Part X of XIV
On this page
Part X: Who the Gnostics Really Were
\ | /
'. \ | / .'
--- -- ( (O) ) -- ---
.' / | \ '.
/ | \
+======================================================================+
| PART X |
| WHO THE GNOSTICS REALLY WERE |
+======================================================================+
* . + . * . + . * . + *
For sixteen centuries you heard about the Gnostics only from their enemies. Now hear the story they told -- in plain words.
What follows is the classic Valentinian myth as taught in the school of Ptolemy. Our fullest summary of it comes, ironically, from Irenaeus (Against Heresies 1.1-8), who preserved it in order to mock it. Read it without the mockery, and it is one of the most beautiful stories ever told about God and the soul.
A WORD BEFORE THE STORY: The Valentinians told this as a myth -- a sacred story pointing to realities beyond words -- not as a physics textbook. They also told it in several versions. What matters is what it reveals: where you came from, why the world hurts, and how you get home.
1. THE DEPTH AND THE SILENCE #
Before anything was, there was the Father. The Valentinians called him BYTHOS -- the Depth, the Fore-Father, the First Beginning. Unknowable. Unnamable. Beyond every thought you could have about him.
With him was SIGE -- Silence. Also called Ennoia (Thought) and Charis (Grace). For endless ages the Depth rested in Silence.
This is not the God who walks in the garden asking where Adam is. This is the God behind that God. The one Jesus called Father.
2. THE PLEROMA -- THE FULLNESS #
From the Depth and Silence came forth pairs of living divine powers -- the AEONS. Each aeon is an aspect of the Father's own life. Together they form the PLEROMA: the Fullness.
- First came Nous (Mind, also called the Only-Begotten) and Aletheia (Truth).
- From them, Logos (Word) and Zoe (Life).
- From them, Anthropos (Human) and Ekklesia (Church, Assembly).
- These eight form the Ogdoad -- and notice, they are exactly the names Ptolemy found in the prologue of John's Gospel (Part II).
- Logos and Zoe brought forth ten more aeons; Anthropos and Ekklesia brought forth twelve. Thirty aeons in all.
Only Nous, the Only-Begotten, could know the Father. The other aeons longed to know him, but rested in quiet desire.
THE PLEROMA DIAGRAM #
* . * . * . * . *
.--------------------------------------------------.
/ THE PLEROMA (Fullness) \
| |
| BYTHOS ==== SIGE |
| (Depth) (Silence) |
| \ / |
| NOUS ==== ALETHEIA |
| (Mind) (Truth) |
| \ / |
| LOGOS ==== ZOE |
| (Word) (Life) |
| \ / |
| ANTHROPOS ==== EKKLESIA |
| (Human) (Church) |
| / \ |
| 10 AEONS (Decad) 12 AEONS (Dodecad) |
| ... SOPHIA |
| (Wisdom, the |
| CHRIST + HOLY SPIRIT 30th aeon) |
| restore the Fullness | |
| | | her longing |
\ | | to know the /
'======== H O R O S (Limit / Boundary / Cross) ======'
| |
| JESUS THE SAVIOR v
| "fruit of the ACHAMOTH
| Fullness" (lower Wisdom; her
| comes down passion and grief)
| |
| +--------+--------+
| | |
| her grief her turning
| becomes back becomes
| MATTER (hyle) SOUL (psyche)
| |
| THE DEMIURGE
| (craftsman of
| this world --
| does not know
| what is above)
| |
v v
.--------------------------------------------------------.
| THIS COSMOS |
| HUMAN BEINGS: body (hyle) + soul (psyche) + SPARK |
| the spark (pneuma) was hidden in us by Wisdom, |
| unknown to the Demiurge |
'--------------------------------------------------------'
|
GNOSIS: the spark remembers
|
v
RETURN to the Pleroma -- the BRIDAL CHAMBER
3. SOPHIA'S FALL #
The youngest aeon, SOPHIA -- Wisdom -- could not bear the distance. She leapt forward to grasp the Father by herself, without her partner. She reached for the unreachable.
She would have dissolved into the infinite Depth. But she was stopped by HOROS -- the Limit, the Boundary. The Valentinians also called Horos "Stauros": the CROSS. The cross is first a cosmic event: the boundary that holds the Fullness together and saves Wisdom from dissolution.
Sophia was restored to the Pleroma. But her desire, her passion, her grief -- these could not stay inside. They were cast outside the Fullness as a formless lower Wisdom, called ACHAMOTH (from the Hebrew hokhmah, "wisdom").
That is where our world begins: in the grief of Wisdom, exiled from the Light.
4. THE DEMIURGE #
From Achamoth's suffering, matter was formed. From her turning back toward the Light, soul was formed. And from soul-substance she formed a craftsman -- the DEMIURGE -- who built the visible world.
The Demiurge did not know his mother, and he did not know the Pleroma above her. So he said, "I am God, and there is none else" (compare Isaiah 45:5; 46:9) -- Irenaeus reports exactly this reading (Against Heresies 1.5.4). He was not lying. He simply did not know.
That is why the world is beautiful and broken at once. It was made by a real, sincere, limited maker, working from a memory of a Fullness he could not see.
IMPORTANT: In the Valentinian school of Ptolemy, the Demiurge is not the devil. Ptolemy calls him "just" -- an intermediate god, neither the perfect Father nor the adversary (Letter to Flora, in Panarion 33.7, PARAPHRASE). He is an unknowing servant whom the Savior's coming teaches and redeems. More on this in Part XI.
5. THE SPARK #
Here is the secret. Without the Demiurge noticing, Achamoth planted a SPIRITUAL SEED -- the spark -- into human beings.
So you are three things at once:
HYLE ...... body, matter -- from Wisdom's grief
PSYCHE .... soul, life, moral will -- from Wisdom's turning back
PNEUMA .... the SPARK -- from the Fullness itself
That spark is why you never quite feel at home here. It is why the sermons sounded hollow. It is why you are reading this. It is the part of you that came from the Light, remembering.
6. CHRIST AND THE SAVIOR #
Inside the Pleroma, the aeon CHRIST, with the Holy Spirit, taught the aeons to rest in the Father and restored their harmony. Then, in gratitude, all the aeons together brought forth the SAVIOR -- Jesus -- "the perfect fruit" of the Fullness (Against Heresies 1.2.6).
The Savior descended through the boundary, came to Wisdom in her grief, and healed her. Then he came into this world -- to us.
He did not come to pay off an angry God. He came to WAKE US UP.
"He was nailed to a tree; he became a fruit of the knowledge of the Father. It did not, however, cause destruction because it was eaten, but to those who ate it, it gave cause to become glad in the discovery." -- Gospel of Truth, NHC I,3 18:24-29 (Robinson)
Look at it. The tree of the cross is the true tree of knowledge. The forbidden fruit of Eden becomes the fruit that saves.
7. GNOSIS -- SALVATION AS REMEMBERING #
What saves? Knowing. Not knowing facts about God -- knowing who you are, where you came from, and where you are going.
"He who is to have knowledge in this manner knows where he comes from and where he is going." -- Gospel of Truth, NHC I,3 22:13-15 (Robinson)
The Valentinian teacher Theodotus put it in a famous list of questions. What frees us, he says, is the knowledge of "who we were, and what we have become, where we were or where we were placed, whither we hasten, from what we are redeemed, what birth is and what rebirth" (Clement of Alexandria, Excerpts from Theodotus 78.2, Casey translation).
Ignorance is the real fall. Knowledge is the real resurrection.
8. THE BRIDAL CHAMBER #
In the end, every spark returns home. The Valentinians pictured it as a wedding: each spiritual self united with its angelic counterpart, its true partner, entering the BRIDAL CHAMBER of the Pleroma. What was split apart is made whole.
"If the woman had not separated from the man, she should not die with the man. His separation became the beginning of death. Because of this Christ came to repair the separation which was from the beginning and again unite the two." -- Gospel of Philip, NHC II,3 70:9-17 (Robinson)
The bridal chamber was also a sacrament -- the highest of the five (Part XIII). Whatever exactly the rite was, it was a mystery of union, not a scandal. The scandal was invented by their enemies.
THE STORY IN ONE BREATH #
The unknowable Father overflowed into a Fullness of living powers. Wisdom, longing to know him, fell into grief. From her grief came this world and its unknowing maker. Into us she hid a spark of the Light. Christ came down to wake that spark. When it remembers, it goes home -- and the whole Fullness is made complete again.
MYTHS ABOUT THE GNOSTICS -- CORRECTED #
MYTH: "They left the Church and formed secret cults." FACT: The Valentinians stayed inside the churches. Irenaeus complains that they call ordinary Christians "catholic" and "churchly," attend the same assemblies, and object that they are called heretics when they confess the same things (Against Heresies 3.15.2). Tertullian complains that they hide among believers (Against the Valentinians 1). They were not outside. They were the deep end of the same pool -- and they were pushed out.
MYTH: "All Gnostics believed the same thing." FACT: There were distinct movements. The two biggest:
SETHIAN VALENTINIAN
----------------------------------- ----------------------------------
texts: Apocryphon of John (NHC II,1 texts: Gospel of Truth (I,3),
etc.), Hypostasis of the Archons Gospel of Philip (II,3),
(II,4), Zostrianos Tripartite Tractate (I,5)
world-maker: Yaldabaoth, arrogant world-maker: the Demiurge,
and often hostile ignorant but "just" (Ptolemy)
heroes: Seth and his "race" hero: Christ the Savior
Eden: the serpent / Eve often Eden: the cross as the true
bring knowledge (II,4) tree of knowledge (I,3)
community: distinct groups community: inside the churches
salvation: the "seed of Seth" salvation: spiritual -- AND
psychics by faith and works
MYTH: "Gnostics hated women." FACT: Valentinians honored the feminine in God -- Silence, Truth, Life, Church, Wisdom are all feminine aeons -- and women taught and celebrated the eucharist among them (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.13.2-3, complaining). The Gospel of Philip remembers Mary Magdalene as the companion of the Savior (NHC II,3 63:32-64:5).
MYTH: "Gnostics were libertines." FACT: The charge comes from hostile writers about some groups. The Valentinian texts themselves teach self- control and love: "He who has knowledge of the truth is a free man, but the free man does not sin" (Gospel of Philip, NHC II,3 77:15-18, Robinson).
MYTH: "Gnosticism is anti-Christian." FACT: Valentinians were Christians who read Paul and John more closely than anyone of their century. They wrote the first commentary on a New Testament book (Heracleon on John). They baptized, anointed, and shared the eucharist in the name of Jesus.