that the unknown Father, happy in the Plenitude of His Life and
Perfections, first produced a Companion for Himself [[Greek: Σύζυγος]
... Suzugos], whom He placed in the Celestial Paradise and who became,
by Him, the Mother of CHRISTOS, Son of the Living God: _i.e._ (laying
aside the allegory), that the Eternal conceived, in the silence of His
decrees, the Thought of revealing Himself by a Being who should be His
image or His Son: that to the Son succeeded his Sister and Spouse, the
Holy Spirit, and they produced four Spirits of the elements, male and
female, Maio and Jabseho, Nouro and Rucho; then Seven Mystic Couples of
Spirits, and Heaven and Earth, and all that is; then seven spirits
governing the planets, twelve governing the Constellations of the
Zodiac, and thirty-six Starry Intelligences whom he called Deacons:
while the Holy Spirit [_Sophia Achamoth_], being both the Holy
Intelligence and the Soul of the physical world, went from the Plerōma
into that material world and there mourned her degradation, until
CHRISTOS, her former spouse, coming to her with his Divine Light and
Love, guided her in the way to purification, and she again united
herself with him as his primitive Companion.
Basilides, the Christian Gnostic, taught that there were seven
emanations from the Supreme Being: The First-born, Thought, the Word,
Reflection, Wisdom, Power, and Righteousness.
[Greek: Πρωτογονος, Νους, Λογος, Φροντσις, Σοψα, Δυναμις], and [Greek:
Δικαιοσύνη] Protogonos, Nous, Logos, Phronesis, Sophia, Dunamis, and
Dikarosunē; from whom emanated other Intelligences in succession, to the
number, in all, of three hundred and sixty-five; which were God
manifested, and composed the Plenitude of the Divine Emanations, or the
God Abraxas; of which the Thought [or Intellect, [Greek: Nouς] ... Nous]
united itself, by baptism in the river Jordan, with the man Jesus,
servant [[Greek: διάκονος]. Diakonos] of the human race; but did not
suffer with Him; and the disciples of Basilides taught that the [Greek:
Νοϋς], put on the appearance only of humanity, and that Simon of Cyrene
was crucified in His stead and ascended into Heaven.
Basilides held that out of the unrevealed God, who is at the head of the
world of emanations, and exalted above all conception or designation
[[Greek: Ό άατονόμαστος, άρρητος]], were evolved seven living,
self-subsistent, ever-active hyposatized powers:
FIRST: THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS.
1st. NOUS [Greek: Νοϋς] The Mind.
2d. LOGOS [Greek: Λόγος] The Reason.
3d. Phronesis [Greek: Φρόνησις] The Thinking Power.
4th. Sophia [Greek: Σοφία] Wisdom.
SECOND: THE ACTIVE OR OPERATIVE POWER.
5th. Dunamis [Greek: Δυναμις] Might, accomplishing the
purposes of Wisdom.
THIRD: THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES.
6th. Dikaiosunē [Greek: Δικαιοσύνη] Holiness or Moral Perfection.
7th. Eirēnē [Greek: Είρήνη] Inward Tranquility.
These Seven Powers ([Greek: Δυνάμεις].. Dunameis), with the Primal
Ground out of which they were evolved, constituted in his scheme the
[Greek: Πρωτη Όγδοάς][Prote Ogdoas], or First Octave, the root of all
Existence. From this point, the spiritual life proceeded to evolve out
of itself continually many gradations of existence, each lower one being
still the impression, the _antetype_, of the immediate higher one. He
supposed there were 365 of these regions or gradations, expressed by the
mystical word [Greek: Αβραξας] [Abraxas].
The [Greek: αβραξας] is thus interpreted, by the usual method of
reckoning Greek letters numerically.... [Greek:
α,1..β,2..ρ,100..a,l..ξ] 60..[Greek: α,l..ς], 200==365: which is the
whole Emanation-World, as the development of the Supreme Being.
In the system of Basilides, Light, Life, Soul, and Good were opposed to
Darkness, Death, Matter, and Evil, throughout the whole course of the
Universe.
According to the Gnostic view, God was represented as the immanent,
incomprehensible and original source of all perfection; the unfathomable
ABYSS ([Greek: βυθος].. buthos), according to Valentinus, exalted above
all possibility of designation; of whom, properly speaking, nothing can
be predicated; the [Greek: άκατονόμαστς] of Basilides, the [Greek: ών]
of Philo. From this incomprehensible Essence of God, an _immediate_
transition to finite things is inconceivable. _Self-limitation_ is the
first beginning of a communication of life on the part of God--the first
passing of the hidden Deity into manifestation; and from this proceeds
all further self-developing manifestation of the Divine Essence. From
this primal link in the chain of life there are evolved, in the first
place, the manifold powers or attributes inherent in the divine Essence,
which, until that first self-comprehension, were all hidden in the Abyss
of His Essence. Each of these attributes presents the whole divine
Essence under one particular aspect; and to each, therefore, in this
respect, the title of God may appropriately be applied. These Divine
Powers evolving themselves to self-subsistence, become thereupon the
germs and principles of all further developments of life. The life
contained in them unfolds and individualizes itself more and more, but
in such a way that the successive grades of this evolution of life
continually sink lower and lower; the spirits become feebler, the
further they are removed from the first link in the series.
The first manifestation they termed [Greek: πρώτη κατάληψις έαυτού protē
katalēpsis heautou] or [Greek: πρώτον καταληπτόν τού θεου] [_proton
Katalēpton tou Theou_]; which was hypostatically represented in a
[Greek: νόύς] or [Greek: λόγος], [_Nous_ or _Logos_].
In the Alexandrian Gnosis, the Platonic notion of the [Greek: ύλη]
[Hulē] predominates. This is the dead, the unsubstantial--the boundary
that limits from without the evolution of life in its gradually
advancing progression, whereby the Perfect is ever evolving itself into
the less Perfect. This [Greek: ύλη] again, is represented under various
images;--at one time as the darkness that exists alongside of the light;
at another, as the void [Greek: κένωμα, κενόν] ....Kenoma, Kenon, in
opposition to the Fullness, [Greek: Πλήρωμα ...Pleroma] of the Divine
Life; or as the shadow that accompanies the light; or as the chaos, or
the sluggish, stagnant, dark water. This matter, dead in itself,
possesses by its own nature no inherent tendency; as life of every sort
is foreign to it, itself makes no encroachment on the Divine. As,
however, the evolutions of the Divine Life (the essences developing
themselves out of the progressive emanation) become feebler, the further
they are removed from the first link in the series; and as their
connection with the first becomes looser at each successive step, there
arises at the last step of the evolution, an imperfect, defective
product, which, unable to retain its connection with the chain of Divine
Life, sinks from the World of Eons into the material chaos: or,
according to the same notion, somewhat differently expressed [according
to the Ophites and to Bardesanes], a drop from the fullness of the
Divine life bubbles over into the bordering void. Hereupon the dead
matter, by commixture with the living principle, which it wanted, first
of all receives animation. But, at the same time, also, the divine, the
living, becomes corrupted by mingling with the chaotic mass. Existence
now multiplies itself. There arises a subordinate, defective life; there
is ground for a new world; a creation starts into being, beyond the
confines of the world of emanation. But on the other hand, since the
chaotic principle of matter has acquired vitality, there now arises a
more distinct and more active opposition to the God-like--a barely
negative, blind, ungodly nature-power, which obstinately resists all
influence of the Divine; hence, as products, of the spirit of the
[Greek: ύλη], (of the [Greek: πνεύμα ύλικον].. Pneuma Hulikon), are
Satan, malignant spirits, wicked men, in none of whom is there any
reasonable or moral principle, or any principle of a rational will; but
blind passions alone have the ascendency. In them there is the same
conflict, as the scheme of Platonism supposes, between the soul under
the guidance of Divine reason the [Greek: νούς... Nous], and the soul
blindly resisting reason--between the [Greek: πρόνοια] [pronoia] and the
[Greek: αναγη] [anagē], the Divine Principle and the natural.
The Syrian Gnosis assured the existence of an active, turbulent kingdom
of evil, or of darkness, which, by its encroachments on the kingdom of
light, brought about a commixture of the light with the darkness, of the
God-like with the ungodlike.
Even among the Platonists, some thought that along with an organized,
inert matter, the substratum of the corporeal world, there existed from
the beginning a blind, lawless motive power, an ungodlike soul, as its
original motive and active principle. As the inorganic matter was
organized into a corporeal world, by the plastic power of the Deity, so,
by the same power, law and reason were communicated to that turbulent,
irrational soul. Thus the chaos of the [Greek: ύλη] was transformed into
an organized world, and that blind soul into a rational principle, a
mundane soul, animating the Universe. As from the latter proceeds all
rational, spiritual life in humanity, so from the former proceeds all
that is irrational, all that is under the blind sway of passion and
appetite; and all malignant spirits are its progeny.
In one respect _all_ the Gnostics agreed: they _all_ held, that there
was a world purely emanating out of the vital development of God, a
creation evolved directly out of the Divine Essence, far exalted above
any outward creation produced by God's plastic power, and conditioned by
pre-existing matter. They agreed in holding that the framer of _this
lower world_ was not the Father of _that higher world_ of emanation; but
the Demiurge [[Greek: Δεμιουργος]], a being of a kindred nature with the
Universe framed and governed by him, and far inferior to that higher
system and the Father of it.
But some, setting out from ideas which had long prevailed among certain
Jews of Alexandria, supposed that the Supreme God created and governed
the world by His ministering spirits, by the angels. At the head of
these angels stood one who had the direction and control of all;
therefore called the Artificer and Governor of the World. This Demiurge
they compared with the plastic, animating mundane spirit of Plato and
Platonists, the [Greek: δεύτερος θεός].. Deuteros Theos; the [Greek:
θεός γενητός]..., Theos Genetos, who, moreover, according to the Timæus
of Plato, strives to represent the IDEA of the Divine Reason, in that
which is _becoming_ (as contradistinguished from that which _is_) and
temporal. This angel is a representative of the Supreme God, on the
lower stage of existence: he does not act independently, but merely
according to the ideas inspired in him by the Supreme God; just as the
plastic, mundane soul of the Platonists creates all things after the
pattern of the ideas communicated by the Supreme Reason [[Greek: Νούς]
... Nous--the [Greek: ό έστι ζώον].... ho esti zōon--the [Greek:
παράδειγμα]. paradeigma, of the Divine Reason hypostatized]. But these
ideas transcend his limited essence; he cannot understand them; he is
merely their unconscious organ; and therefore is unable himself to
comprehend the whole scope and meaning of the work which he performs. As
an organ under the guidance of a higher inspiration, he reveals higher
truths than he himself can comprehend. The mass of the Jews, they held,
recognized not the angel, by whom, in all the Theophanies of the Old
Testament, God _revealed_ Himself; they knew not the Demiurge in his
true relation to the hidden Supreme God, _who never reveals Himself_ in
the sensible world. They confounded the type and the archetype, the
symbol and the idea. They rose no higher than the Demiurge; they took
him to be the Supreme God Himself. But the spiritual men among them, on
the contrary, clearly perceived, or at least _divined_, the ideas veiled
under Judaism; they rose beyond the Demiurge, to a knowledge of the
Supreme God; and are therefore properly His worshippers [[Greek
θεραπευταί].. Therapeutai].
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
God. 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
Sabæans, 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 God, as presented by
the Old Testament, appeared to then defective. Against his will and rule
the [Greek: υνη] was continually rebelling, revolting without control
against the dominion which he, the fashioner, 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 God of
Holiness and Love, who has no connection whatever with the sensible
world, has scattered among men. That perfect God was at most known and
worshipped 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: Άρχή, Δόγος, Μονογενής, Ζωή, Φώς] and [Greek:
Πνεϋμα], [Archē, Logos, Monogenēs, Zōe, Phōs, 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 God 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 Plēroma [[Greek: Πλήρωμα]], Plenitude or Fullness, was a favorite
term with the Gnostics, and Truth and Grace were the Gnostic Eons; and
the Simonians, Dokētēs, 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 Plēroma and Truth and Grace.
In the doctrine of Valentinus, reared a Christian at Alexandria, God was
a perfect Being, an Abyss [[Greek: Βυθός].. 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: Προπατωρ] and [Greek: ροαρχή]..
Propatōr and Proarchē]: He will BE always, and does not grow old. The
development of His Perfections produced the intellectual world. After
having passed 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: Έννοια].. Ennoia] is also termed [Greek: Χάρις] [Charis],
Grace or Joy, and [Greek: Σιγή], or [Greek: Άρρητον] [Sigē or Arrēton],
Silence or the Ineffable. Its first manifestation was [Greek: Νους]
[Nous], the Intelligence, first of the Eons, commencement of all things,
first revelation of the Divinity, the [Greek: Μονογενής] [Monogenēs], or
Only-Begotten: next, Truth [[Greek: Άλήθεια] .. Alētheia], his
companion. Their manifestations were the Word [[Greek: Λογος].. Logos]
and Life [[Greek: Ζοή].. Zoe]; and theirs, Man and the Church [[Greek:
Ανθροπος] and [Greek: Έκκλησία].. Anthrōpos and Ekklēsia]: 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 God, was disturbed,
and to redeem and restore them, the Intelligence [Greek: Νούς] 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: Λογος] [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
constituted the [Greek: Πλήρωμα] [Plēroma].
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: Σοφία] [Sophia], to the mundane
soul and to the Plēroma:--the spiritual natures, [Greek: φύσεις
πνεματικαί] [Phuseis Pneumatikai]: 2d. The natures originating in the
life, divided from the former by the mixture of the [Greek: ύλη]--the
psychical natures, [Greek: φύσεις ψυχικαί] [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 Ungodlike
or Hylic Nature, which resists all amelioration, and whose tendency is
only to destroy--the nature of blind lust and passion.
The nature of the [Greek: πνευματικόν] [pneumatikon], the spiritual, is
essential relationship with God (the [Greek: όμοούσιον τώ θεώ]..
Homoousion tō Theō): hence the life of Unity, the undivided, the
absolutely simple (ούσία ένική, μονοειδής.. Ousia henike, monoeides).
The essence of the ψυχικοί [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 ύλικοì [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 Λογος του οντος
[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 σπέρματα πνευματικά..
spermata pneumatika], which lie shut up in the Eons, continually unfold
and individualize themselves more and more, is represented as a
spontaneous analysis of the several _names_ of the Ineffable, into their
several _sounds_..An _echo_ of the Plēroma falls down into the ύλη
[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 Αλήθεια [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 יהוה, who has redeemed the Soul of Jesus by the
living Christ". The assembly 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 Titans, 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: πρώτος άνθρωπος] [Protos Anthropos] of Mani,
the [Greek: πράων άνθρωπος] [Praōn Anthrōpos] 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: Γνώσις] [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.