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Carpocratians and Curriculum: Irenaeus' Reply

Robert M. Grant

Harvard Theological Review / Volume 79 / Issue 1-3 / July 1986, pp 127 - 136
DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000020393, Published online: 10 June 2011

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Robert M. Grant (1986). Carpocratians and Curriculum: Irenaeus' Reply.
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HTR 79:1-3(1986) 127-36

CARPOCRATIANS AND CURRICULUM:

IRENAEUS' REPLY

Robert M. Grant
The Divinity School
University of Chicago

It seems suitable, when honoring a dean who has become a bishop, to

write on an episcopal theologian who thought he could answer Gnostics
by discussing curriculum. I doubt that in either office Krister Stendahl
would ever have taken such a tack. It is odd to see Irenaeus doing so.
Irenaeus's Hellenistic culture was important to him, even when he
wrote against Gnostic heresies.1 It appears in his preface, where he rhe-
torically claims not to be using rhetoric, and in his references to the
authors and themes of Hellenistic education. To be sure, he was no
philosopher. His training was not on the level of Apuleius, who called
himself a "Platonic philosopher." But he was versed in logical
argumentation—"dialectic"—as known to rhetoricians.2 Here we look
at one important aspect of his Hellenistic argument against Gnostics.
The Situation
Irenaeus himself tells us most of what we know about the Carpocra-
tians, apart from exotic details about the life and thought of Carpoc-
rates' son Epiphanes which we owe to Clement. The account seems
rather incoherent. Carpocrates taught that the soul of Jesus, "which
was strong and pure, preserved the memory of what it had seen in the
sphere of the unbegotten Father." After passing through the realms of
the archons who made the world, it escaped to the Father. Similar

'See my article "Irenaeus and Hellenistic Culture," HTR 42 (1949) 41-51; W. R.

Schoedel, "Philosophy and Rhetoric in the Adversus Haereses of Irenaeus," VC 13
(1959) 22-32; idem, "Theological Method in Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses 2.25-28),"
JTS35 (1984) 31-49.
2
See the basic article by B. Reynders, "La polemique de saint Irenee: Methode et
principes," Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 7 (1935) 5 - 2 7 .
128 Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl

souls can make the same ascent, for they receive powers enabling them
to perform the same actions. These souls when in bodies can perform
any deeds they wish, for "good and evil actions exist only by human
opinion." So far, so good; the moral doctrine is essentially Cynicism.
Next, however, Irenaeus says that "in their transmigrations into
various bodies the souls have to (oportere) participate in every [kind of]
life and every [kind of] act." They have to experience everything; oth-
erwise they must return to bodies.
He admits that he has doubts as to whether they really live this way,
but claims that advice to act thus is to be found in their books.3 We
observe that Justin, whose works Irenaeus knew, expressed similar
doubts about Gnostic licentiousness.4 Both authors were thus able to
make charges against their opponents without being responsible for
their information.
Irenaeus's Comments
Irenaeus devotes parts of two chapters in his second book
(31.2-32.2) to attacks on the behavior of Simonians and Carpocra-
tians.5
First he discusses their use of magic and then turns to their demand
for libertinism, more accentuated among the Carpocratians.
a) This demand is opposed to the teaching of the Lord, especially as
expressed in the Matthaean Sermon on the Mount. The Jesus whose
soul they claim to admire taught them not to perform the actions they
advocate or to think about them. "If nothing were bad or good, but
some things were considered unjust or just because of human opinion
alone, he would never have declared in his teaching, 'The just will
shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.' As for the unjust
and those who do not do the works of justice, he will send them into
eternal fire." 6
b) They claim that they must experience everything imaginable.
But have they ever "tried to devote themselves to what is related to
virtue, what is difficult, what is glorious, what is artistic—in other
words, what is considered good by everyone"? Surely Irenaeus here
has Phil 4:8 in mind: "whatever is true, whatever is honorable,

3
All this occurs in Adv. haer. 1.25.1-5 and is reprinted by Morton Smith, Clement of
Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973)
301-3.
4
Apol 1.26.7.
5
See Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, eds., Irenee de Lyon Contre les heresies
Livre II (2 vols.; SC 293-94; Paris, 1982) 187-88.
6
Adv. haer. 2.32.1; Matt 12:43.
 Grant: Carpocratians and Curriculum 129

whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gra-

cious, if there is any excellence, if there is any praise, think on these
things."7 There is a commonly accepted standard of good and bad, but
the Carpocratians seem to consider only the bad. Their actions thus fail
to reach their own goal of complete experience.
c) Now Irenaeus proceeds to indicate their shortcomings. "If one
ought to experience every work and activity, it was fitting to learn all
the arts without exception, both theoretical and practical or those
learned by self-mastery and acquired by effort and exercise and perse-
verance." The studies he is about to list are the ones that a student
would encounter after he studied grammar, probably rhetoric, and pos-
sibly dialectic. He would go beyond literature to theory and practice.
Thus music dealt with the study of harmony, arithmetic with addition
and subtraction and the relations of numbers, geometry with abstract
essence, astronomy, like the others, with divine things and their har-
mony with one another. (Clement adds dialectic with its distinction of
genera from species.)8
The distinction between theoretical and practical arts, already
expressed by Aristotle (Metaph. E (vi) 1025b20), is frequently set forth
around Irenaeus's time.9 But all the studies came to be regarded as
important, and the tetrad of theoretical studies gradually attracted other
areas to itself, as Irenaeus's list itself shows.10 Marrou notes that the
first century polymath Cornelius Celsus gave the title Arts to a collec-
tion that included only four treatises: agronomy, medicine, rhetoric,
and military science.11
Galen's treatment of these studies is noteworthy. Like the Gnostic
Epiphanes and Origen he was taught by his father, who he says was an
expert in "geometry, architecture, practical and theoretical arithmetic,
and astronomy.12 In Protrepticus 5 he says that closest to the god
Hermes, discoverer of the arts, stand those who practice geometry,
arithmetic, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, and literature; in second
place there are teachers of grammar, carpenters and architects and
stonecutters; after them come the rest of the arts. The list is significant
because Galen's own art, medicine, has replaced music (and is above

7
RSV, slightly revised.
8
Clement Strom. 6.80.2-3.
9
Philo Leg. alleg. 1.57; Quintilian Inst. oral 2.18; Galen (see below); and Origen Horn,
in Luke (ed. Rauer; GCS, 9).
10
H. Fuchs, "Enkyklios Paideia," RAC5 (1965) cols. 365-98.
11
Henri Irenee Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique (Paris: Universite de
Paris, 1937) 226-27.
12
De probis pravisque alimentorum succis 6.755 (ed. Kiihn); cf. Libr. ord 4.19.59.
130 Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl

his father's architecture) and because in his view all the arts were close
to a god. Elsewhere (chap. 14) he returns to the theme and
differentiates "mental" arts from "manual" ones. The line is hard to
draw, for his first class includes medicine (first of all!), rhetoric, music,
geometry, arithmetic, logic, astronomy, grammar, and law. He is wil-
ling to add sculpture and painting (architecture has disappeared), but he
has no use for merely manual arts. (The point seems to neglect his
own emphasis on the role of the hand in De usu partium.)
In his Gymnasticus the rhetorician Philostratus includes in sophia the
study of philosophy, rhetoric, poetry, music, geometry, and astronomy,
but places military science, medicine, painting, sculpture, and working
in stone and metal in a lower rank. Below these come navigation and
gymnastics. Similarly in the Life of Apollonius he rates poetry, music,
and astronomy at the top, rhetoric (if not for pay) below them, and at
the bottom painting and sculpture, along with navigation and farming.13
These examples and others show that Irenaeus's catholic list of sciences
and arts was not unique.
1) He begins with "music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and all
the other theoretical disciplines." These are the mathematical disci-
plines generally regarded as the foundation of the so-called enkyklios
paideia or liberates artes.
2) He then turns to the practical or productive arts.14 "The whole of
medicine, the knowledge of herbs [ = pharmacy] and all the disciplines
developed for saving life."15
3) "Painting, sculpture in bronze and marble, and other arts like
these." These arts, Galen said, involve toil and pain but make money
for the artisan.16
4) "Agriculture, the care of horses and of flocks and herds, and all
the arts which include others, such as navigation, gymnastics, hunting,
military science and kingship." Galen discusses the advantages and
disadvantages of such arts in relation to the health of the artist; but
horsemanship and hunting had been included in such lists for a long
time. We find the former in Teles and, along with hunting, in an old
Stoic fragment.17

13
Gymn 1; Vita ApolL 8.7.3.
14
See also the distinctions drawn in Diog. Laert. 3.84, with the discussion of the forms
of medicine in 3.85.
15
Cf. the discussion by Origen in Horn, in Jer.. frg. from Homer 39 (ed. Nautin, 374) in
Philoc. 2.2 and my note "Paul, Galen, and Origen," JTS34 (1983) 533-36.
16
Comm. II in Hippocr. de humor. 28 (ed Kiihn, 16. 311-12).
17
Stobaeus 4.34.72; 2.67.5 = Stoicorum veterum fragmenta 3. 294.
 Grant: Carpocratians and Curriculum 131

5) "Without counting all the others, of which they could not learn a
ten-thousandth part in a whole life's labor." Ultimately only God
possesses such knowledge, as we learn from Wis 7:17-20.18
d) Instead of working at any of these arts and sciences, the Carpo-
cratians turn to pleasures, lust, and disgusting deeds. They thus con-
demn themselves on their own grounds because they lack experience of
the matters just discussed.
Irenaeus concludes by returning to his strongest point. These people
really profess the hedonistic philosophy of Epicurus and the
indifference of the Cynics. They wrongly claim to follow one whose
teaching was sharply opposed to theirs.
We note that Irenaeus's argument is not consistent with what Cle-
ment of Alexandria tells us about the Carpocratians. He says that the
youthful Gnostic Epiphanes, son of Carpocrates, was "educated by his
father in the encyclical education and Platonic philosophy."19 If Cle-
ment is right, Irenaeus should have argued not that the Carpocratians
knew nothing about the subjects he listed but that they knew only part
of them, the theoretical studies. Did he know? or did he care?
Presumably he did not know the book by Epiphanes which Clement
cited. Its ridicule of both private property and monogamy could hardly
have been answered by raising a question about Carpocratian education.
Irenaeus's Use of His Sources
As we have seen, Irenaeus's list of advanced studies is similar to
other lists produced or copied by some of his contemporaries, presum-
ably often based on the writings of rhetoricians.20 Philostratus was him-
self a rhetorician.
Irenaeus pointed out how much the Gnostics claimed to experience
and how limited their experience really was. He has listed items from
the higher studies, that is, those going beyond reading books, and has
pointed out how difficult it would be to know all these subjects. Sextus
Empiricus makes the same point against teachers of literature, and we
must suspect that Irenaeus took the idea from some similar source.
If the grammarian possesses an art capable of discriminating among
the things said by poets and prose-writers, he must understand
either the words only, or the objects behind them, or both. But it

18
Cited by Origen Horn, in Luke. (ed. Rauer; G C S , frg. 50).
19
Clement Strom. 3.5.3
20
See Friedmar KUhnert, Allgemeinbildung und Fachbildung in der Antike (Deutsche Aka-
demie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Schriften der Sektion fUr Altertumswissenschaft 30;
Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1961) 71-111.
132 Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl

is evident that they do not understand the objects. For some of

these are physical, some mathematical, some medical, some musi-
cal, and he who deals with the physical must of course be a physi-
cist, he who deals with the musical a musician, and of course he
who deals with the mathematical a mathematician, and similarly
with the other sciences. Experience proves the self-evident truth
that the grammarian is not simultaneously all-wise and skilled in
every science.21

This is Irenaeus's point too (2.32.2). It is most unlikely, however, that

he had read much, if any, of Sextus's Adversus mathematicos, since it
denounces the basic sciences plus logic, physics, and ethics. Irenaeus is
against Gnosticism, not philosophy or science.
Irenaeus's Use of Examples
Since many of Irenaeus's own rhetorical examples are related to his
listing of the basic theoretical and practical arts and sciences, he may
even have found the headings in a book of examples intended for the
use of speechmakers.22 By "examples" we mean essentially what
ancient writers called parabolai or similtudines, though as Quintilian
notes the terms were not rigidly fixed.23
Irenaeus first points out against Gnostic shortcuts that in all the arts
one needs self-control, effort, meditation, and perseverance. Then he
speaks of arts based on verbal proficiency. These are the traditional
mathematical sciences recommended by Plato and Greek educators
after him. First comes music, to which Irenaeus alludes when he
speaks of melody and harmony (2.25.2; 4.20.7). Arithmetic is second:
we note only that he could criticize the Basilidian Gnostics for having
365 heavens when they should have had 4380 for the number of day-
time hours in the year, or 8760 including the nights as well (2.16.4).
Third comes geometry and fourth, astronomy. From geometry come
the examples of concentric circles, spheres, and tetragons (2.13.6).
The exempla related to astronomy attest little knowledge of it. Though
the sun is a very small planet24 its rays go a long way (2.13.5). We

21
Adv. math. 1.300.
22
For such books see Karl Alewell, Uber das rhetorische I l A P A A E i r M A : Theorie,
Beispielsammlungen, Verwendung in der r'dmischen Literatur der Kaiserzeit (Leipzig: August
Hoffmann, 1913); but these are paradeigmata.
23
Inst. oral 5.11.1-2; a comparison of oratory with music precedes, 5.10.124-25.
24
Here Irenaeus agrees with Theophilus Ad AutoL 1.5.
 Grant: Carpocratians and Curriculum 133

cannot look at the sun because our eyes are weak (4.29.1).25 Interest-
ingly enough, the example of the sun (-god) as dimming the sight of
those who stare at it (him) occurs in Sextus Empiricus too.26 Much of
Irenaeus's rather meager astronomical information comes through Mar-
cosian Gnostics, leaving the bishop himself to state that no one knows
the cause of the moon's phases (2.28.2).
Medicine and pharmacy are also among the arts. They have been
developed for the preservation of human life, or as Sextus Empiricus
puts it, medicine is "a curative and pain-relieving art." 27 Irenaeus is
rather fond of medical examples. He compares Gnostics with "those
who fall into delirium; the more they laugh, the more they think they
are healthy and do everything as if they were healthy but do some
things more than in health, the sicker they are" (1.16.3). He asks,
"What doctor desiring to cure a sick man will act in accordance with
the desires of the sick man and not with what is suited to medicine?"
(3.5.2). Inevitably he compares Christian love toward heretics with "a
harsh medicine which consumes the foreign and superfluous flesh
formed on a wound" (3.25.7). Less vividly he compares God with a
mother who is able to supply solid food to an infant, but mankind like
the child cannot yet receive it (4.38.1; cf. 1 Cor 3:2-3).
Other more practical arts are learned by effort and exercise. One
example, used for soul and body, is related to all of them. The artisan
plans at high speed, but completes the work more slowly because of the
inertia of his subject matter. The velocity of his mind is fused with the
slowness of the instrument (2.33.4).
One of these arts is painting, in relation to which perhaps we should
consider the mosaic picture of a king transformed into one of a fox
(1.8.1). Another is sculpture. In this regard we are told that clay is not
molded for its own sake but for that of the statue to be made in
bronze, gold, or silver (2.15.3).28 Again, a clay statue may be colored to
make it look as if of gold; but one need only take off a fragment to let
the clay appear (2.19.8).
Another is metal-working. Here Irenaeus relies on his Christian
predecessors. One of them said that "a precious stone, of great value
with some, is insulted by a bit of glass artfully made like it, if no one is
there to test it and unmask the fraud. And when bronze is mixed with
silver, who can readily verify it if he is not an expert?" (1 pr. 2).

25
Again, cf. ibid., 1.2 and 1.5
26
Adv. math. 1.306.
27
Ibid., 1.51.
28
Cf. Melito Horn, pasck 36-37.
134 Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl

Again, the Gnostics were eager to point out that "gold in mud does not
lose its beauty" (1.6.2). Irenaeus himself noted that straw is useful for
refining gold (5.29.1).
He made little use of examples from the other arts he listed, includ-
ing marble-working, agriculture (though he does note that the stalk
helps wheat grow, 5.29.1), veterinary arts, pastoral arts and other arts
of craftsmen (opifices). He makes no use of navigation. A bit more
comes from gymnastics and hunting.
A strange example comes from gymnastics. In the wrestling school
"novices struggle with others and seize some part of their opponent's
body firmly with their hands and fall because of what they hold.
Though they fall they think they have won because they tenaciously
hold that member they first grabbed, but in reality they are held in deri-
sion because they have fallen" (5.13.2). Another such example may be
based on a gospel saying (Matt 12:29) but this itself is proverbial. "A
strong man can be overcome neither by an inferior nor by an equal, but
by one who is stronger" (5.22.1).
Equally strange examples are taken from hunting. First, the Gnos-
tics are compared with a beast that hides in a forest and comes out to
devastate many. It can be caught only when the forest is delimited and
defoliated so that the beast can be seen. It still has to be captured, but
with the new situation it can be struck from every side, wounded, and
killed (1.31.4). Second, Gnostic liars are like those who offer cus-
tomary foods in order to capture some animal, gradually softening it up
through the foods, and then, taking it captive, they tie it up harshly and
by force take it wherever they wish (2.14.8).
Irenaeus warms to the examples apparently taken from military and
political science but perhaps invented for the occasion. First, suppose
that "hostile forces have defeated their enemies and led them bound as
captives, and have possessed them as slaves for such a long time that
they even have children." If now "someone feels sorry for those who
were enslaved and defeats the same enemies, will he act justly if he
frees the children of the captives but leaves those whom he vindicated
subject to them? Liberty would be given to the sons because of their
fathers' vindication, but not to the fathers who underwent captivity"
(3.23.2). Or again: "If a free man, forcibly abducted by someone
whom he served for many years by increasing his property, then
obtained some help from it, he could seem to be taking possession of
part of his master's property, whereas in reality he would depart having
received very little in return for his many labors. If anyone accused
him of having acted unjustly, the accuser would prove to be an unjust
judge in relation to the man who had been led into slavery by force"
 Grant: Carpocratians and Curriculum 135

(4.30.2). Presumably this defense of the Israelites who despoiled the

Egyptians is based on earlier Jewish apologetic and is not a simple rhe-
torical "example."
Kingship appears several times. A king is responsible for military
victory because he is in charge, as is the Father in Christian theology
(2.2.3). (More "banausic" examples in this context make the same
point. An axe cuts, a saw saws; but it is the man who made the tools
who does the work.) Again, "The advent of a king is announced by
slaves sent in advance for the preparation of those who are beginning to
receive their lord. But when the king comes and his subjects are filled
with the joy predicted, have received the liberty that comes from him,
share in the sight of him, hear his words and enjoy gifts from him, it is
no longer necessary for the king to bring anything beyond . . . himself
(4.34.1). The theological emphasis of the "example" is obvious, and
the idea that the kingdom of God announced by Jesus was Jesus him-
self is found in Origen. This example may have been composed for the
occasion.
In one more example the situation of the devil is "as if a rebel
should take possession of some region and disturb those in it and
assume the glory of a king among those who do not know he is a rebel
and a thief (5.24.4). Once more, the analogy seems to be invented to
fit the theological point.
It is not so much the rhetorical method of Irenaeus that we find
novel. After all, he was well aware that Jesus had taught with parables
or comparisons. The novelty lies in the subject matter, paralleling
much of the Greco-Roman educational curriculum and using it for rhe-
torical purposes.
Gnostic Attitudes toward the Curriculum
Finally, even if Carpocrates taught his son the encyclical studies,
Irenaeus was probably right in supposing that Gnostics were not
enthusiastic about mundane and ordinary studies. The attitude of the
Hermetic Asclepius, on the borderline of Gnosticism, is hostile toward
the curriculum. Trismegistus attacks those who make philosophy
incomprehensible by mixing it up with arithmetic, music, and
geometry. They abandon pure religion for detailed information about
the stars, the earth, and music, all of which should lead simply to rev-
erence. Nock and Festugiere give parallels for this attitude.29 A more
definitely Gnostic statement appears in the Tripartite Tractate from Nag

29
Asclep. 13-14; Corpus Hermeticum (ed. A. D. Nock and A.-J. Festugiere; 4 vols. in 2;
Paris: Belles Lettres, 1945) 2. 369 n. 115.
136 Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl

Hammadi. The speculative wisdom of the Greeks is inconsistent

because of archontic influences. "Therefore nothing is in agreement
with other studies, nothing, whether philosophy or kinds of medicine or
kinds of music or types of logic."30 The word for "logic" is organon, as
often among Peripatetics.
Though Irenaeus's targeting was inaccurate when he aimed at the
Carpocratians, the fact that some Gnostics rejected the curriculum of
studies helps justify his onslaught.

30
Harold W. Attridge in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English
(New York: Harper & Row, 1977) 85, partly revised; Codex I (treatise 5) 109,25-110,17.