Part 51 (1/2)
Other Gnostics, who had not been followers of the Mosaic religion, but who had, at an earlier period, framed to themselves an oriental Gnosis, regarded the Demiurge as a being absolutely _hostile_ to the Supreme G.o.d. He and his angels, notwithstanding their finite nature, wish to establish their independence: they will tolerate no foreign rule within their realm. Whatever of a higher nature descends into their kingdom, they seek to hold imprisoned there, lest it should raise itself above their narrow precincts. Probably, in this system, the kingdom of the Demiurgic Angels corresponded, for the most part, with that of the deceitful Star-Spirits, who seek to rob man of his freedom, to beguile him by various arts of deception, and who exercise a tyrannical sway over the things of this world. Accordingly, in the system of these Sabaeans, the seven Planet-Spirits, and the twelve Star-Spirits of the zodiac, who sprang from an irregular connection between the cheated Fetahil and the Spirit of Darkness, play an important part in everything that is bad. The Demiurge is a limited and limiting being, proud, jealous, and revengeful; and this his character betrays itself in the Old Testament, which, the Gnostics held, came from him. They transferred to the Demiurge himself, whatever in the idea of G.o.d, as presented by the Old Testament, appeared to then defective. Against his will and rule the [Greek: ???] was continually rebelling, revolting without control against the dominion which he, the fas.h.i.+oner, would exercise over it, casting off the yoke imposed on it, and destroying the work he had begun. The same jealous being, limited in his power, ruling with despotic sway, they imagined they saw in nature. He strives to check the germination of the divine seeds of life which the Supreme G.o.d of Holiness and Love, who has no connection whatever with the sensible world, has scattered among men. That perfect G.o.d was at most known and wors.h.i.+pped in Mysteries by a few spiritual men.
The Gospel of St. John is in great measure a polemic against the Gnostics, whose different sects, to solve the great problems, the creation of a material world by an immaterial Being, the fall of man, the incarnation, the redemption and restoration of the spirits called men, admitted a long series of intelligences, intervening in a series of spiritual operations; and which they designated by the names, _The Beginning, the Word, the Only-Begotten, Life, Light_, and _Spirit_ [Ghost]: in Greek, [Greek: ????, ?????, ?????e???, ???, F??] and [Greek: ??e?a], [Arche, Logos, Monogenes, Zoe, Phos, and Pneuma]. St. John, at the beginning of his Gospel, avers that it was Jesus Christ who existed in the Beginning; that He was the WORD of G.o.d by which everything was made; that He was the Only-Begotten, the Life and the Light, and that He diffuses among men the Holy Spirit [or Ghost], the Divine Life and Light.
So the Pleroma [[Greek: ?????a]], Plenitude or Fullness, was a favorite term with the Gnostics, and Truth and Grace were the Gnostic Eons; and the Simonians, Doketes, and other Gnostics held that the Eon Christ Jesus was never really, but only apparently clothed with a human body: but St. John replies that the Word did really become Flesh, and dwelt among us; and that in Him were the Pleroma and Truth and Grace.
In the doctrine of Valentinus, reared a Christian at Alexandria, G.o.d was a perfect Being, an Abyss [[Greek: ?????].. Buthos], which no intelligence could sound, because no eye could reach the invisible and ineffable heights on which He dwelt, and no mind could comprehend the duration of His existence; He has always been; He is the Primitive Father and Beginning [the [Greek: ???pat??] and [Greek: ??a???]..
Propator and Proarche]: He will BE always, and does not grow old. The development of His Perfections produced the intellectual world. After having pa.s.sed infinite ages in repose and silence, He manifested Himself by His Thought, source of all His manifestations, and which received from Him the germ of His creations. Being of His Being, His Thought [[Greek: ?????a].. Ennoia] is also termed [Greek: ?????] [Charis], Grace or Joy, and [Greek: S???], or [Greek: ????t??] [Sige or Arreton], Silence or the Ineffable. Its first manifestation was [Greek: ????]
[Nous], the Intelligence, first of the Eons, commencement of all things, first revelation of the Divinity, the [Greek: ?????e???] [Monogenes], or Only-Begotten: next, Truth [[Greek: ????e?a] .. Aletheia], his companion. Their manifestations were the Word [[Greek: ?????].. Logos]
and Life [[Greek: ???].. Zoe]; and theirs, Man and the Church [[Greek: ?????p??] and [Greek: ?????s?a].. Anthropos and Ekklesia]: and from these, other twelve, six of whom were Hope, Faith, Charity, Intelligence, Happiness, and Wisdom; or, in the Hebrew, _Kesten, Kina, Amphe, Ouananim, Thaedes_, and _Oubina_. The harmony of the Eons, struggling to know and be united to the Primitive G.o.d, was disturbed, and to redeem and restore them, the Intelligence [Greek: ????] produced Christ and the Holy Spirit His companion; who restored them to their first estate of happiness and harmony; and thereupon they formed the Eon Jesus, born of a Virgin, to whom the Christos united himself in baptism, and who, with his Companion Sophia-Achamoth, saved and redeemed the world.
The Marcosians taught that the Supreme Deity produced by His words the [Greek: ?????] [Logos] or Plenitude of Eons: His first utterance was a syllable of four letters, each of which became a being; His second of four, His third of ten, and His fourth of twelve: thirty in all, which const.i.tuted the [Greek: ?????a] [Pleroma].
The Valentinians, and others of the Gnostics, distinguished three orders of existences:--1st. The divine germs of life, exalted by their nature above matter, and akin to the [Greek: S?f?a] [Sophia], to the mundane soul and to the Pleroma:--the spiritual natures, [Greek: f?se??
p?eat??a?] [Phuseis Pneumatikai]: 2d. The natures originating in the life, divided from the former by the mixture of the [Greek: ???]--the psychical natures, [Greek: f?se?? ?????a?] [Phuseis Psuchikai]; with which begins a perfectly new order of existence, an image of that higher mind and system, in a subordinate grade; and finally, 3d. The UnG.o.dlike or Hylic Nature, which resists all amelioration, and whose tendency is only to destroy--the nature of blind l.u.s.t and pa.s.sion.
The nature of the [Greek: p?e?at????] [pneumatikon], the spiritual, is essential relations.h.i.+p with G.o.d (the [Greek: ????s??? t? ?e?]..
h.o.m.oousion to Theo): hence the life of Unity, the undivided, the absolutely simple (??s?a ?????, ???e?d??.. Ousia henike, monoeides).
The essence of the ??????? [psuchikoi] is disruption into multiplicity, manifoldness; which, however, is subordinate to a higher unity, by which it allows itself to be guided; first unconsciously, then consciously.
The essence of the ????? [Hulikoi] (of whom Satan is the head), is the direct opposite to all unity; disruption and disunion in itself, without the least sympathy, without any point of coalescence whatever for unity; together with an effort to destroy all unity, to extend its own inherent disunion to everything, and to rend everything asunder. This principle has no power to posit anything; but only to negative: it is unable to create, to produce, to form, but only to destroy, to decompose.
By Marcus, the disciple of Valentinus, the idea of a ????? t?? ??t??
[Logos Tou Ontos], of a WORD, manifesting the hidden Divine Essence, in the Creation, was spun out into the most subtle details--the entire creation being, in his view, a continuous _utterance_ of the Ineffable.
The way in which the germs of divine life [the sp??ata p?e?at???..
spermata pneumatika], which lie shut up in the Eons, continually unfold and individualize themselves more and more, is represented as a spontaneous a.n.a.lysis of the several _names_ of the Ineffable, into their several _sounds_..An _echo_ of the Pleroma falls down into the ???
[Hule], and becomes the forming of a new but lower creation.
One formula of the pneumatical baptism among the Gnostics ran thus: ”In the NAME which is hidden from all the Divinities and Powers” [of the Demiurge], ”The Name of Truth” [the ????e?a [Aletheia], self-manifestation of the Buthos], which Jesus of Nazareth has put on in the light-zones of Christ, the living Christ, through the Holy Ghost, for the redemption of the angels,--the Name by which all things attain to Perfection. The candidate then said: ”I am established and redeemed; I am redeemed in my soul from this world, and from all that belongs to it, by the name of ????, who has redeemed the Soul of Jesus by the living Christ”. The a.s.sembly then said: ”Peace (or Salvation) to all on whom this name rests!”
The boy Dionusos, torn in pieces, according to the Bacchic Mysteries, by the t.i.tans, was considered by the Manicheans as simply representing the Soul, swallowed up by the powers of darkness,--the divine life rent into fragments by matter:--that part of the luminous essence of the primitive man [the [Greek: p??t?? ?????p??] [Protos Anthropos] of Mani, the [Greek: p???? ?????p??] [Praon Anthropos] of the Valentinians, the Adam Kadmon of the Kabalah; and the Kaiomorts of the Zendavesta], swallowed up by the powers of darkness; the Mundane Soul, mixed with matter--the seed of divine life, which had fallen into matter, and had thence to undergo a process of purification and development.
The [Greek: G??s??] [Gnosis] of Carpocrates and his son Epiphanes consisted in the knowledge of one Supreme Original being, the highest unity, from whom all existence has emanated, and to whom it strives to return. The finite spirits that rule over the several portions of the Earth, seek to counteract this universal tendency to unity; and from their influence, their laws, and arrangements, proceeds all that checks, disturbs, or limits the original communion, which is the basis of nature, as the outward manifestation of that highest Unity. These spirits, moreover, seek to retain under their dominion the souls which, emanating from the highest Unity, and still partaking of its nature, have lapsed into the corporeal world, and have there been imprisoned in bodies, in order, under their dominion, to be kept within the cycle of migration. From these finite spirits, the popular religions of different nations derive their origin. But the souls which, from a reminiscence of their former condition, soar upward to the contemplation of that higher Unity, reach to such perfect freedom and repose, as nothing afterward can disturb or limit, and rise superior to the popular deities and religions. As examples of this sort, they named Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and Christ. They made no distinction between the latter and the wise and good men of every nation. They taught that any other soul which could soar to the same height of contemplation, might be regarded as equal with Him.
The Ophites commenced their system with a Supreme Being, long unknown to the Human race, and still so the greater number of men; the [Greek: ?????] [Buthos], or Profundity, Source of Light, and of Adam-Kadmon, the Primitive Man, made by the Demiourgos, but perfected by the Supreme G.o.d by the communication to him of the Spirit [[Greek: ??e?a].. Pneuma].
The first emanation was the Thought of the Supreme Deity [the [Greek: ?????a].. Ennoia], the conception of the Universe in the Thought of G.o.d. This Thought, called also Silence ([Greek: S???].. Sige), produced the Spirit [[Greek: ??e?a].. Pneuma], Mother of the Living, and Wisdom of G.o.d. Together with this Primitive Existence, Matter existed also (the Waters, Darkness, Abyss, and Chaos), eternal like the Spiritual Principle. Buthos and His Thought, uniting with Wisdom, made her fruitful by the Divine Light, and she produced a perfect and an imperfect being, _Christos_, and a Second and inferior wisdom, _Sophia-Achamoth_, who falling into chaos remained entangled there, became enfeebled, and lost all knowledge of the Superior Wisdom that gave her birth. Communicating movement to Chaos, she produced Ialdabaoth, the Demiourgos, Agent of Material Creation, and then ascended toward her first place in the scale of creation. Ialdabaoth produced an angel that was his image, and this a second, and so on in succession to the sixth after the Demiourgos: the seven being _reflections_ one of the other, yet different and inhabiting seven distinct regions. The names of the six thus produced were IAO, SABAOTH, ADONAI, ELOI, ORAI, and ASTAPHAI. Ialdabaoth, to become independent of his mother, and to pa.s.s for the Supreme Being, made the world, and man, in his own image; and his mother caused the Spiritual principle to pa.s.s from him into man so made; and henceforward the contest between the Demiourgos and his mother, between light and darkness, good and evil, was concentrated in man; and the image of Ialdabaoth, reflected upon matter, became the Serpent-Spirit, Satan, the Evil Intelligence. Eve, created by Ialdabaoth, had by his Sons children that were angels like themselves. The Spiritual light was withdrawn from man by Sophia, and the world surrendered to the influence of evil; until the Spirit, urged by the entreaties of Wisdom, induced the Supreme Being to send Christos to redeem it. Compelled, despite himself, by his Mother, Ialdabaoth caused the man Jesus to be born of a Virgin, and the Celestial Saviour, uniting with his Sister, Wisdom, descended through the regions of the seven angels, appeared in each under the form of its chief, concealed his own, and entered with his sister into the man Jesus at the baptism in Jordan. Ialdabaoth, finding that Jesus was destroying his empire and abolis.h.i.+ng his wors.h.i.+p, caused the Jews to hate and crucify Him; before which happened, Christos and Wisdom had ascended to the celestial regions. They restored Jesus to life and gave Him an ethereal body, in which He remained eighteen mouths on earth, and receiving from Wisdom the perfect knowledge [G??s??.. Gnosis], communicated it to a small number of His apostles, and then arose to the intermediate region inhabited by Ialdabaoth, where, unknown to him, He sits at his right hand, taking from him the Souls of Light purified by Christos. When nothing of the Spiritual world shall remain subject to Ialdabaoth, the redemption will be accomplished, and the end of the world, the completion of the return of Light into the Plenitude, will occur.
Tatian adopted the theory of Emanation, of Eons, of the existence of a G.o.d too sublime to allow Himself to be known, but displaying Himself by Intelligences emanating from His bosom. The first of these was His spirit [??e?a.. Pneuma], G.o.d Himself, G.o.d thinking, G.o.d conceiving the Universe. The second was the Word [?????.. Logos], no longer merely the Thought or Conception, but the Creative Utterance, manifestation of the Divinity, but emanating from the Thought or Spirit; the First-Begotten, author of the visible creation. This was the Trinity, composed of the Father, Spirit, and Word.
The Elxates adopted the Seven Spirits of the Gnostics; but named them Heaven, Water, Spirit, The Holy Angels of Prayer, Oil, Salt, and the Earth.
The opinion of the Doketes as to the human nature of Jesus Christ, was that most generally received among the Gnostics. They deemed the intelligences of the Superior World too pure and too much the antagonists of matter, to be willing to unite with it: and held that Christ, an Intelligence of the first rank, in appearing upon the earth, did not become confounded with matter, but took upon Himself only the _appearance_ of a body, or at the most used it only as an envelope.
Noetus termed the Son the first Utterance of the Father; the Word, not by Himself, as an Intelligence, and unconnected with the flesh, a real Son; but a Word, and a perfect Only-Begotten; light emanated from the Light; water flowing from its spring; a ray emanated from the Sun.
Paul of Samosata taught that Jesus Christ was the Son of Joseph and Mary; but that the Word, Wisdom, or Intelligence of G.o.d, the ???? [Nous]