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Against the Valentinians
Tertullian, ANF 3
The Relative Positions of the Pleroma. The Region of Achamoth, and the Creation of the…
Their most eminent powers, moreover, they confine within the following limits, as in a citadel. In the most elevated of all summits presides the tricenary Pleroma,1 Horos marking off its boundary line. Beneath it, Achamoth occupies the intermediate space for her abode,2 treading down her son. For under her comes the Demiurge in his own Hebdomad, or rather the Devil, sojourning in this world in common with ourselves, formed, as has been said above, of the same elements and the same body, out of the most profitable calamities of Sophia; inasmuch as, (if it had not been for these,) our spirit would have had no space for inhaling and ejecting3 air-that delicate vest of all corporeal creatures, that revealer of all colours, that instrument of the seasons-if the sadness of Sophia had not filtered it, just as her fear did the animal existence, and her conversion the Demiurge himself. Into all these elements and bodies fire was fanned. Now, since they have not as yet explained to us the original sensation of this4 in Sophia, I will on my own responsibility5 conjecture that its spark was struck out of the delicate emotions6 of her (feverish grief). For you may be quite sure that, amidst all her vexations, she must have had a good deal of fever.7
Notes
- Above, in chap. viii., he has mentioned the Pleroma as “the fulness of the thirtyfold divinity.”
- Metatur.
- Reciprocandi.
- Fire.
- Ego.
- Motiunculis.
- Febricitasse.