Part I — the Father, the Son, and the Pleroma

1As we said about the Father, who is the root of the All — from whom we have received these things — he existed before everything other than himself came into being. The Father is single, like a number, for he is the first one and the one who is alone, while he is not therefore as something solitary, otherwise how could he be a Father?

2Yet he is unique in the manner of a Father, since none was before him. He is not divided, nor is he such that something can be added or subtracted to him. He is unsurpassable, eternal, ineffable. He is unbegotten, generating without beginning. He is the source of every emanation. He is the original cause.

3Within himself the Father generated the Son, who is his Thought, his Word, his Image. The Son is the perfect image of the Father, and the All is in the Son.

4And from the Son, the Father generated the Aeons — the Pleroma — through the Holy Spirit. The Aeons are the eternal beings; they are the offspring of the Father, dwelling in the Son. They sing the praise of the Father; they know him in part, in measure, but never exhaust him.

5The youngest of the Aeons, the Logos, sought to know the Father directly, beyond what was given to him. In his over-reaching, he produced an emission that fell out of the Pleroma; it became the cause of the world below. The Logos repented; the Pleroma sent him a saviour, and he was restored.

6From the fallen emission came the rulers of the lower realms, and the matter of the world. From the repented Logos came the spirit and the soul. The Father willed that the work of the Logos be brought back to its origin, and so the human being was created — a creature compounded of three parts: matter, soul, and spirit.