[548]. Ephes. v. 27 sq.
[549]. The Apostle in this passage (Ephes. iv. 13) is evidently contemplating the collective body, and not the individual believers. He writes οἱ πάντες, not πάντες, and ἄνδρα τέλειον, not ἄνδρας τελέιους. As he has said before ἑνὶ ἑκάστῳ ἡμῶν ἐδόθη [ἡ] χάρις κατὰ τὸ μέτρον τῆς δωρεᾶς τοῦ Χριστοῦ, so now he describes the result of these various partial graces bestowed on individuals to be the unity and mature growth of the whole, ‘the building up of the body’, μεχρὶ καταντήσωμεν οἱ πάντες εἰς τὴν ἑνότητα ... εἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον, εἰς μέτρον ἡλικίας τοῦ πληρώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ. This corporate being must grow up into the one colossal Man, the standard of whose spiritual and moral stature is nothing less than the pleroma of Christ Himself.
[550]. Matt. v. 48.
[551]. iii. 16. 1 ‘Quoniam autem sunt qui dicunt Iesum quidem receptaculum Christi fuisse, in quem desuper quasi columbam descendisse, et quum indicasset innominabilem Patrem, incomprehensibiliter et invisibiliter intrasse in pleroma’.
[552]. i. 26. 1 ‘post baptismum descendisse in eum ab ea principalitate, quæ est super omnia, Christum figura columbæ; et tunc annuntiasse incognitum Patrem et virtutes perfecisse: in fine autem revolasse iterum Christum de Iesu et Iesum passum esse et resurrexisse, etc.’
[553]. iii. 11. 1 ‘iterum revolasse in suum pleroma’. This expression is the connecting link between the other two passages. This third passage is quoted more at length, above, p. 112: but I ought to have stated there that illi is referred by several critics to the Valentinians, and that certainly some characteristic errors of the Valentinian teaching are specified immediately after. The probable explanation seems to be that illi is intended to include the Gnostics generally, and that Irenæus mentions in illustration the principal errors of Gnostic teaching, irrespective of the schools to which they belong. He goes on to say that St John in his Gospel desired to exclude ‘omnia talia’.
[554]. I have not been able however to verify the statement in Harvey’s Irenæus I. p. lxxiii that ‘The Valentinian notion of a spiritual marriage between the souls of the elect and the angels of the Pleroma originated with Cerinthus’.
[555]. See p. [101] sq., and the notes on [i. 19].
[557]. Hippol. R. H. vii. 22 φεύγει γὰρ πάνυ καὶ δέδοικε τὰς κατὰ προβολὴν τῶν γεγονότων οὐσίας ὁ Βασιλείδης. Basilides asked why the absolute First Cause should be likened to a spider spinning threads from itself, or a smith or carpenter working up his materials. The later Basilideans, apparently influenced by Valentinianism, superadded to the teaching of their founder in this respect; but the strong language quoted by Hippolytus leaves no doubt about the mind of Basilides himself.