Adolf Harnack, On the Monarchian Gnosis of Apelles (1874), Part Two: The Doctrine of Apelles

From the same dissertation, Part Two, pages 55–92: the doctrine of Apelles set out and illustrated, followed by Harnack’s addenda and corrigenda and the table of contents of 1874.

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Part Two

The doctrine of Apelles is set out and illustrated

As we are about to set out Apelles’ doctrine, we warn once more, as we already said above, that no one should rashly pick out single and varied opinions of other Gnostics from here and there and compare them with Apelles’ doctrine.

First of all, effort must be given to understanding rightly the relation that existed between Apelles and Marcion. For it will become clear that Apelles, even where he seems to have departed from Marcion, still remained Marcion’s disciple. You must therefore use a cautious judgment if you mean to bring Apelles’ views into comparison with the doctrines of others.

I.

All the authorities to a man hand down that Apelles professed one God. In confessing one God he left the footsteps of his master Marcion, who brought in two “unborn, unmade, eternal” gods. To this one God he gave these names or similar ones: „ὁ ἀγαθὸς θεός. ὁ ἀγαθὸς πατήρ. ὁ ἄνω θεός. ὁ ἄνω ἀγαθὸς θεός. ἡ μία ἀρχή. ἡ μία δύναμις ἀκατονόμαστος. ὁ ἅγιος ἄνωθεν θεὸς καὶ ἀγαθός. ἡ ὕπερθεν δύναμις. ὁ ἀγέννητος θεός κτλ.“ [English: “the good God; the good Father; the God above; the good God above; the one principle; the one unnameable power; the holy God from above, and good; the power above; the unbegotten God, etc.”] Above all he called his God the good and higher God; and with these same names Marcion too adorned the God of the New Testament.¹⁾

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That higher and good God neither created the world nor takes any care for what goes on in the world: this Apelles taught, here too following Marcion’s doctrine.¹⁾ Yet Apelles did not proclaim that the higher God created nothing at all; he denied only that this world is the work of the good God. On the contrary, he held him to be the author of a certain higher and purer world.²⁾ In professing this doctrine Apelles sided with almost all the heresiarchs of the Gnostics, and also with Marcion, who himself did not hesitate to say openly that the higher God had founded a certain higher world.³⁾ We must remember this when we come to explain Apelles’ christology, where the question presents itself for us to solve: from which world did Christ take flesh for himself, from the creator’s world or from the seats of the higher God above the heavens?

But that better God not only made a world and a heaven for himself; he also created powers and angels.⁴⁾ The first and chief of these is a certain renowned and glorious angel, who is both the founder and the god of this world. So Apelles referred everything that exists and can be thought of to one and the same God, to whom

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he set no rival beside him. In this way he had driven out the dualism of Marcion, who invented two rival principles opposed to each other; but he himself professed another dualism, one that was, so to speak, born and grew up by degrees. The catholic church itself approved a similar doctrine, professing that the devil was indeed created by God and yet was utterly hostile to God; but it is as far as possible from the doctrine of Apelles, who separated the creator of the world from God himself and made him, once separated, an opponent of God. It is clear, then, that Apelles held a middle position between the catholic and the Marcionite doctrine: together with the church he confesses one God and no other; together with Marcion he denies that this world was created by God himself. Yet what was it that moved the disciple to change his master’s views? By what arguments was he led to cast off the doctrines of his famous and stern teacher and turn to the worship of one God?

A thorough look into Marcion’s own doctrine can answer this question. When we examine it carefully, we cannot help confessing that there is much in it that could prepare the way to the acknowledgment of one God.¹⁾ “Languishing over the question of evil, whence evil comes, and with his senses dulled by the very excess of his curiosity,”²⁾ and led on by comparing the Old Testament with Paul’s doctrine, Marcion did fall into dualism and separated the good God of the New Testament from the just-and-malign God of the Old Testament. But although he laid that dualism beneath his theology as its principle and foundation, his doctrine itself in many of its parts tends toward removing that opposition. Let us not forget that Marcion did not compose a system of theology at all,

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much less written one down; for he is nowhere consistent with himself, but everywhere contradictory and troublesome to himself! So it could happen that, in what he taught about redemption and about the things to come after death,¹⁾ he almost dropped the dualism he had set up between the good and the just God and himself paved the way to acknowledging the monarchy of God. So his doctrine, though built on dualism, in fact smacks of monism here and there.²⁾ If you weigh this, you will judge that Marcion’s own doctrine gave Apelles the handle by which to escape the snares of dualism. In embracing the view that the supreme God is the author of all things, Apelles came close to the church’s doctrine; but he was still so held by his master’s fictions that he refused to grant that God himself created this world, and he set between them another creator of the world,³⁾ though one created by God himself, in order to separate God and the world as far as possible. But all the apologists of the second century, and all the fathers of the second and third centuries, defended and confessed this above all: that the supreme God and the creator of the world are one and the same. With the fullest right they set up this doctrine as a bulwark against the heretics’ opinions; with the fullest right they laid it down that no one could be tolerated in the church who set about striking at and violating the rule of faith on this point.⁴⁾ But someone may perhaps say that the church of that time itself separated God from the world, by teaching that not God himself but his λόγος [Word] founded the world. A rash saying indeed, and wholly foolish! For who does not see that the fathers of the church, in confessing the λόγος as the author of the world, by no means side with those heretics? For the heretics put a creator of the world in between, so that the evil creation

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might be separated from the good God; but the church, in putting the λόγος between, by no means wished to remove the world from God. For the λόγος, God’s own reason and word, is himself, so to speak, the full possessor of the nature and the character of the Godhead; and so the very men who held the λόγος to be the creator of the world surely did not deny that God himself founded the world. And although they all to a man judged that the λόγος was subordinate to the Father in time and origin, the fathers of the church always and at all times attributed to the λόγος the divine properties themselves, I mean power and goodness. So they by no means taught that the λόγος created the world in order to keep the good God himself from touching matter, as though matter were evil.¹⁾ Here we run into the chief and greatest difference between the churchmen and the Gnostics. Apelles, however, in supposing that God himself neither created the world nor gave the law, stands on the side of the Gnostics and sides with his master Marcion.

But in Apelles’ view the higher God not only made the higher world and the powers and angels; he also brought forth the souls of men himself. We affirm this as certain when we consider the passages de carne Chr. 8; de anim. 23; Epiph. h. 44 c. 5.²⁾ Tertullian and Hippolytus do disagree with each other when they set out Apelles’ doctrine of the fall of souls, but each hands down this: that in Apelles’ view the souls at first dwelt in the seats above the heavens and, led on by the enticements of a certain angel, fell down to earth. It is clear, then, that the souls, which in the beginning lived in the higher world, were created by the higher God. Marcion, however, professed an altogether different view, teaching that both the body and the soul of man were founded by the demiurge and not by the higher God. He made man as foreign as possible to the higher God, so that the overflowing clemency and mercy of God might appear, by which he snatched man, who was joined to him by no bond, out of

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the hands of the cruel and malign demiurge and saved him. But that view, put forward so that God’s goodness might shine out most brilliantly, did great violence to reason and could in no way stand. With the fullest right, therefore, the fathers pointed out that on Marcion’s view the higher God is like a thief; for it is a thief’s part to seize and keep what belongs to others.¹⁾ And not only did the fathers of the church reject this doctrine; many of Marcion’s own disciples also tried to escape it. The Marcionites whom Origen²⁾ and Pseudo-Origen-Adamantius³⁾ refuted taught that men’s bodies were indeed founded by the creator, but that their souls took their origin from the higher God; in this way they explained why the higher God had sent his son Christ into the creator’s world and set men free: namely, to recover his own for himself. By embracing this view they did remove the stumbling block to reason, but in trying to explain Marcion’s doctrine they tore down the foundations of the doctrine itself. For Marcion laid this down as the foundation of his doctrine: that men are by nature and origin altogether foreign to the good God. He determined that God set men free without reason, indeed against reason, so that every claim to redemption and salvation might be extinguished. For if men’s souls had really been created by God himself, God would of necessity have pity on his creature; and if God of necessity had pity on men, the nature of grace would vanish. So he separated man from God as far as possible, so that, with both every reason and every necessity for setting him free shut out, the whole work of redemption might be attributed to God’s grace alone. But his disciples,

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either neglecting the sense of Marcion’s views or correcting them on purpose, changed the doctrine in order to satisfy reason and soften the opposition between the two principles; and our Apelles too stands on their side, teaching that the souls were at first in the seats above the heavens.¹⁾ Apelles therefore traced the origin of the souls back to the higher God himself, granting that there exists a certain natural bond that joins God with men. In confessing this view Apelles had repealed and driven out the dualism of Marcion.

II.

Apelles professed different views at different times about the nature of the glorious angel who created the world and men. Let us first hear Hippolytus as he copies out Apelles’ words. Apelles said that the creator turned out not at all good and that his works were not well made, for everything was founded out of his evil mind;²⁾ but that Christ came to destroy this tyrant’s works and to snatch from his hands the souls he had led astray.³⁾ To put it in a few words: the creator is in truth the adversary and enemy of the good God. The very names that Apelles, on Hippolytus’ testimony, seems to have given the creator show this: „Ὁ κακὸς ὑπάρχων. ὁ κακὸς ποιητής. ὁ ὅλως κακὸς ποιητής. ὁ κτισθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ θεοῦ πονηρὸς δημιουργός. ὁ τύραννος κτλ.“ [English: “the one who is evil; the evil maker; the wholly evil maker; the wicked creator created by the good God; the tyrant, etc.”] So Apelles in some part charges the creator with the same character that Marcion had attributed to him when he called him fierce, mighty in war, malign.⁴⁾

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Marcion, however, held the creator to be not only cruel and evil but above all just; for he set against goodness not malice, nor against God the devil, but rather against goodness justice, and against the God of the N. T. the God of the O. T. Twisting the doctrine of the apostle Paul, he judged that the worshippers of the good God are enemies of the just God, and he taught that Christ came into the world to destroy not the works of the devil but the schemes of a certain just one. But that just one (this Marcion truly professed), since he lacked goodness and used justice alone, became malign; being malign, he became cruel; and cruelty paved the way to malice. So the just creator turned out evil. Compare, please, with this doctrine that Apelleian saying „[ὁ δημιουργὸς] ἀπέβη οὐκ ἀγαθός“ [(the creator) turned out not good], and be assured that at one time Apelles too laid down something similar about the creator’s nature. The view that Marcion put forward about the creator’s nature, and that Apelles took over, is certainly two-sided; two-sided, yet clear, once you have dug out the foundations of the doctrine that lie in the epistles of the apostle Paul. You will hardly be surprised that the disciples did not keep the two-sided doctrine whole. They took two roads, so as to keep Marcion’s doctrine and still avoid the tortures of reason. Some declared that the creator is just, and besides brought in another, an evil god; others affirmed that the creator himself was only evil. The former proclaimed three principles, good, just and evil; the latter laid down two, good and evil.¹⁾ Both, however, violated the genuine view of Marcion, who constantly asserted two principles: the good, and the just who is at the same time evil. Apelles, on Hippolytus’ testimony, seems at first to have kept this genuine doctrine of Marcion, calling the creator again and again „οὐκ ἀγαθὸν ἀποβάντα“ [one who turned out not good] and at the same time an enemy of the higher God; but later he seems to have changed his doctrine himself, transferring the creator’s evil properties to a certain fiery angel and calling the creator himself just and obedient to the good God. So it is clear that Apelles later sided with those who set two gods, the just

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and the evil, beside the higher God.¹⁾

Tertullian, Hippolytus II and Origen are our witnesses of this; for they illustrated and described the nature, character and history of the creator altogether differently from Hippolytus I. And we showed above that Tertullian and Origen used the words of the Apelleiaci themselves or of Apelles himself. We conclude, therefore, that the Apelleiaci, or Apelles himself,²⁾ gradually arranged the doctrine differently.

If we listen to Tertullian and Origen, what Apelles professed about the creator and the creation of the world is this:

1) The creator founded this world in imitation of the higher world.³⁾

2) The creator, in order to create the world, was helped by the spirit (πνεῦμα), the will (βουλή) and the power (δύναμις) of Christ himself.⁴⁾

3) The creator built the world for the glory of the higher God.⁵⁾

4) The creator, when he had founded the world and recognized that he had not reached the pattern set before him to imitate, mixed repentance into it.⁶⁾

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5) The creator, when he saw that his world was not perfect, himself asked the higher God to send his son to correct his world.¹⁾

6) The creator is just and not evil.²⁾

All of this agrees very well together, and it is wholly at odds with what Apelles argued on the testimony of Hippolytus I. I will repeat this one point: on Hippolytus’ testimony Apelles said that Christ came to earth to teach us to reject the creator and to call us away from worshipping him; on Origen’s testimony, however, that Christ came down to earth at the creator’s request. The two can in no way be reconciled.³⁾ The creator’s nature, as Tertullian and Origen describe it from Apelles’ view, brings forward other notions and other properties than the nature that Hippolytus I, he too following the footsteps of Apelles himself, attributed to him. We judge, therefore, that Apelles in later time separated the evil properties from the creator’s nature and heaped them onto another angel, whom he then held to be the true enemy of the higher God: onto that fiery angel. Of that fiery angel Hippolytus says nothing at all; for when Apelles, first working out his doctrine, had professed that the creator himself was the enemy of the higher God, there was no need to summon another to set against God and take the adversary’s part.⁴⁾ But when he had recognized that the creator does not oppose the higher God but obeys him,

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he raised up another, whom he made out to be God’s adversary. Tertullian¹⁾ and Hippolytus II speak of that adversary:²⁾

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1) That adversary is called fiery.¹⁾

2) That adversary is the God of the law, of Israel, of the Catholics.²⁾ It is clear that Apelles was still caught in the snares of the Marcionite doctrine, since he held the God of the Old Testament in such contempt as to make him the bitterest enemy of the good God. From this definition of the doctrine Apelles’ so-called antinomianism shines out most clearly. He separated the God of the law and of the Old Testament from the God of the gospel and the New Testa-

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ment, and not only separated him but set the one against the other. That the God of Israel and the fiery angel are the same follows also from what Rhodon handed down about Apelles: „τὸν Ἀπελλῆ μυρία κατὰ τοῦ Μωϋσέως νόμου ἀσεβεῖν“ [that Apelles committed countless impieties against the law of Moses]. For if in Apelles’ view the glorious angel had been the God of Israel and of the law, Apelles would certainly not have despised the law so much. But since Apelles held the God of Israel and the God of the Catholics to be the same, we may rightly conjecture that he charged the Catholics with a Judaizing faith and life.

3) That adversary is evil, and he is called “praeses mali” [ruler of evil], „κακῶν αἴτιος“ [cause of evils], „πνεῦμα ἀντικείμενον“ [the opposing spirit]. His malice can be recognized above all from the fact that he lured men’s souls with earthly foods from the seats above the heavens down to earth and built impure and shameful flesh onto them.¹⁾ He is therefore the author of sin and of the flesh. From this we conclude that Apelles in later time made a distinction between matter and flesh. He persuaded himself that matter was created by the creator-angel, but the flesh by the fiery angel. So Apelles distinguished three kinds of matter, so to speak:

1) The matter above the heavens, pure and whole, which God himself or his Christ had brought forth.

2) The matter of the world and the earth, neither good nor evil,

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but bearing the marks of an imperfect craftsman, which that glorious angel had founded.

3) The sinful flesh, which the fiery angel had made.¹⁾ Apelles made this distinction not at the beginning but in later time. If you bring the opinions of other Gnostics into comparison, you will easily understand that Apelles by no means sides with them. For they set matter itself against God and attributed certain evils to it; but Apelles, agreeing with the Catholics at least on this point, denied that matter itself is evil. Yet he still stands on the side of the Gnostics in contending that the nature of the flesh is evil and depraved.²⁾ Behold a mind wavering between the opinions of the catholic church and those of the Gnostics!³⁾

But the fiery angel not only led the souls into evil; once they had been led there he also held them, prescribing perverse and impious laws and publishing them in the Old Testament, so as to disturb and confuse men. Christ, however, came into the world at the creator’s request to set free both him and men and to destroy the fiery angel’s schemes.

From what has been set out it is easy to see that Apelles’ doctrine was gradually changed by Apelles himself. In earlier time he taught that the creator was the author of the fall, that he produced the books of Holy Scripture, and that Christ came to overcome him. Illustrating the creator’s nature in this way, at the beginning he did not stray far from Marcion’s footsteps. But then he paved another road for himself by, as it were, splitting apart the creator’s nature, which Marcion had fashioned for himself after the likeness of Proteus. For Marcion, so that the nature and history of the world and of the human race

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before Christ came might be grasped and judged by the mind, used only one standard of judgment: he held everything that had happened before Christ to be false, wicked and impious. For Marcion judged that even the best men of the time before Christ were utterly foreign to the good God. So he painted the history of the Jews and of the Nations, and also the nature of their god (namely the creator), in one single colour, and a gloomy one, so to speak, finding not even the smallest spark of the divine or the good anywhere. But Apelles, having looked more closely into the history of the human race, changed his master’s views a little in later time. In this he seems always to have sided with Marcion: he declared that the good God was altogether unknown before Christ’s time and had not revealed himself. But it did not escape him that already in the history of that time there was a struggle between evil and something better, although that better thing too was by no means good and perfect in every respect. So he set beside the evil fiery angel a creator who was eager for the good, and he did not reject the Old Testament as a whole, but uncovered in it revelations of a better god, mixed in with the perverse and evil laws and institutions of the fiery angel. In this way he corrected, and violated, Marcion’s doctrine, which had done away with all reason in history.¹⁾

There was nothing Apelles cared about more than defining more accurately what credit and authority should be granted to the Old Testament. As long as he followed Marcion’s doctrine he refused the Old Testament altogether. Then, if you listen to Hippolytus,²⁾ he distinguished in the Old Testament between words that had their origin from Christ³⁾ and words of the evil creator. For he said that Christ came to earth

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to show us which things in the sacred writings had been spoken by himself and which had been brought forth by the creator. „Οὕτως γάρ, φησίν, ἔφη ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ· Γίνεσθαι δόκιμοι τραπεζῖται.¹⁾ Χρῶ γάρ, φησίν, ἀπὸ πάσης γραφῆς ἀναλέγων τὰ χρήσιμα.“ [English: “For thus, he says, he spoke in the gospel: Be approved money-changers. For make use, he says, of what is useful, gathering it from every scripture.”] Later, however, after he had separated the fiery angel from the creator-angel, he judged that the false and perverse things had been inspired by the fiery one, and that whatever was saving and better had been brought into the Old Testament by the creator-angel.²⁾ Then, near the end of his life, he came close again to Marcion’s view, persuading himself that nothing at all in the Old Testament had been spoken by the good God; indeed he confessed that every attempt to separate the true from the false in the Old Testament

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had come to nothing. So the old man came to hold what the young man had suspected, and he rejected the law and the prophets altogether.¹⁾

To demonstrate the discrepancy between the O. and the N. T., and to uncover the absurdities of certain views in the O. T. itself, Apelles wrote a book to which he gave the name Συλλογισμοί [Syllogisms]. Ambrose and Origen²⁾ have preserved for us some remains of this now lost book, and from them it is clear that in this book Apelles used the method of his master Marcion, who had written a book of „Ἀντιθέσεων“ [Antitheses], that is, “contrariarum oppositionum, quae conarentur 1) discordiam evangelii cum lege admittere, ut ex diversitate sententiarum utriusque instrumenti diversitatem quoque probarent deorum et 2) deum V. T. inconstantiae convincere, ut ex diversitate institutionum et legum natura creatoris mobilis et inconstans cognosceretur” [English: “of contrary oppositions, which attempted 1) to set the gospel at variance with the law, so that from the difference between the views of the two instruments they might also prove a difference of gods, and 2) to convict the God of the O. T. of inconstancy, so that from the difference of his institutions and laws the creator’s nature might be recognized as changeable and inconstant”].

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Marcion, then, harassed the Old Testament to show the “pettiness and inconstancy” of the God of the law;¹⁾ Apelles, however, put forward his Syllogisms to show that two different angels spoke in the O. T., one of whom was a liar. Marcion referred everything found in the O. T. to one and the same god, and so condemned everything; Apelles, who at one time referred some things to a certain better angel, picked out some things for himself and spat out a great many as made up.

From the fragments of the Syllogisms that now survive we can see how much subtlety and sagacity Apelles, a man practised in criticism, brought to interpreting the books of the O. T.²⁾ He seems to have spent his effort above all on explaining the passages Gen. c. 1–3, having taken over Marcion’s scruples.³⁾ Ambrose (de Parad. V, 28) excerpted these:

“Plerique enim, quorum auctor Apelles, sicut habes in trigesimo et octavo tomo ejus, has quaestiones proponunt: ‘Quomodo lignum vitae plus operari videtur ad vitam, quam insufflatio dei?’

‘Deinde si hominem non perfectum fecit deus, unusquisque autem per industriam propriam perfectionem sibi virtutis adsciscit: nonne videtur plus sibi homo acquirere, quam ei deus contulit?’

Tertium objiciunt: ‘Et si homo non gustaverat mortem, utique quam non gustaverat, scire non poterat. Ergo si non [p. 73] gustaverat, nesciebat; si nesciebat, timere non poterat. Frustra igitur Deus mortem pro terrore objecit, quam homines non timebant.’”

[English: “For most of them, whose author is Apelles, as you have it in his thirty-eighth tome, put forward these questions: ‘How is it that the tree of life seems to do more for life than the breath of God?’ ‘Next, if God did not make man perfect, but each man by his own diligence gains for himself the perfection of virtue, does not man seem to gain more for himself than God gave him?’ Third, they object: ‘And if man had not tasted death, he certainly could not know what he had not tasted. So if he had not tasted it, he did not know it; if he did not know it, he could not fear it. In vain, then, did God hold out death as a terror, since men did not fear it.’”]

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Behold the interpretations of a man who was surely not ordinary! Apelles here laid bare difficulties which the wisest men of every age have sweated, and will sweat, to escape.

Of less value are the ones Origen preserved. They are found in Hom. in Gen. II, 2 (in Greek and Latin), on c. 6:

„Ἐπηπόρουν τινὲς εἰ δύναται ἡ τηλικαύτη κιβωτὸς χωρῆσαι κἂν τὸ πολλοστὸν μόριον τῶν ἐπὶ γῆς πάντων ζώων. Καὶ μάλιστα Ἀπελλῆς ὁ τοῦ Μαρκίωνος γνώριμος, καὶ γενόμενος ἑτέρας αἱρέσεως παρ᾽ ἐκεῖνον πατήρ, ἀθετεῖν βουλόμενος ὡς οὐχ ἅγια τὰ Μωϋσέως συγγράμματα, τοῦτο ἐπαπορήσας ἐπιφέρει, τό· ψευδὴς ἄρα ὁ μῦθος· οὐκ ἄρα ἐκ θεοῦ ἡ γραφή.“

[English: “Some raised the difficulty whether an ark of that size could hold even the smallest fraction of all the animals on earth. And above all Apelles, the pupil of Marcion, who became the father of another heresy besides his, wishing to set aside the writings of Moses as not holy, raises this difficulty and adds: ‘So the story is false; so the scripture is not from God.’”]

“Sed his omnibus tanta arte compositis objiciunt quidam quaestiones, et praecipue Apelles, qui fuit discipulus quidem Marcionis, sed alterius haereseos magis quam ejus, quam a magistro suscepit, inventor. Is ergo dum assignare cupit, scripta Mosis nihil in se divinae sapientiae nihilque operis S. S. continere, exaggerat hujusmodi dicta, et dicit, nullo modo fieri potuisse, ut tam breve spatium tot animalium genera eorumque cibos, qui per totum annum sufficerent, capere potuisset. Cum enim bina et bina ex immundis animalibus, hoc est bini masculi et binae feminae (hoc enim indicat sermo repetitus), ex mundis vero septena et septena, quod est paria septena, in arcam dicantur inducta, quomodo, inquit, fieri potuit istud spatium, quod scriptum est, ut quattuor saltem solos elephantes capere potuerit? Et posteaquam per singulas species hoc modo refragatur, addit super omnia his verbis: ‘constat ergo fictam esse fabulam. Quod si est, constat, non esse a deo hanc Scripturam.’”

[English: “But against all these things, so skilfully put together, certain people raise questions, and above all Apelles, who was indeed a disciple of Marcion, but rather the inventor of another heresy than of the one he received from his master. He, then, in his desire to show that the writings of Moses contain nothing of divine wisdom and nothing of the work of the Holy Spirit, enlarges on sayings of this kind and says that it could in no way have happened that so small a space could hold so many kinds of animals and their food, enough to last a whole year. For since two and two of the unclean animals, that is, two males and two females (for this is what the repeated word indicates), but seven and seven of the clean, that is, seven pairs, are said to have been brought into the ark, how, he asks, could that space, as it is written, have held even four elephants alone? And after he has objected in this way about each kind, he adds over and above everything, in these words: ‘It is clear, then, that the story is made up. And if so, it is clear that this Scripture is not from God.’”]

It follows from what we have brought forward that Apelles inquired into Holy Scripture with no ordinary zeal. Since he seems to have rejected altogether the allegorical art of interpreting the sacred books,

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you will hardly be surprised that he tracked down many contradictory statements in the O. T.¹⁾

It is harder to know which books of the New Testament Apelles received into his canon, for the authorities report very little about this.²⁾ All agree that Marcion, apart from Luke’s Gospel and ten epistles of the apostle Paul, accused all the books of the new instrument of Judaizing doctrine and therefore spat them out. One must suspect, then, that Apelles sided with his master in this matter too, and the testimonies of the authorities hardly stand against this suspicion.³⁾ Anger, who tried with the greatest care to uncover the traces of Apelles’ gospel, judged that he favoured the four gospels which

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the church received.¹⁾ But that most learned man brought forward arguments of little certainty. We deny that this question can be solved with certainty; looking only at the testimonies of the authorities, we can note the following in advance: 1) From the words of Apelles himself, of Jerome and of Bede it can by no means be concluded that Apelles kept only one gospel. 2) From the passage de carne Chr. 7 it does not follow that Apelles received the Gospel according to Matthew.²⁾ 3) From the passage Philos. VII, 38 (Χριστὸν καταλιπεῖν τὸ τῆς ζωῆς σπέρμα εἰς τὸν κόσμον τοῖς πιστεύουσιν [that Christ left the seed of life in the world for those who believe] and δείξαντα τοὺς τύπους τῶν ἥλων καὶ τῆς πλευρᾶς κτλ. [having shown the marks of the nails and of the side, etc.]) it cannot be proved that he received John’s Gospel.³⁾ 4) It is known that Apelles used Marcion’s apostle. 5) The Gospels according to Matthew, Mark and John seem hardly better suited to Apelles’ doctrine than to Marcion’s views. So it seems more probable to me at least that Apelles kept only one gospel, that is, Luke’s Gospel, which he had received already circumcised and cut short by Marcion, and which he himself mutilated according to his own opinion and adorned with sayings supplied from elsewhere that pleased him.

Now, so that we may come to sketching Apelles’ christology: since we have shown well enough that Apelles himself changed his reasoning and his doctrine, the thing most to be asked seems to be what led him to go so far. For perhaps it can still be tracked down even now that his mind was so greatly moved, either by certain turns

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of fortune or by the persuasions of men, that he could not rest in the doctrine he had worked out. Indeed certain traces, though obscured, seem to us to lie hidden in what has been recorded of his life. For on returning to Rome from Alexandria, when he had, as it were, completed his earlier doctrine and brought it to its end, so that almost nothing seemed left, he took that virgin Philumene into close association with himself. That this woman had very great influence with him is testified with one voice by Rhodon, Tertullian,¹⁾ Hippolytus II, Pseudo-Tertullian, Pacian,²⁾ Jerome³⁾ and Theodoret. “Apelles followed her as a prophetess”; he wrote down her prophecies and published them under the title „Φανερώσεις“ [Revelations],⁴⁾ and indeed he seems to have granted them an authority equal to that of Holy Scripture.⁵⁾ Tertullian relates that this Philumene pretended to be inspired by a certain angel, and to refute her he uses the apostle’s words, Gal. 1:8, “even if an angel from heaven should preach a gospel otherwise, he would be called anathema by us,” calling that angel

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the angel of seduction, “transforming himself into an angel of light.”¹⁾ In various places²⁾ he likewise hands down that Philumene was Apelles’ instructress and teacher. So, since Tertullian reports that Apelles, when he came back from Alexandria, was “no longer a Marcionite,”³⁾ and yet hands down that Philumene, whom he attached to himself only after returning to Rome, was his teacher, we may conjecture that Apelles changed his doctrine to some extent twice. For, moved by Philumene’s illusions and called out by the two-sided nature of his own doctrine, he again amended his views somewhat. If we remember that Hippolytus I says nothing at all about Philumene, we shall hold it most probable that Hippolytus I renders the form of the Apelleian doctrine which the heretic thought out at Alexandria, while Tertullian renders the form which that curious man built for himself with Philumene’s help after his return to Rome. Out of the shipwreck of knowledge Apelles fled to the mystical utterances of a prophetess, so as to find, with the help of the angels themselves, something certain on which mortals could rely.⁴⁾

III.

To set men free and snatch them from the hands of the fiery angel, the higher God, at the creator’s request,⁵⁾ at the consummation of the age⁶⁾

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sent his son into the world.¹⁾ The same God, who until then had nowhere revealed himself and had neglected the human race, now suddenly shows himself through his son, and suddenly, indeed against all expectation, sets free the souls of men. For Marcion and Apelles denied that Christ, or God himself, ever appeared to the Patriarchs or to Moses or to the Prophets, or sent messengers to them.²⁾ A sudden mercy, a sudden grace they

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contrived, so that the new and at the same time happy condition of the new time might shine out as brightly as possible. They thought they had dug out the traces of the apostle Paul’s doctrine, which they judged the church had buried and covered over. And you will hardly affirm that they were altogether wrong. For since the church taught both that Christ had already appeared in the Old Testament and that, once incarnate, he preached a new law, there was reason to fear that it would understand too little, and value too low, the unique work of the Saviour’s incarnation, the singular dignity of the gospel preaching, and the new condition of the New Testament. Who does not know that the churchmen, in that fight with the heretics over the authority of the Old Testament, went so far that they wholly overturned at that time the account of the relation between the Old and the New Testament which Paul had rightly defined, and which indeed they had not truly grasped from the beginning? Those who at first had taken care to fit the views and precepts of the Old Testament to the nature of the new covenant by using immoderate allegory were soon led to bring the laws of the Old Testament into the discipline of the Christian church, and in this way to violate Christian freedom. But Marcion and Apelles, so that the singular nature of the work of redemption might shine out, denied that Christ was ever seen in the Old Test., and set the Old Test., together with the divine law itself, against the New Test. and the gospel. In confessing that the nature of the law is one thing and the nature of the gospel another, they side with the apostle Paul; but they leave him as far behind as possible by, as it were, cutting through the bond by which, in Paul’s view, the law was joined with the gospel. It is clear, then, that both the churchmen and the Marcionites strayed from Paul’s footsteps, for neither rightly grasped the apostle’s genuine view of the relation of the law to the gospel:¹⁾ the former, by confusing law and gospel into one, obscured the nature of the grace of the gospel; the latter, by tearing law and gospel apart, threw down all the foundations of the history of salvation. But that Apelles, by teaching that the creator-angel was inspired by Christ to found the world, softened the Marcionite dogmas somewhat, even if he did not repeal them, will be clear from what we argued above.

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How pleasant it would be, if only it were known what our Apelles judged about the person of Christ and his saving work! But in the surviving monuments of church antiquity very few of the views Apelles held about the Saviour’s person and work are recorded. Yet the foundations of his doctrine can be known.

Apelles was devoted to this view: that Christ took on a true and solid body;¹⁾ that in this true body he lived hidden from the powers of the world,²⁾ suffered, was crucified, died and was buried; and indeed that he rose with this true body and appeared to the disciples to show them that he was not a phantom but had true flesh. In confessing this right and purely catholic view, Apelles seems to have left the tenets of the Gnostics behind and repelled the common, so-called docetism. By asserting that Christ’s body was true and solid he banished the fictions of Marcion, Satornilus, Valentinus and Basilides. But what was it that moved Apelles and led him so far as to throw off altogether the doctrine of his master Marcion, who had professed that Christ’s body was a φάντασμα [phantom]?³⁾ For who does not know that none of the heretics kept to docetism as strictly as Marcion, who had denied to Christ all reality of flesh and had altogether denied the reality

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of Christ’s birth?¹⁾ But Apelles, as you see, not only left his master’s footsteps but also seems to agree little with any of the Gnostics, since he taught that the Son of God himself suffered, died and was raised in a true body. But before we solve this question, Apelles’ view of Christ must be understood more accurately. For although Apelles had restored to Christ a true and solid body, he nevertheless denied that Christ carried about human flesh. That heretic professed that Christ’s body was by no means taken from the virgin’s womb, nor born, but was a body of its own quality. And he thought up this fable: that Christ, descending from heaven and gliding down to earth, built himself a body out of the four elements, that is, out of the hot and the cold, the dry and the moist.²⁾ Apelles, as you see, spat out the birth and the human nature of Christ. So although Apelles had repelled Marcion’s docetism, he nevertheless brought in a certain docetism by the back door, siding in this matter with Marcion, who, utterly loathing every appearance of generation and birth,³⁾ constantly asserted that Christ, suffering none of the shame of being born, flowed down from heaven in the fifteenth year of Tiberius and preached the gospel.⁴⁾ So that no one may wonder at this, I very much wish this to be held fast: Apelles supposed that human flesh was the structure of the fiery and evil angel, and

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made it out to be sinful by nature; so, following Marcion’s footsteps, he was of necessity led to deny Christ human flesh. He therefore laid down this: that Christ borrowed solid flesh from the elements, so that by admitting flesh and denying birth he might answer both lines of reasoning, namely, shutting out the shame of human flesh while keeping the true appearance of Christ’s body. It is truly well worth noting that Apelles, although he taught that Christ had true flesh even after the resurrection (an opinion by which he seemed to drive out all the scruples of the Gnostics),¹⁾ and although he was well aware how much weight Christ’s human nature carries in his saving work, nevertheless by no means persuaded himself that Christ returned with his flesh to the Father in heaven.²⁾ So he confessed a two-sided view, keeping the true history of the resurrection while also teaching that Christ, as he ascended into heaven, gave his body back to the elements, the hot to the hot, the cold to the cold, and so on.³⁾

Now we must above all take up this question: from which world, in Apelles’ view, did Christ take his flesh, from that higher world of the higher God or from the lower world of the creator God? Then the kind of docetism Apelles brought in can be defined more rightly. From the passage de carne Chr. 8 it appears that Tertullian did not doubt that Apelles professed that Christ built himself a body from the creator’s world;⁴⁾ but Apelles’ own

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words, preserved by Tertullian, stand against this. For in De carne Chr. 6 we read that Christ borrowed his flesh “de sideribus et de substantiis superioris mundi” [from the stars and from the substances of the higher world]; in de carne 8, “de sideribus competisse Christo carnem” [that his flesh came to Christ from the stars]; and in Pseudo-Tertullian we find written “in ipso descensu Christum sideream sibi carnem et aëream contexuisse” [that Christ, in the very descent, wove himself a starry and airy flesh]. So we hold it as established that Christ, in the very descent, took a body for himself from the substances of the higher world, that is, from the stars. Epiphanius (Hippolytus), however, seems to report something else. For from the words ἐν τῷ ἔρχεσθαι ἀπὸ τῶν ἐπουρανίων ἦλθεν εἰς τὴν γῆν καὶ συνήγαγεν ἑαυτῷ ἀπὸ τῶν τεσσάρων στοιχείων σῶμα [in coming from the heavenly places he came to the earth and gathered to himself a body from the four elements] one may conjecture that Christ, after gliding down to earth, wove himself flesh from the earth; and Philastrius seems to agree with this report when he writes “dicit autem Christum in carne apparuisse, non tamen sicut Valentinus de caelo carnem deposuisse” [but he says that Christ appeared in the flesh, yet did not, as Valentinus says, bring flesh down from heaven]. But Epiphanius’ words, looked at more carefully, make no sense at all,¹⁾ and they seem to need correcting from Pseudo-Tertullian’s words. You will easily persuade yourself that Hippolytus too wrote „ἐν τῷ ἔρχεσθαι ἀπὸ τῶν ἐπουρανίων εἰς τὴν γῆν συνήγαγεν ἑαυτῷ σῶμα“ [in coming from the heavenly places to the earth he gathered to himself a body], or something like it. Epiphanius, then, is not at odds with Tertullian.²⁾ Philastrius’ authority, however, hardly deserves any regard. This being so, we hold it probable that in Apelles’ view Christ built himself a body not after his descent, out of the earth, but in the very descent, out of the stars and the heavenly matter;³⁾ yet, weighing the report of Epiphanius and Philastrius, we do not wish to deny that Hippolytus did not set out clearly enough the incarnation of Christ as Apelles conceived it.

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But if Apelles really taught that Christ took flesh from the stars, the first thing to ask is whether the stars belonged to the higher God or to the creator. For my part I have no doubt that Apelles supposed the stars were founded by the higher God;¹⁾ for no one is unaware that the philosophers of the Alexandrians, whom Apelles had heard in their own city, counted the stars as part of the higher world.²⁾

So far, then, was Apelles still held by the fictions of the Gnostics³⁾ that he would not grant even this: that Christ could have taken anything from the world of the creator, let alone from that of the fiery and evil god. Now since he was compelled by necessity no less to grant Christ a true and solid body than to deny that Christ could take on any of the matter of this world, which is subject to the senses, he took refuge in contending that Christ’s flesh was made of stars. Behold a mind wavering between the doctrine of the catholic church and the opinions of the Gnostics, and its vain attempts to reconcile

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things that contradict each other! For it is clear that by that reasoning the discrepancy of conflicting things, such as we see reigning everywhere in Apelles’ doctrine, is not removed but only lightly veiled.

Difficulties of this kind, with which he felt his doctrine was struggling, seem to have been the reason why, just as he had earlier despaired of drawing sure arguments from Holy Scripture, so toward the end of his life he cast off altogether the pursuits and formulas of thought. The man who all his life had held nothing dearer than to penetrate into the knowledge of Holy Scripture came to the point of saying again and again that neither by the help of thought (γνῶσις) nor by the help of Holy Scripture could a sure and firm foundation be laid on which mortals could rely. The attempt to separate the true from the false in Holy Scripture had come to nothing: therefore the whole of Scripture must be cast off. The arguments by which it was to be proved that God is one had shown themselves futile: and yet that very thing must be believed! See, please, what our Gnostic saved from his shipwreck, so to speak: the unity of God, and salvation to be obtained by faith alone, held in the Saviour who was put on the cross. The man who had once asserted with some confidence that Christ came down to these lands meaning to share perfect γνῶσις with men¹⁾ now, near death, professes that the seed of life (τὸ σπέρμα τῆς ζωῆς) has been given to those who believe,²⁾ but that no mortal attains to γνῶσις. Therefore it is not right to demand “an account of the faith that is believed,” nor, if there is one, to examine it scrupulously.³⁾ He says each man must be left his own faith,⁴⁾ holding fast to this: Σωθήσεσθαι τοὺς ἐπὶ τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον ἠλπικότας, μόνον ἐὰν ἐν ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς εὑρίσκωνται [that those who have set their hope on the Crucified will be saved, if only they are found in good works]. Whatever the church teaches and lays down need not be cared about at all; for the truth and sincerity of the Christian faith by no means consists in an exact exposition, definition and confession of the faith. Everything lies in the inborn piety of the soul and in shaping one’s conduct to the rule of the divine will.⁵⁾

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Just as piety leads us to the worship of one God, so good conduct and good works are born of piety.¹⁾ The Gnostic, withholding every vote and every assent from things uncertain, casts off γνῶσιν and keeps πίστιν!

Apelles was a man steeped in a truly Christian piety and strictness,²⁾ but he was also little consistent with himself, and, refusing obedience to the divine law, he laid stricter laws upon himself. Like Marcion, he rightly reproached the church’s doctrine with many things: a doctrine that even then, even where it relied on the precepts of the apostle Paul, was degenerating, rushing into a kind of Judaism and preaching a new law. But each of them was little fit to restore the church, since each acted at his own discretion, wholly uncaring about the history of salvation, indeed rashly neglecting it; each, if you want the truth, was no Gnostic, but each was likewise a stranger to true obedience to Jesus Christ. The Marcionites and the followers of Apelles, although they differ from the Montanists in almost everything and indeed hold the opposite position almost everywhere, are nonetheless joined to them by a certain kinship. For both, though they go off in different directions, are to be counted among the fanatics and enthusiasts who, carried away by a certain perverse piety, overturn the order of the church.³⁾ It will be clear, then, why Tertullian the Montanist fought so vehemently against Marcion and Apelles, men in a way akin to himself, but

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at the same time as contrary to him as possible.¹⁾ Who will not see that Apelles, near the end of his life, escaped from the company of the Gnostics? But there is no reason to lay down that Apelles put an end to Gnosticism itself, and no reason to affirm that gnosticism gradually returned into the bosom of the church. Those who wish to demonstrate this by considering the doctrine of Apelles, or of Marcion himself,²⁾ forget that neither Marcion nor Apelles stood wholly on the side of the Gnostics. The formulas of their views are indeed like those of the Gnostics, but their principles and foundations by no means correspond. Marcion was so far from casting off faith, or rating it low, and extolling the dignity of γνῶσις above all else, that he pressed and asserted πίστις and the surpassing grace of God first of all. But by cutting justice off from goodness and setting the good God of the N. T. against the just God of the O. T., he slipped into errors and into the formulas of gnostic views; and then the doctrines of his followers, “growing into the forests of the Gnostics, ran wild,” although the master himself had rested on other foundations. Once you have understood that the doctrines of Marcion and the Marcionites cannot rightly be referred to the fictions of the Gnostics, it will now be clear that our Apelles is wrongly called the man who put an end to Gnosticism. For his doctrine is built on the foundations Marcion had laid, and you will hold the heretic himself, though he went out from Marcion’s school, to be a true disciple of his master if you look at the inmost nature of his faith and piety.³⁾ How, then, can we suppose that he put an end to Gnosticism, when he is hardly to be counted among the Gnostics at all?

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Who will affirm that he advanced Gnosticism, when, singular as he was in his own age, he had very few among his contemporaries whom he could persuade? Indeed, when I look at the tenets of the later Basilidians¹⁾ and of Tatian, I do not wish to deny that the Gnostics who appeared at the end of the second century rejected dualism and gradually went back by various and different roads to monism, and softened the forms of docetism. But the Basilidians, in defending monism, by no means left the footsteps of the Gnostics, and, in exchanging dualism for pantheism, came not one step nearer to the church’s doctrine. Hilgenfeld therefore unwisely compared the Basilidians with the Apelleiaci,²⁾ and no less rash is the judgment of anyone who supposes that the opinions of Pseudo-Clement hang together in some part with the Apelleian ones. For the views of Pseudo-Clement, though here and there quite like the Apelleian ones as to their formulas, rest on altogether different foundations; nor is there any reason to judge that they moved Apelles. Apelles and Pseudo-Clement do agree in many things, but they came together at the same point by altogether different roads. I readily grant, however, that the relation between Marcion and the Marcionites and the followers of Pseudo-Clement needs to be investigated more accurately.

But I know of one most distinguished and highly regarded man, a contemporary of Apelles,³⁾ once a churchman, as the story goes, and afterwards a heretic, whose doctrine fits Apelles’ views excellently: I mean Tatian the Assyrian. Setting aside the question Lipsius raised,⁴⁾ whether Tatian remained in the church while sowing heretical seeds or not, we shall bring forward his views, so that you may understand how closely they hang together with the doctrines of Apelles.⁵⁾

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1) Tatian taught that besides the higher God there exists another god who created the world, and that the creator-god is not hostile to the higher God but obeys him in everything; indeed, that there is a certain bond between the one and the other, for the words “Let there be light” are the words of one who prays. Tatian, then, supposed that the creator-god implored that higher God to bring forth light.¹⁾

2) He judged that the law was brought forth not by the higher God but by some other, and so separated the law from the gospel.²⁾

3) Jerome testifies that he professed a certain docetism.³⁾

4) Tatian composed a gospel (a harmony of the gospels), cutting out the genealogies of Christ.⁴⁾

5) He seems to have rejected the epistles of Paul written to Timothy and Titus. So he received only those epistles which the Marcionites and Apelles kept.⁵⁾

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6) Tatian rejected marriage, judging every union of male with female unclean and utterly loathing the begetting of children.¹⁾

7) Tatian set up so strict a rule of life that he even rejected and condemned the foods God created for us to use.²⁾

8) He composed a book entitled „Προβλήματα“ [Problems], in which he promised „τὸ ἀσαφὲς καὶ ἐπικεκρυμμένον τῶν θείων γραφῶν παραστήσειν“ [to set forth what is obscure and hidden in the divine scriptures].³⁾

If you bear Apelles’ doctrine in mind, you will notice a great and wonderful agreement between Apelles and Tatian. Each of them composed a book, similar even in its title, to destroy the authority of the Old Testament.

Marcion’s Ἀντιθέσεις, Apelles’ Συλλογισμοί, Tatian’s Προβλήματα: those three specimens of the critical art look to one and the same end. They were written so that the inconstancy of the God of the Old Testament, the absurdities of the law, the goodness of the higher God, the discrepancy between the Old and the New Testament, the opposition of law and gospel, indeed the difference between the god of the Jews and the God of the Christians, might shine out as clearly as possible. The books, alas, were burned at the time when a wicked barbarism, joined with a certain piety, tried to extinguish every document of the heretics. A few small fragments of the Antitheses still survive, from which it can be understood that the Marcionites sometimes expressed and rendered the sense of each Testament more rightly than the churchmen, who harassed the Holy Scriptures with immoderate and perverse allegory. Yet I am persuaded that the churchmen saw the principal sense of the Old Testament better than the Marcionites, and understood the relation of the New Testament to the Old more rightly than the Apelleiaci. In the fight between the catholic church and the Marcionites, above all Apelles, over the dignity of the Old Testament, the authority of the law and the

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integrity of the New Testament, you will most certainly find the Christian truth in a purer form with the church.¹⁾ Yet if you consider that fight, you will hardly say that truth fought with falsehood, when you reflect that the sincere truth of the Christian faith was already, at that time, everywhere wrapped in the darkness of human error. But if the principles that Marcion and Apelles followed had prevailed, the church, robbed of the gospel and torn apart and shattered by fanatics, would soon have rushed to ruin.

But when the catholic church came off the victor, the gospel remained. Although it no longer held the first place in the church, since the church laid a new law on individuals and wished to make men obedient before they were believers, it could still be handed down within the church to later generations, to be restored for the better in its own time. A church founded by pious enthusiasts, on the other hand, who wrongly neglect every necessity and authority of faith, reason and confession, rushes to destruction without any hope of salvation.

That Apelles’ doctrine, in the form he himself put it forward, did not flourish for long²⁾ is clear in itself. Just as you will not be surprised that such things as Apelles taught were thought up, so

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you will hardly contend that a community of Christians could ever embrace and profess them. Yet although he had very few among his contemporaries to follow him, Apelles is not singular of his kind; for what he thought and taught is praised by countless people, even if they do not profess what they think so openly. The church of that time barred Apelles from the sacrifices and counted him among the impious and the heretics; the men of our own age may well hold him to be a true Christian, a man who, clamouring against every authority and wholly uncaring about the history of salvation, in everything consulted his own mind, a pious one perhaps.

Addenda and Corrigenda

Page 11, n. 2: it should have been added that H. Roensch, l. c. p. 11, rightly counts the book against the Apelleiaci among the lost volumes of Tertullian.

Page 30, line 1, read “epitomatore” for “epitomator.” Page 31, line 22, read “Pseudotert.” for “Pseudert.” [Editor’s note: these two misprints concern only the Latin wording; the English translation is not affected.]

Index [table of contents of the 1874 edition]