is the name given to a loosely organized religious and philosophical
movement that flourished in the first and second centuries CE. The
exact origin(s) of this school of thought cannot be traced, although
it is possible to locate influences or sources as far back as the
second and first centuries BCE, such as the early treatises of the
Corpus Hermeticum, the Jewish Apocalyptic writings, and especially
Platonic philosophy and the Hebrew Scriptures themselves. In spite of
the diverse nature of the various Gnostic sects and teachers, certain
fundamental elements serve to bind these groups together under the
loose heading of "Gnosticism" or "Gnosis." Chief among these elements
is a certain manner of "anti-cosmic world rejection" that has often
been mistaken for mere dualism. According to the Gnostics, this world,
the material cosmos, is the result of a primordial error on the part
of a supra-cosmic, supremely divine being, usually called Sophia
(Wisdom) or simply the Logos. This being is described as the final
emanation of a divine hierarchy, called the Plêrôma or "Fullness," at
the head of which resides the supreme God, the One beyond Being. The
error of Sophia, which is usually identified as a reckless desire to
know the transcendent God, leads to the hypostatization of her desire
in the form of a semi-divine and essentially ignorant creature known
as the Demiurge (Greek: dêmiourgos, "craftsman"), or Ialdabaoth, who
is responsible for the formation of the material cosmos. This act of
craftsmanship is actually an imitation of the realm of the Pleroma,
but the Demiurge is ignorant of this, and hubristically declares
himself the only existing God. At this point, the Gnostic revisionary
critique of the Hebrew Scriptures begins, as well as the general
rejection of this world as a product of error and ignorance, and the
positing of a higher world, to which the human soul will eventually
return. However, when all is said and done, one finds that the error
of Sophia and the begetting of the inferior cosmos are occurrences
that follow a certain law of necessity, and that the so-called dualism
of the divine and the earthly is really a reflection and expression of
the defining tension that constitutes the being of humanity — the
human being.
1. The Philosophical Character of Gnosticism
Gnosticism, as an intellectual product, is grounded firmly in the
general human act of reflecting upon existence. The Gnostics were
concerned with the basic questions of existence or
"being-in-the-world" (Dasein) — that is: who we are (as human beings),
where we have come from, and where we are heading, historically and
spiritually (cf. Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion 1958, p. 334). These
questions lie at the very root of philosophical thinking; but the
answers provided by the Gnostics go beyond philosophical speculation
toward the realm of religious doctrine and mysticism. However, it is
impossible to understand fully the meaning of Gnosticism without
beginning at the philosophical level, and orienting oneself
accordingly. Since any orientation toward an ancient phenomenon must
always proceed by way of contemporary ideas and habits of mind, an
interpretative discussion of Gnostic thinking as it applies to
Psychology, Existentialism, and Hermeneutics, is not amiss here. Once
we have understood, to the extent of our ability, the philosophical
import of Gnostic ideas, and how they relate to contemporary
philosophical issues, then we may enter into the historical milieu of
the Gnostics with some degree of confidence — a confidence devoid, to
the extent that this is possible, of tainting exegetical
presuppositions.
a. Psychology
Who are we? The answer to this question involves an account (logos) of
the nature of the soul (psukhê or psyche); and the attempt to provide
an answer has accordingly been dubbed the science or practice of
"psychology" — an account of the soul or mind (psukhê, in ancient
Greek, denoted both soul, as the principle of life, and mind, as the
principle of intellect). Carl Jung, drawing upon Gnostic mythical
schemas, identified the objectively oriented consciousness with the
material or 'fleshly' part of humankind — that is, with the part of
the human being that is, according to the Gnostics, bound up in the
cosmic cycle of generation and decay, and subject to the bonds of fate
and time (cf. Apocryphon of John [Codex II] 28:30). The human being
who identifies him/herself with the objectively existing world comes
to construct a personality, a sense of self, that is, at base, fully
dependent upon the ever-changing structures of temporal existence. The
resulting lack of any sense of of permanence, of autonomy, leads such
an individual to experience anxieties of all kinds, and eventually to
shun the mysterious and collectively meaningful patterns of human
existence in favor of a private and stifling subjective context, in
the confines of which life plays itself out in the absence of any
reference to a greater plan or scheme. Hopelessness, atheism, despair,
are the results of such an existence. This is not the natural end of
the human being, though; for, according to Jung (and the Gnostics) the
temporally constructed self is not the true self. The true self is the
supreme consciousness existing and persisting beyond all space and
time. Jung calls this the pure consciousness or Self, in
contradistinction to the "ego consciousness" which is the temporally
constructed and maintained form of a discrete existent (cf. C.G. Jung,
"Gnostic Symbols of the Self," in The Gnostic Jung 1992, pp. 55-92).
This latter form of 'worldly' consciousness the Gnostics identified
with soul (psukhê), while the pure or true Self they identified with
spirit (pneuma) — that is, mind relieved of its temporal contacts and
context. This distinction had an important career in Gnostic thought,
and was adopted by St. Paul, most notably in his doctrine of the
spiritual resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:44). The psychological or
empirical basis of this view, which soon turns into a metaphysical or
onto-theological attitude, is the recognized inability of the human
mind to achieve its grandest designs while remaining subject to the
rigid law and order of a disinterested and aloof cosmos. The
spirit-soul distinction (which of course translates into, or perhaps
presupposes, the more fundamental mind-body distinction) marks the
beginning of a transcendentalist and soteriological attitude toward
the cosmos and temporal existence in general.
b. Existentialism
The basic experience of existence, described by the philosophy that
has become known as 'Existentialism,' involves a general feeling of
loneliness or abandonment (Geworfenheit, "having been thrown") in/to a
world that is not amenable to the primordial desires of the human
being (cf. Jonas, p. 336). The recognition that the first or primal
desire of the human being is for the actualization or positing of a
concrete self or 'I' (an autonomous and discrete individual existing
and persisting amidst the flux and flow of temporal and external
'reality') leads to the disturbing realization that this world is not
akin to the human being; for this world (so it seems) follows it own
course, a course already mapped out and set in motion long before the
advent of human consciousness. Furthermore, that the essential
activity of the human being — i.e., to actualize an autonomous self
within the world — is carried out in opposition to a power or 'will'
(the force of nature) that always seems to thwart or subvert this
supremely human endeavor, leads to the acknowledgment of an anti-human
and therefore anti-intellectual power; and this power, since it seems
to act, must also exist. However, the fact that its act does not
manifest itself as a communication between humanity and nature (or
pure objectivity), but rather as a mechanical process of blind
necessity occurring apart from the human endeavor, places the human
being in a superior position. For even though the force of nature may
arbitrarily wipe out an individual human existent, just as easily as
it brings one into existence, this natural force is not conscious of
its activity. The human mind, on the other hand, is. And so a gap or
fissure — a product of reflection — is set up, by which the human
being may come to orient him/herself with and toward the world in
which s/he exists and persists, for a brief moment. Martin Heidegger
has described this brief moment of orientation with/in (toward) the
world as "care" (Sorge), which is always a care or concern for the
"moment" (Augenblick) within which all existence occurs; this "care"
is understood as the product of humankind's recognition of their
unavoidable being-toward-death. But this orientation is never
completed, since the human soul finds that it cannot achieve its
purpose or complete actualization within the confines set by nature.
While the thwarting necessity of nature is, for the Existentialist, a
simple, unquestioned fact; for the Gnostics it is the result of the
malignant designs of an inferior god, the Demiurge, carried out
through and by this ignorant deity's own law. In other words, nature
is, for modern Existentialism, merely indifferent, while for the
Gnostics it was actively hostile toward the human endeavor. "[C]osmic
law, once worshipped as the expression of a reason with which man's
reason can communicate in the act of cognition, is now seen only in
its aspect of compulsion which thwarts man's freedom" (Jonas, p. 328).
Time and history come to be understood as the provenance of the human
mind, over-against futile idealistic constructions like law and order,
nomos and cosmos. Knowledge, at this point, becomes a concrete
endeavor — a self-salvific task for the human race.
Becoming aware of itself, the self also discovers that it is not
really its own, but is rather the involuntary executor of cosmic
designs. Knowledge, gnosis, may liberate man from this servitude; but
since the cosmos is contrary to life and to spirit, the saving
knowledge cannot aim at integration into the cosmic whole and at
compliance with its laws. For the Gnostics … man's alienation from the
world is to be deepened and brought to a head, for the extrication of
the inner self which only thus can gain itself (Jonas, p. 329).
The obvious question, then — Where did we come from? – only becomes
intelligible alongside and within the more dynamic question of Where
are we heading?
c. Hermeneutics
In the context of ancient Greek thinking, hermêneia was usually
associated with tekhnê, giving us the tekhnê hermêneutikê or "art of
interpretation" discussed by Aristotle in his treatise De
Interpretatione [Peri Hermêneias]. Interpretation or hermeneutics,
according to Aristotle, does not bring us to a direct knowledge of the
meaning of things, but only to an understanding of how things come to
appear before us, and thereby to provide us with an avenue toward
empirical knowledge, as it were. "Moreover, discourse is hermêneia
because a discursive statement is a grasp of the real by meaningful
expression, not a selection of so-called impressions coming from the
things themselves" (Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations
1974, p. 4). In this sense, we may say that the "art of
interpretation" is a distinctly historical method of understanding or
coming to terms with reality. In other words, since our "expression"
is always an ex-position, a going-out from the given forms or patterns
of reality toward a living use of these forms with/in Life, then we,
as human beings persisting in a realm of becoming, are responsible, in
the last analysis, not for any eternal truths or "things in
themselves," but only for the forms these things take on within the
context of a living and thinking existence. Knowledge or
understanding, then, is not of immutable and eternal things in
themselves, but rather of the process by which things — i.e., ideas,
objects, events, persons, etc. — become revealed within the
existential or ontological process of coming-to-know. The attention to
process and the emergence of meaning occurs on the most immediate
experiential level of human existence, and therefore contains about it
nothing of the metaphysical. However, the birth of metaphysics may be
located within this primordial or phenomenal structure of basic
"brute" experience; for it is the natural tendency of the human mind
to order and arrange its data according to rational principles. The
question will inevitably arise, though, as to whence these rational
principles derive: are they a derivative product of the phenomenal
realm of experience? or are they somehow endemic to the human mind as
such, and hence eternal? If we take the first question as an answer,
we are led to phenomenology, which "discovers, in place of an idealist
subject locked within [a] system of meanings, a living being which
from all time has, as the horizon of all its intentions, a world, the
world" (Ricoeur, p. 9). According to the general contemporary or
'post-modern' formulation, such a "living being" is directed,
intentionally, always and only toward a multiplicitous world or realm
in which human activity itself becomes the sole object of knowledge,
apart from any 'transcendent' metaphysical ideals or schemas. For the
Gnostics, on the other hand, who worked within and upon the latter
question, giving it a positive, if somewhat mytho-poetical answer,
rational principles, which seem to be culled from a mere contact with
sensible reality, are held to be reminders of a unified existence that
is an eternal possibility, open to anyone capable of transcending and,
indeed, transgressing this realm of experience and process — i.e., of
history. This 'transgression' consists in the act of balancing oneself
with/in, and orienting oneself toward, history as an interplay of past
and present, in which the individual is poised for a decision — either
to succumb to the flux and flow of an essentially decentered cosmic
existence, or to strive for a re-integration into a godhead that is
only barely recollected, and more obscure than the immediate
perceptions of reality.
i. Reception and Revelation
Where are we heading? This question is at the very heart of Gnostic
exegesis, and indeed colors and directs all attempts at coming to
terms, not only with the Hebrew Scriptures, which served as the main
text of Gnostic interpretation, but with existence in general. The
standard hermeneutical approach, both in our own era, and in Late
Hellenistic times, is the receptive approach — that is, an engagement
with texts of the past governed by the belief, on the part of the
interpreter, that these texts have something to teach us. Whether we
struggle to overcome our own "prejudices" or presuppositions, which
are the inevitable result of our belonging to a particular tradition
by way of the hermeneutical act (Gadamer), or allow our prejudices to
shape our reading of a text, in an act of "creative misprision"
(Bloom) we are still acknowledging, in some way, our debt to or
dependence upon the text with which we are engaged. The Gnostics, in
their reading of Scripture, acknowledged no such debt; for they
believed that the Hebrew Bible was the written revelation of an
inferior creator god (dêmiourgos), filled with lies intended to cloud
the minds and judgment of the spiritual human beings (pneumatikoi)
whom this Demiurge was intent on enslaving in his material cosmos.
Indeed, while the receptive hermeneutical method implies that we have
something to learn from a text, the method employed by the Gnostics,
which we may call the 'revelatory' method, was founded upon the idea
that they (the Gnostics) had received a supra-cosmic revelation,
either in the form of a "call," or a vision, or even, perhaps, through
the exercise of philosophical dialectic. This 'revelation' was the
knowledge (gnôsis) that humankind is alien to this realm, and
possesses a "home on high" within the plêrôma, the "Fullness," where
all the rational desires of the human mind come to full and perfect
fruition. On this belief, all knowledge belonged to these Gnostics,
and any interpretation of the biblical text would be for the purpose
of explaining the true nature of things by elucidating the errors and
distortions of the Demiurge. This approach treated the past as
something already overcome yet still 'present,' insofar as certain
members of the human race were still laboring under the old law —
i.e., were still reading the Scriptures in the receptive manner. The
Gnostic, insofar as he still remained within the world, as an existing
being, was, on the other hand, both present and future — that is to
say, the Gnostic embodied within himself the salvific dynamism of a
history that had broken from the constraint of a tyrannical past, and
found the freedom to invent itself anew. The Gnostic understood
himself to be at once at the center and at the end or culmination of
this history, and this idea or ideal was reflected most powerfully in
ancient Gnostic exegesis. We must now turn to a discussion of the
concrete results of this hermeneutical method.
2. The Gnostic Mytho-Logos
The Gnostic Idea or Notion was not informed by a philosophical
world-view or procedure; rather, the Gnostic vision of the world was
based upon the intuition of a radical and seemingly irreparable
rupture between the realm of experience (pathos) and the realm of true
Being, i.e., existence in its positive, creative, or authentic aspect.
The problem faced by the Gnostics was how to explain such a radical,
pre-philosophical intuition. This intuition is 'pre-philosophical'
because the brute experience of existing in a world that is alien to
humankind's aspirations may submit itself to a variety of
interpretations; and the attempt at an interpretation may take on the
form of either muthos or logos – either a merely descriptive rendering
of the experience, or a rationally ordered account of such an
experience, including an explanation of its origins. The ancient Greek
explanation of this experience was to call it a primal 'awe' or
'wonder' felt by the human being as he faces the world that stands so
radically apart from him, and to posit this experience as the
beginning of philosophy (cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 982b 10-25 and
Plato, Theaetetus 155d). But the Gnostics recognized this 'awe' as the
product of a radical disruption of the harmony of a realm persisting
beyond becoming — that is, beyond 'becoming' in the sense of pathos,
or 'that which is undergone'. The muthos always corresponds to the
'first-hand' account rendered by one who has undergone, immediately,
the effect of a certain event. The myth is always an explanation of
something already known, and therefore carries its truth-claim along
with it, just as the immediacy of an event forbids any doubt or
questioning on the part of the one undergoing it. The logos, on the
other hand, is the product of a careful reflection (dianoia), and
refers, for its truth-value, not to the immediate moment of 'grasping'
a phenomenon (prolêpsis), but to the moment of reflection during which
one attains a conceptual knowledge of the phenomenon, and first comes
to 'know' it as such — this is gnôsis: insight. The direct result of
this gnôsis is the emergence from the sense of existence as pathos, to
the actuality of being as aisthêsis — that is, reception and judgment
of experience by way of purely rational or divine criteria. Such
criteria proceeds directly from the logos, or divine 'ordering
principle,' to which the Gnostics believed themselves to be related,
by way of a divine genealogy. Although Gnostic onto-theology proceeds
by way of an elaborate myth, it is a myth informed always by the
logos, and is, in this sense, a true mythology – that is, a rendering,
in the immediacy of language, of that which is ever-present (to the
Gnostic) as a product of privileged reflection.
a. The Myth of Sophia
According to Gnostic mythology (in general) We, humanity, are existing
in this realm because a member of the transcendent godhead, Sophia
(Wisdom), desired to actualize her innate potential for creativity
without the approval of her partner or divine consort. Her hubris, in
this regard, stood forth as raw materiality, and her desire, which was
for the mysterious ineffable Father, manifested itself as Ialdabaoth,
the Demiurge, that renegade principle of generation and corruption
which, by its unalterable necessity, brings all beings to life, for a
brief moment, and then to death for eternity. However, since even the
Pleroma itself is not, according to the Gnostics, exempt from desire
or passion, there must come into play a salvific event or savior —
i.e., Christ, the Logos, the "messenger," etc. — who descends to the
material realm for the purpose of negating all passion, and raising
the innocent human "sparks" (which fell from Sophia) back up to the
Pleroma (cf. Apocryphon of John [Codex II] 9:25-25:14 ff.). This
process of re-integration with/in the godhead is one of the basic
features of the Gnostic myth. The purpose of this re-integration
(implicitly) is to establish a series of existents that are
ontologically posterior to Sophia, and are the concrete embodiment of
her 'disruptive' desire — within the unified arena of the Pleroma.
Indeed, if the Pleroma is really the Fullness, containing all things,
it must contain the manifold principles of Wisdom's longing. In this
sense, we must not view Gnostic salvation as a simply one-sided
affair. The divine "sparks" that fell from Sophia, during her
"passion," are un-integrated aspects of the godhead. We may say, then,
that in the Hegelian sense the Gnostic Supreme God is seeking,
eternally, His own actualization by way of full self-consciousness
(cf. G.W.F. Hegel, History of Philosophy vol. 2, pp. 396-399). But it
is not really this simple. The Supreme God of the Gnostics
effortlessly generates the Pleroma, and yet (or for this very reason!)
this Pleroma comes to act independently of the Father. This is because
all members of the Pleroma (known as Aeons) are themselves "roots and
springs and fathers" (Tripartite Tractate 68:10) carrying Time within
themselves, as a condition of their Being. When the disruption,
brought about by the desire of Sophia, disturbed the Pleroma, this was
not understood as a disturbance of an already established unity, but
rather as the disturbance of an insupportable stasis that had come to
be observed as divine. Indeed, when the Greeks first looked to the sky
and admired the regularity of the rotations of the stars and planets,
what they were admiring, according to the Gnostics, was not the image
of divinity, but the image or representation of a 'divine' stagnancy,
a law and order that stifled freedom, which is the root of desire (cf.
Jonas, pp. 260-261). The passion of Sophia — her production of the
Demiurge, his enslavement of the human "sparks" in the material
cosmos, and the subsequent redemption and restoration — are but one
episode in the infinite, unfolding drama of spiritual existence. We,
as human beings, just happen to be the unwitting victims of this
particular drama. But if, as the Gnostics hold, our salvation consists
in our becoming gods (Poimandres 26) or "lord[s] over creation and all
corruption" (Valentinus, Fragment F, Layton) then how are we to be
confident that, in ages to come, one of us will not give birth to
another damned cosmos, just as Sophia had done?
b. Christian Gnosticism
The Christian idea that God has sent his only "Son" (the Logos) to
suffer and die for the sins of all humankind, and so make possible the
salvation of all, had a deep impact on Gnostic thought. In the
extensive and important collection of Gnostic writings discovered at
Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945, only a handful present the possibility of
having originated in a pre-Christian, mostly Hellenistic Jewish
milieu. The majority of these texts are Christian Gnostic writings
from the early second to late third centuries CE, and perhaps a bit
later. When we consider the notion of salvation and its meaning for
the early Gnostics, who stressed the creative aspect of our
post-salvific existence, we are struck by the bold assertion that our
need for salvation arose, in the first place, from an error committed
by a divine being, Sophia (Wisdom), during the course of her own
creative act (cf. Apocryphon of John [Codex II] 9:25-10:6). Since this
is the case, how, we are led to ask, will our post-salvation existence
be any less prone to error or ignorance, even evil? The radical
message of early Christianity provided the answer to this
problematical question; and so the Gnostics took up the Christian idea
and transformed it, by the power of their singular mytho-logical
technique, into a philosophically and theologically complex
speculative schema.
i. Basilides
The Christian philosopher Basilides of Alexandria (fl. 132-135 CE)
developed a cosmology and cosmogony quite distinct from the Sophia
myth of classical Gnosticism, and also reinterpreted key Christian
concepts by way of the popular Stoic philosophy of the era. Basilides
began his system with a "primal octet" consisting of the "unengendered
parent" or Father; Intellect (nous); the 'ordering principle' or
"Word" (logos); "prudence" (phronêsis); Wisdom (sophia); Power
(dunamis) (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.24.3, in Layton, The Gnostic
Scriptures 1987) and "justice" and "peace" (Basilides, Fragment A,
Layton). Through the union of Wisdom and Power, a group of angelic
rulers came into existence, and from these rulers a total of 365
heavens or aeons were generated (Irenaeus 1.24.3). Each heaven had its
own chief ruler (arkhôn), and numerous lesser angels. The final
heaven, which Basilides claimed is the realm of matter in which we all
dwell, was said by him to be ruled by "the god of the Jews," who
favored the Jewish nation over all others, and so caused all manner of
strife for the nations that came into contact with them — as well as
for the Jewish people themselves. This behavior caused the rulers of
the other 364 heavens to oppose the god of the Jews, and to send a
savior, Jesus Christ, from the highest realm of the Father, to rescue
the human beings who are struggling under the yoke of this jealous god
(Irenaeus 1.24.4). Since the realm of matter is the sole provenance of
this spiteful god, Basilides finds nothing of value in it, and states
that "[s]alvation belongs only to the soul; the body is by nature
corruptible" (Irenaeus 1.24.5). He even goes so far as to declare,
contra Christian orthodoxy, that Christ's death on the cross was only
apparent, and did not actually occur 'in the flesh' (Irenaeus 1.24.4)
— this doctrine came to be called docetism.
The notion that material existence is the product of a jealous and
corrupt creator god, who favors one race over all others, is really
the 'mythical' expression of a deeply rooted ethical belief that the
source of all evil is material or bodily existence. Indeed, Basilides
goes so far as to assert that sin is the direct outcome of bodily
existence, and that human suffering is the punishment either for
actual sins committed, or even just for the general inclination to
sin, which arises from the bodily impulses (cf. Fragments F and G). In
an adaptation of Stoic ethical categories, Basilides declares that
faith (pistis) "is not the rational assent of a soul possessing free
will" (Fragment C); rather, faith is the natural mode of existence,
and consequently, anyone living in accordance with the "law of nature"
(pronoia), which Basilides calls the "kingdom," will remain free from
the bodily impulses, and exist in a state of "salvation" (Fragment C).
However, Basilides goes beyond simple Stoic doctrine in his belief
that the "elect," i.e., those who exist by faith, "are alien to the
world, as if they were transcendent by nature" (Fragment E); for
unlike the Stoics, who believed in a single, material cosmos,
Basilides held the view, as we have seen, that the cosmos is composed
of numerous heavens, with the material realm as the final heaven, and
consequently corrupt. Since this final heaven represents the 'last
gasp' of divine emanation, as it were, and is by no means a perfect
image of true divinity, adherence to its laws can lead to no good.
Further, since the body is the means by which the ruler of this
material cosmos enforces his law, freedom can only be attained by
abandoning or "becoming indifferent to" all bodily impulses and
desires. This indifference (adiaphoria) to bodily impulses, however,
does not lead to a simple stagnant asceticism. Basilides does not call
upon his hearers to abandon the material realm only to dissolve into
negativity; instead, he offers them a new life, by appealing to the
grand hierarchy of rulers persisting above the material realm (cf.
Fragment D). When one turns to the greater hierarchy of Being, there
results a "creation of good things" (Fragment C, translation
modified). Love and personal creation — the begetting of the Good —
are the final result of Basilides' vaguely dialectical system, and for
this reason it is one of the most important early expressions of a
truly Christian, if not "orthodox," philosophy.
ii. Marcion
Marcion of Sinope, in Pontus, was a contemporary of Basilides.
According to Tertullian, he started his career as an orthodox
Christian — whatever that meant at such an early stage of development
of Christian doctrine — but soon formulated the remarkable and radical
doctrine that was to lead to his excommunication from the Roman Church
in July 144 CE, the traditional date of the founding of the Marcionite
Church (Tertullian, Against Marcion 1.1; cf. Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis
1984, p. 314). The teaching of Marcion is elegantly simple: "the God
proclaimed by the law and the prophets is not the Father of Our Lord
Jesus Christ. The God (of the Old Testament) is known, but the latter
(the Father of Jesus Christ) is unknown. The one is just, but the
other is good" (Irenaeus 1.27.1). Marcion believed that this cosmos in
which we live bears witness to the existence of an inflexible,
legalistic, and sometimes spiteful and vengeful God. This view arose
from a quite literal reading of the Old Testament, which does contain
several passages describing God in terms not quite conducive to
divinity — or at least to the idea of the divine that was current in
the Hellenistic era. Marcion then, following Paul (in Romans 1:20)
declared that God is knowable through His creation; however, unlike
Paul, Marcion did not take this "natural revelation" as evidence of
God's singularity and goodness. Quite the contrary, Marcion believed
that he knew the God of this realm all too well, and that He was not
worthy of the devotion and obedience that He demanded. Therefore,
Marcion rejected the teaching of the orthodox Christian Church of his
era, that Yahweh (or Jehovah) is the Father of Christ, and, through a
creative excision of what he termed "Judaistic interpolations" in Luke
and ten Pauline Epistles, Marcion simultaneously put forth his notion
of the "alien God" and His act of salvation, and established the first
Canon of Scripture used in a 'Christian' Church (Jonas, pp. 145-146).
Marcion was not a philosopher in the sense that term has come to
imply. He never developed, as far as we can tell from the surviving
evidence, a systematic metaphysical, cosmological, or anthropological
theory in the manner of a Basilides or a Valentinus (whom we shall
discuss below), nor did he appeal to history as a witness for his
doctrines. This latter point is the most important. Unlike the
majority of Gnostics, who elaborated some sort of divine genealogy
(e.g., the Sophia myth) to account for the presence of corruption and
strife in the world, Marcion simply posited two opposed and
irreducible Gods: the biblical god, and the unknown or "alien" God,
who is the Father of Christ. According to Marcion, the god who
controls this realm is a being who is intent on preserving his
autonomy and power even at the expense of the (human) beings whom he
created. The "alien" God, who is the Supremely Good, is a "god of
injection," for he enters this realm from outside, in order to
gratuitously adopt the pitiful human beings who remain under the sway
of the inferior god as His own children. This act is the origin of and
reason for the Incarnation of Christ, according to Marcion.
In spite of the absence of any solid philosophical or theological
foundation for this rather simple formulation, Marcion's idea
nevertheless expresses, in a somewhat crude and immediate form, a
basic truth of human existence: that the desires of the Mind are
incommensurable with the nature of material existence (cf. Irenaeus
1.27.2-3). Yet, if we follow Marcion's argument to its logical (or
perhaps 'anti-logical') conclusion, we discover an existential
expression (not a philosophy) of the primal feeling of "abandonment"
(Geworfenheit). This expression plays upon the subtle yet poignant
opposition of "love of wisdom" (philosophia) and "complete wisdom"
(plêrosophia). We are alone in a world that does not lend itself to
our quest for unalterable truth, and so we befriend wisdom, which is
the way of or manner in which we attain this intuited truth. According
to Marcion, this truth is not to be found in this world — all that is
to be found is the desire for this truth, which arises amongst human
beings. However, since this desire, on the part of human beings, only
produces various philosophies, none of which can hold claim to the
absolute truth, Marcion concludes that the noetic beings (humans) of
this realm are capable of nothing more than a shadow of wisdom. It is
only by way of the guidance and grace of an alien and purely good God
that humankind will rise to the level of plêrosophia or complete
wisdom (cf. Colossians 2:2 ff.). Moreover, instead of attempting to
discover the historical connection between the revelation of Christ
and the teachings of the Old Testament, Marcion simply rejected the
latter in favor of the former, on the belief that only the Gospel
(thoughtfully edited by Marcion himself) points us toward complete
wisdom (Irenaeus 1.27.2-3; Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.3).
While other Christian thinkers of the era were busy allegorizing the
Old Testament in order to bring it into line with New Testament
teaching, Marcion allowed the New Testament (albeit in his own special
version) to speak to him as a singular voice of authority — and he
formulated his doctrine accordingly. This doctrine emphasized not only
humankind's radical alienation from the realm of their birth, but also
their lack of any genealogical relation to the God who sacrificed His
own Son to save them — in other words, Marcion painted a picture of
humanity as a race displaced, with no true home at all (cf. Giovanni
Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism 1992, p. 164). The hope of searching
for a lost home, or of returning to a home from which one has been
turned out, was absent in the doctrine of Marcion. Like Pico della
Mirandola, Marcion declared the nature of humankind to be that of an
eternally intermediate entity, poised precariously between heaven and
earth (cp. Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, 3).
However, unlike Pico, Marcion called for a radical displacement of
humankind — a 'rupture' — in which humanity would awaken to its full
(if not innate) possibilities.
iii. Valentinus and the Valentinian School
The great Christian teacher and philosopher Valentinus (ca. 100-175
CE) spent his formative years in Alexandria, where he probably came
into contact with Basilides. Valentinus later went to Rome, where he
began his public teaching career, which was so successful that he
actually had a serious chance of being elected Bishop of Rome. He lost
the election, however, and with it Gnosticism lost the chance of
becoming synonymous with Christianity, and hence a world religion.
This is not to say that Valentinus failed to influence the development
of Christian theology — he most certainly did, as we shall see below.
It was through Valentinus, perhaps more than any other Christian
thinker of his time, that Platonic philosophy, rhetorical elegance,
and a deep, interpretive knowledge of scripture became introduced
together into the realm of Christian theology. The achievement of
Valentinus remained unmatched for nearly a century, until the
incomparable Origen came on the scene. Yet even then, it may not be
amiss to suggest that Origen never would have 'happened' had it not
been for the example of Valentinus.
The cosmology of Valentinus began, not with a unity, but with a primal
duality, a dyad, composed of two entities called "the Ineffable" and
"Silence." From these initial beings a second dyad of "Parent" and
"Truth" was generated. These beings finally engendered a quaternity of
"Word" (logos), "Life" (zôê), "Human Being" (anthropos), and "Church"
(ekklêsia). Valentinus refers to this divine collectivity as the
"first octet" (Irenaeus 1.11.1). This octet produced several other
beings, one of which revolted or "turned away," as Irenaeus tells us,
and set in motion the divine drama that would eventually produce the
cosmos. According to Irenaeus, who was writing only about five years
after the death of Valentinus, and in whose treatise Against Heresies
the outline of Valentinus' cosmology is preserved, the entity
responsible for initiating the drama is referred to simply as "the
mother," by which is probably meant Sophia (Wisdom). From this
"mother" both matter (hulê) and the savior, Christ, were generated.
The realm of matter is described as a "shadow," produced from the
"mother," and from which Christ distanced himself and "hastened up
into the fullness" (Irenaeus 1.11.1; cp. Poimandres 5). At this point
the "mother" produced another "child," the "craftsman" (dêmiourgos)
responsible for the creation of the cosmos. In the account preserved
by Irenaeus, we are told nothing of any cosmic drama in which "divine
sparks" are trapped in fleshly bodies through the designs of the
Demiurge. However, it is to be assumed that Valentinus did expound an
anthropology similar to that of the classical Sophia myth (as
represented, for example, in the Apocryphon of John; cf. also The
Hypostasis of the Archons, and the Apocalypse of Adam), especially
since his school, as represented most significantly by his star pupil
Ptolemy (see below), came to develop a highly complex anthropological
myth that must have grown out of a simpler model provided by
Valentinus himself. The account preserved in Irenaeus ends with a
description of a somewhat confused doctrine of a heavenly and an
earthly Christ, and a brief passage on the role of the Holy Spirit
(Irenaeus 1.11.1). From this one gets the idea that Valentinus was
flirting with a primitive doctrine of the Trinity. Indeed, according
to the fourth century theologian Marcellus of Ancyra, Valentinus was
"the first to devise the notion of three subsistent entities
(hypostases), in a work that he entitled On the Three Natures"
(Valentinus, Fragment B, Layton).
Valentinus was certainly the most overtly Christian of the Gnostic
philosophers of his era. We have seen how the thought of Basilides was
pervaded by a Stoicizing tendency, and how Marcion felt the need to go
beyond scripture to posit an "alien" redeemer God. Valentinus, on the
other hand, seems to have been informed, in his speculations,
primarily by Jewish and Christian scripture and exegesis, and only
secondarily by 'pagan' philosophy, particularly Platonism. This is
most pronounced in his particular version of the familiar theological
notion of "election" or "pre-destination," in which it is declared
(following Paul in Romans 8:29) that God chose certain individuals,
before the beginning of time, for salvation. Valentinus writes, in
what is probably a remnant of a sermon:
From the beginning you [the "elect" or Gnostic Christians] have
been immortal, and you are children of eternal life. And you wanted
death to be allocated to yourselves so that you might spend it and use
it up, and that death might die in you and through you. For when you
nullify the world and are not yourselves annihilated, you are lord
over creation and all corruption (Valentinus, Fragment F).
This seems to be Valentinus' response to the dilemma of the permanence
of salvation: since Sophia or the divine "mother," a member of the
Pleroma, had fallen into error, how can we be sure that we will not
make the same or a similar mistake after we have reached the fullness?
By declaring that it is the role and task of the "elect" or Gnostic
Christian to use up death and nullify the world, Valentinus is making
clear his position that these elite souls are fellow saviors of the
world, along with Jesus, who was the first to take on the sin and
corruption inherent in the material realm (cf. Irenaeus 1.11.1; and
Layton p. 240). Therefore, since "the wages of sin is death" (Romans
6:23), any being who is capable of destroying death must be incapable
of sin. For Valentinus, then, the individual who is predestined for
salvation is also predestined for a sort of divine stewardship that
involves an active hand in history, and not a mere repose with God, or
even a blissful existence of loving creation, as Basilides held. Like
Paul, Valentinus demanded that his hearers recognize their
createdness. However, unlike Paul, they recognized their creator as
the "Ineffable Parent," and not as the God of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The task of Christian hermeneutics after Valentinus was to prove the
continuity of the Old and New Testament. In this regard, as well as in
the general spirituality of his teaching — not to mention his
primitive trinitarian doctrine — Valentinus had an incalculable impact
on the development of Christianity.
1) The System of Ptolemy
Ptolemy (or Ptolemaeus, fl. 140 CE) was described by St. Irenaeus as
"the blossom of Valentinus' school" (Layton, p. 276). We know next to
nothing about his life, except the two writings that have come down to
us: the elaborate Valentinian philosophical myth preserved in
Irenaeus, and Ptolemy's Epistle to Flora, preserved verbatim by St.
Epiphanius. In the former we are met with a grand elaboration, by
Ptolemy, of Valentinus' own system, which contains a complex
anthropological myth centering around the passion of Sophia. We also
find, in both the myth and the Epistle, Ptolemy making an attempt to
bring Hebrew Scripture into line with Gnostic teaching and New
Testament allegorization in a manner heretofore unprecedented among
the Gnostics.
In the system of Ptolemy we are explicitly told that the cause of
Sophia's fall was her desire to know the ineffable Father. Since the
purpose of the Father's generating of the Aeons (of which Sophia was
the last) was to "elevate all of them into thought" (Irenaeus 1.2.1)
it was not permitted for any Aeon to attain a full knowledge of the
Father. The purpose of the Pleroma was to exist as a living,
collective expression of the intellectual magnitude of the Father, and
if any single being within the Pleroma were to attain to the Father,
all life would cease. This idea is based on an essentially positive
attitude toward existence — that is, existence understood in the sense
of striving, not for a reposeful end, but for an ever-increasing
degree of creative or 'constitutive' insight. The goal, on this view,
is to produce through wisdom, and not simply to attain wisdom as an
object or end in itself. Such an existence is not characterized by
desire for an object, but rather by desire for the ability to persist
in creative, constitutive engagement with/in one's own 'circumstance'
(= circumscribed stance or individual arena). When Sophia desired to
know the Father, then, what she was desiring was her own dissolution
in favor of an envelopment in that which made her existence possible
in the first place. This amounted to a rejection of the gift of the
Father — i.e., of the gift of individual existence and life. It is for
this reason that Sophia was not permitted to know the Father, but was
turned back by the "boundary" (horos) that separates the Pleroma from
the "ineffable magnitude" of the Father (Irenaeus 1.2.2).
The remainder of Ptolemy's account is concerned with the production of
the material cosmos out of the hypostatized "passions" of Sophia, and
the activity of the Savior (Jesus Christ) in arranging these initially
chaotic passions into a structured hierarchy of existents (Irenaeus
1.4.5 ff., and cp. Colossians 1:16). Three classes of human beings
come into existence through this arrangement: the "material"
(hulikos), the "animate" (psukhikos), and the "spiritual"
(pneumatikos). The "material" humans are those who have not attained
to intellectual life, and so place their hopes only upon that which is
perishable — for these there is no hope of salvation. The "animate"
are those who have only a half-formed conception of the true God, and
so must live a life devoted to holy works, and persistence in faith;
according to Ptolemy, these are the "ordinary" Christians. Finally,
there are the "spiritual" humans, the Gnostics, who need no faith,
since they have actual knowledge (gnôsis) of intellectual reality, and
are thus saved by nature (Irenaeus 1.6.2, 1.6.4). The
Valentinian-Ptolemaic notion of salvation rests on the idea that the
cosmos is the concrete manifestation or hypostatization of the desire
of Sophia for knowledge of the Father, and the "passions" her failure
produced. The history of salvation, then, for human beings, has the
character of an external manifestation of the threefold process of
Sophia's own redemption: recognition of her passion; her consequent
"turning back" (epistrophê); and finally, her act of spiritual
production, whence arose Gnostic humanity (cf. Irenaeus 1.5.1).
Salvation, then, in its final form, must imply a sort of spiritual
creation on the part of the Gnostics who attain the Pleroma. The
"animate" humans, however, who are composed partly of corruptible
matter and partly of the spiritual essence, must remain content with a
simple restful existence with the craftsman of the cosmos, since no
material element can enter the Pleroma (Irenaeus 1.7.1).
In his Epistle to Flora (in Epiphanius 33.3.1-33.7.10), which is an
attempt to convert an "ordinary" Christian woman to his brand of
Valentinian Christianity, Ptolemy clearly formulates his doctrine of
the relation between the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, who is merely
"just," and the Ineffable Father, who is the Supreme Good. Rather than
simply declaring these two gods to be unrelated, as did Marcion,
Ptolemy develops a complex, allegorical reading of the Hebrew
Scriptures in relation to the New Testament in order to establish a
genealogy connecting the Pleroma, Sophia and her "passion," the
Demiurge, and the salvific activity of Jesus Christ. The scope and
rigor of Ptolemy's work, and the influence it came to exercise on
emerging Christian orthodoxy, qualifies him as one of the most
important of the early Christian theologians, both proto-orthodox and
"heretical."
c. Mani and Manichaeism
The world religion founded by Mani (216-276 CE) and known to history
as Manichaeism has its roots in the East, borrowing elements from
Persian dualistic religion (Zoroastrianism), Jewish Christianity,
Buddhism, and even Mithraism. The system developed by Mani was
self-consciously syncretistic, which was a natural outgrowth of his
desire to see his religion reach the ends of the earth. This desire
was fulfilled, and until the late Middle Ages, Manichaeism remained a
world religion, stretching from China to Western Europe. It is now
completely extinct. The religion began when its founder experienced a
series of visions, in which the Holy Spirit supposedly appeared to
him, ordering him to preach the revelation of Light to the ends of the
earth. Mani came to view himself as the last in a series of great
prophets including Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, and Paul (Rudolph, p.
339). His highly complex myth of the origin of the cosmos and of
humankind drew on various elements culled from these several
traditions and teachings. The doctrine of Mani is not 'philosophical,'
in the manner of Basilides, Valentinus or Ptolemy; for Mani's teaching
was not the product of a more or less rational or systematic
speculation about the godhead, resulting in Gnosis, but the wholly
creative product of what he felt to be a revelation from the divinity
itself. It is for this reason that Mani's followers revered him as the
redeemer and holy teacher of humankind (Rudolph, p. 339). Since
Manichaeism belongs more to the history of religion than to philosophy
proper (or even the fringes of philosophy, as does Western
Gnosticism), it will suffice to say only a few words about the system,
if for no other reason than that the great Christian philosopher
Augustine of Hippo had followed the Manichaen religion for several
years, before converting to Christianity (cf. Augustine, Confessions
III.10).
The main point of distinction between the doctrine of Mani and the
Western branch of Gnosticism (Basilides, Valentinus, etc.), is that in
Manichaeism the "cosmology is subservient to the soteriology"
(Rudolph, p. 336). This means, essentially, that Mani began with a
fundamental belief about the nature of humanity and its place in the
cosmos, and concocted a myth to explain the situation of humankind,
and the dynamics of humanity's eventual salvation. The details of the
cosmology were apparently not important, their sole purpose being to
illustrate, poetically, the dangers facing the souls dwelling in this
"realm of darkness" as well as the manner of their redemption from
this place. The Manichaean cosmology began with two opposed first
principles, as in Zoroastrianism: the God of Light, and the Ruler of
Darkness. This Darkness, being of a chaotic nature, assails the
"Kingdom of Light" in an attempt to overthrow or perhaps assimilate
it. The "King of the Paradise of Light," then, goes on the defensive,
as it were, and brings forth Wisdom, who in her turn gives birth to
the Primal Man, also called Ohrmazd (or Ahura-Mazda). This Primal Man
possesses a pentadic soul, consisting of fire, water, wind, light, and
ether. Armored with this soul, the Primal Man descends into the Realm
of Darkness to battle with its Ruler. Surprisingly, the Primal Man is
defeated, and his soul scattered throughout the Realm of Darkness.
However, the Manichaeans understood this as a plan on the part of the
Ruler of Light to sow the seeds of resistance within the Darkness,
making possible the eventual overthrow of the chaotic realm. To this
end, a second "Living Spirit" is brought forth, who was also called
Mithra. This being, and his partner, "Light-Adamas," set in motion the
history of salvation by putting forth the "call" within the realm of
darkness, which recalls the scattered particles of light (from the
vanquished soul of Ohrmazd). These scattered particles "answer"
Mithra, and the result is the formation of the heavens and earth, the
stars and planets, and finally, the establishment of the twelve signs
of the zodiac and the ordered revolution of the cosmic sphere, through
which, by a gradual process, the scattered particles of light will
eventually be returned to the Realm of Light. The Manichaeans believed
that these particles ascend to the moon, and that when the moon is
full, it empties these particles into the sun, from whence they ascend
to the "new Aeon," also identified with Mithra, the "Living Spirit"
(Rudolph, pp. 336-337). This process will continue throughout the ages
of the world, until all the particles eventually reach their proper
home and the salvation of the godhead is complete.
It should be clear from this brief exposition that humanity as such
does not hold the prime place in the salvific drama of Manichaeism,
but rather a part of the godhead itself — i.e., the scattered soul of
Ohrmazd. The purpose of humanity in this scheme is to aid the
particles of light in their ascent to the godhead. Of course, these
particles dwell within every living thing, and so the salvation of
these particles is the salvation of humanity, but only by default, as
it were; humanity does not hold a privileged position in Manichaeism,
as it does in the Western or strictly Christian Gnostic schools. This
belief led the Manichaeans to establish strict dietary and purity
laws, and even to require selected members of their church to provide
meals for the "Elect," so that the latter would not become defiled by
harming anything containing light particles. All of this, however, is
a long way from philosophy. Hans Jonas was right to describe
Manichaeism as representing "a more archaic level of gnostic thought"
(Jonas, p. 206). Now that we have examined one of the
non-philosophical directions taken by Gnostic thought, let us proceed
to discuss its role in the philosophical development of the era.
3. Platonism and Gnosticism
Long before the advent of Gnosticism, Plato had posited two contrary
World Souls: one "which does good" and one "which has the opposite
capacity" (Plato, Laws X. 896e, tr. Saunders). For Plato, this did not
imply that the cosmos is under the control of a corrupt or ignorant
god, as it did for the Gnostics, but simply that this cosmos, like the
human soul, possesses a rational and an irrational part, and that it
is the task of the rational part to govern the irrational. The
question arose, however, among Platonists, regarding Plato's true
position on this matter. Was he declaring that a part of the cosmos is
evil? or that the divine Demiurge (who, in the highly influential
Timaeus account, is said to have crafted the cosmos) actually produced
an evil soul? Both of these conjectures flew in the face of everything
that the ancient thinkers believed about the cosmos — i.e., that it
was divine, orderly, and perfect. A common solution, among both
Platonists and Pythagoreans, was to interpret the second or "evil"
Soul as Matter, that is, the material or generative principle, which
is the opposite of the truly divine and unchanging Forms. The purpose
of the Intellectual principle, or the "good" Soul, is to bring this
disorderly principle under the control of reason, and thereby maintain
an everlasting but not eternal cosmos (cf. Timaeus 37d). Since the
cosmos, according to Plato in the Timaeus, cannot be as perfect as the
eternal image upon which it is founded, a generative principle is
necessary to maintain the "living creature" (which is precisely how
the cosmos is described), and therefore not really "evil," even though
it possesses the "opposite capacity" (generation, and hence,
corruption) from that of the Good or Rational Soul.
a. Numenius of Apamea and Neo-Platonism
Several centuries after Plato, around the time when the great Gnostic
thinkers like Valentinus and Ptolemy were developing their systems, we
encounter the Platonic philosopher Numenius of Apamea (fl. 150 CE).
The main ideas of Numenius' philosophy, preserved in the fragments of
his writings that survive, bear clear traces of Gnostic influence. His
cosmology describes, in language strikingly similar to that of the
Gnostics, the degradation of the divine dêmiourgos upon his contact
with pre-existent Matter (hulê, or the "indefinite" principle):
[I]n the process of coming into contact with Matter, which is the
Dyad, [the Demiurge] gives unity to it, but is Himself divided by it,
since Matter has a character prone to desire [epithumêtikon êthos] and
is in flux. So in virtue of not being in contact with the Intelligible
(which would mean being turned in upon Himself), by reason of looking
towards Matter and taking thought for it, He becomes unregarding
(aperioptos) of Himself. And he seizes upon the sense realm and
ministers to it and yet draws it up to His own character, as a result
of this yearning towards Matter [eporexamenos tês hulês] (Numenius,
Fragment 11, in Dillon 1977, The Middle Platonists, pp. 367-368).
In this fragment, Numenius is transferring a basic Gnostic
anthropological idea into the realm of cosmology. It is a common
feature of Gnostic systems to describe the individual human soul's
contact with the material realm as resulting in a forgetting of the
soul's true origin. Platonism, also, warned against the soul's
becoming too attached to the realm of the senses, since this realm is
changing and illusory, and does not accurately reflect the divinity.
However, neither Platonism nor Gnosticism described such a danger as
affecting, in any way, the Demiurge; for the Gnostics declared the
Demiurge to be just as much a part of the cosmos as he was its ruler,
and the orthodox Platonists located the Demiurge outside the cosmos,
declaring the cosmos to be self-sufficient (following Timaeus 34b).
Numenius, however, went further and bridged the gap between the
sensible cosmos and the Intelligible Realm by linking the Demiurge to
the latter by way of contemplation, and to the former by way of his
"desire" (orexis) for matter. In Fragment 18, Numenius tells us that
the Demiurge derives his "critical faculty" (kritikon) from his
contemplation of the Good, and his "impulsive faculty" (hormêtikon)
from his attachment to Matter (Dillon, p. 370). This idea seems to
foreshadow Plotinus' doctrine that the individual soul will always
take on certain characteristics of Matter, and that these
characteristics manifest themselves in the form of sense perceptions
that must be brought under the controlling influence of rational
judgment (cf. Enneads I.8.9 and I.1.7). Unlike Plotinus, however, who
leaves the World-Soul or active part of the Demiurge safely beyond the
affective cosmic realm, Numenius posits a Demiurge that is both
transcendent and immanent, and arrives at a doctrine of a cosmos that,
even on the highest level — the level of the celestial bodies — is not
devoid of evil influence, since even the Demiurge, the highest cosmic
deity, is infected by the tainting influence of Matter. "This
importation of evil into the celestial realm is surely more Gnostic
than Platonist, and did not comment itself to such successors as
Plotinus or Porphyry, though it does seem to be accepted by
Iamblichus" (Dillon, p. 374).
Plotinus, during the height of his teaching career at Rome (ca. 255
CE), composed a treatise "Against Those Who Declare the Creator of
This World, and the World Itself, to be Evil," also known, simply, as
"Against the Gnostics" (Ennead II.9) in which he argues for the
divinity and goodness of the cosmos, and upholds the ancient Greek
belief in the divinity of the stars and planets, declaring them to be
our "noble brethren," and responsible only for the good things that
befall humankind. Porphyry, in his Life of Plotinus, tells us that
Plotinus commissioned him, along with his fellow student Amelius, to
write more treatises attacking the Gnostics on points that Plotinus
skipped over (Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 16). Porphyry also mentions
by name two Gnostic treatises that were discovered in Egypt in 1945,
and are now readily available to scholars: Zostrianos, and Allogenes,
in the Nag Hammadi Collection of Codices. These texts, as well as the
Tripartite Tractate (also in the Nag Hammadi Collection) show how
tightly Platonism and Gnosticism were intertwined in the early
centuries of our era.
4. Concluding Summary
Gnosticism began with the same basic, pre-philosophical intuition that
guided the development of Greek philosophy — that there is a dichotomy
between the realm of true, unchanging Being, and ever-changing
Becoming. However, unlike the Greeks, who strived to find the
connection between and overall unity of these two 'realms,' the
Gnostics amplified the differences, and developed a mytho-logical
doctrine of humankind's origin in the realm of Being, and eventual
fall into the realm of darkness or matter, i.e., Becoming. This
general Gnostic myth came to exercise an influence on emerging
Christianity, as well as upon Platonic philosophy, and even, in the
East, developed into a world religion (Manichaeism) that spread across
the known world, surviving until the late Middle Ages. In the
twentieth century, there began a renewed interest in Gnostic ideas,
particularly in the pioneering work of Hans Jonas, the Existentialist
philosopher and student of Martin Heidegger. The psychologist Carl
Jung, as well, drew upon Gnostic motifs in his theoretical work, and
the increasing emphasis on Hermeneutics in late twentieth century
thought owes something to the analyses of Gnostic myth and exegesis
done by Harold Bloom, Paul Ricoeur, and others.
More than any of these accomplishments, however, it was the discovery
in 1945, in Egypt, of a large collection of Coptic Gnostic codices,
now known as the Nag Hammadi Collection, or the Nag Hammadi Library.
This collection contains works of the Valentinian School, as well as
of many earlier and contemporaneous sects, and sheds much needed light
on the nature and structure of what to this day is still called, with
some reservations, the Gnostic Religion. The study of this library has
led certain scholars to question the existence of any unified movement
called "Gnosticism" or the "Gnostic Religion." Michael Allen Williams,
in 1996, published a book entitled Rethinking "Gnosticism": An
Argument For Dismantling A Dubious Category (Princeton University
Press 1996). Through a detailed study of numerous texts of the Nag
Hammadi Collection, Williams attempts to show that the extreme
diversity underlying the texts that many scholars have lumped together
under the catch-all phrase of "Gnosticism," casts doubt on the
existence of anything like a Gnostic religion. Moreover, he argues,
such a wholesale consignment of these texts to what is, in fact, a
modern designation, blinds us to the deeper meaning of these diverse
intellectual monuments. It should be noted, however, that the early
Church Fathers, like Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Origen,
Hippolytus, Epiphanius, and even 'pagan' philosophers like Plotinus
and Porphyry, who have preserved for us accounts and occasionally some
original documents of philosophers and theologians whom they term
"Gnostic," were also contemporaries or near contemporaries of many of
the figures and schools that they criticize and interpret. The
insights of these writers, then, who were living and working side by
side, and almost always in conflict with, members of the Gnostic
sects, should be given priority over any modern attempts to revise our
understanding of what Gnosticism is.
5. References and Further Reading
a. Sources
Dillon, John (1977). "Numenius of Apamea" in The Middle Platonists
(Cornell University Press).
Filoramo, Giovanni. A History of Gnosticism, tr. Anthony Alcock
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishers 1990, 1992).
Hegel, G.W.F. "The Gnostics" in Lectures on the History of Philosophy,
vol 2. "Plato and the Platonists," tr. E.S. Haldane and Frances H.
Simson (University of Nebraska Press; Bison Books Edition 1995).
Jonas, Hans (1958, 2001). The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the
Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity (Boston: Beacon Press).
Layton, Bentley (1987). The Gnostic Scriptures (Doubleday: The Anchor
Bible Reference Library).
Plato. Laws, tr. Trevor J. Saunders, in Plato: Complete Works, ed.
John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing 1997).
Plato. Timaeus, tr. Donald J. Zeyl, in Plato: Complete Works.
Plotinus. The Enneads, tr. A.H. Armstrong, in 7 volumes (Harvard: Loeb
Classical Library 1966).
Ricoeur, Paul. The Conflict of Interpretations (Northwestern
University Press 1974).
Rudolph, Kurt. Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism, tr.
Robert McLachlan Wilson (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark Ltd. 1984).
Segal, Robert A. (ed.) The Gnostic Jung (Princeton University Press 1992).
b. Suggestions for Further Reading
Barnstone, Willis (1984 ed.) The Other Bible (Harper San Francisco).
Bultmann, Rudolph (1956). Primitive Christianity in its Contemporary
Setting (New York: Meridian Books).
Fideler, David (1993). Jesus Christ, Sun of God: Ancient Cosmology and
Early Christian Symbolism (Wheaton, Illinois: Quest Books).
Pagels, Elaine (1975). The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the
Pauline Letters (Philadelphia: Trinity Press).
Williams, Michael Allen. Rethinking "Gnosticism": An Argument For
Dismantling A Dubious Category (Princeton University Press 1996).
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