2nd century (Irenaeus – c. 180)

Gnostic Dualism and Irenaeus's Response: The One Creator God and His "Two Hands"

Gnostic systems distinguished a highest, good God – the Depth, the First Principle – from a lower demiurge-creator identified with the God of the Old Testament; between them were the aeons, emanations forming the pleroma (according to Ptolemy, thirty aeons). Matter and flesh are evil or inferior, and salvation is knowledge (gnosis) awakening the spiritual spark. The Fathers regarded the Gnostics' basic error as the separation of the true God and the Creator God. Irenaeus starts from the unity of God: the Creator is the one God, who creates and governs the world with two "hands" – the Son and the Spirit, the Word and Wisdom; even the devil was created by God. He rejected the apologists' reasoning about the Logos as "another god."