By Water & Blood

On Aeons

On Aeons.

Valentinus and Secundinus and Marcus and their successors say that there are a great many Aeons older than the Creator, having learned this not from the divine oracles, but themselves fabricating the fables. And those thunderstruck ones did not understand that an aeon is not some subsisting essence, but a certain interval of time, indicating at one time what is infinite, when it is said of God, at another time what is commensurate with creation, and at another with human life.

For concerning us the divine David says: “Our aeon is for the enlightenment of your face.” And concerning creation the Lord says: “Behold, I am with you all the days, until the completion of the aeon.” And concerning the God of all again the blessed David: “From aeon to aeon you are”—instead of “You have neither beginning nor end.” And since an aeon indicates a certain interval, lest anyone foolishly suppose that the God of all did not exist before the ages, in another psalm the same Prophet said: “God will hear, and he who exists before the ages will humble them.”

Therefore the God of all, the Creator of all things, did not spring after thirty-five aeons from the passion of Achamoth after the Ogdoad and the Decad and the Dodecad and Achamoth and the Limit and the Son and the Spirit; but he is before all the ages—not those shameful ones mythologized in pairs, but those that signify any interval whatsoever.

For this reason the blessed Paul said that both the Father and the Son are makers of the ages: “For he spoke to us in a Son,” he says, “whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also made the ages.” And “he made” does not indicate an essence of the ages, but that no one is older than the God of all. And in another place he says: “To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever”—not teaching that there are certain hypostatic ages, but proclaiming that God’s kingdom is eternal. And again the same Apostle: “But we speak wisdom among the perfect, yet not a wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are being brought to nothing; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predetermined before the ages.” But if the mystery of the economy is older than the ages, according to the divine definition, it is the height of impiety to call the God of all younger than the ages.

And the prophet Isaiah also proclaims: “The eternal God, who prepared the ends of the earth.” And again: “From of old we have not heard, nor have our eyes seen a God besides you.” Before the ages, then, is God, the creator of all.