Gnosticism also presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable
God and the demiurgic “creator” of the material. In contrast to Plato,
several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic
to the will of the Supreme Being: his act of creation occurs in
unconscious semblance of the divine model, and thus is fundamentally
flawed, or else is formed with the malevolent intention of entrapping
aspects of the divine
in materiality. Thus, in such systems, the
Demiurge acts as a solution to the
problem of evil.
The Gnostic mythos describes the declination of aspects of the divine into human form.
Sophia (Greek, literally meaning “wisdom”), the Demiurge’s mother and a partial aspect of the divine
Pleroma
or “Fullness,” desired to create something apart from the divine
totality, and without the receipt of divine assent. In this abortive act
of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and,
being ashamed of her deed, wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne
for him within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother,
nor anyone else, and thus concluded that only he himself existed, being
ignorant of the superior levels of reality that were his birth-place.
The Demiurge, having stolen a portion of power from his mother, sets about a work of creation in unconscious imitation of the superior Pleromatic realm: He frames the
seven heavens, as well as all material and
animal things, according to forms furnished by his mother; working
however blindly, and ignorant even of the existence of the mother who is
the source of all his energy. He is blind to all that is spiritual, but
he is king over the other two provinces. The word
dēmiourgos
properly describes his relation to the material; he is the
father
of that which is animal like himself.
Thus Sophia’s power becomes enclosed within the material forms of humanity, themselves entrapped within the material universe: the goal of Gnostic movements was typically the awakening of this spark, which
permitted a return by the subject to the superior, non-material
realities which were its primal source.
Psalms 82:1 describes a plurality of gods (
ʔelōhim), which an older version in the
Septuagint calls the “assembly of the gods,” although it does not indicate that
these gods were co-actors in creation.
Philo had inferred from the
expression, "Let us make man," of Genesis that God had used other beings
as assistants in the creation of man, and he explains in this way why
man is capable of vice as well as virtue, ascribing the origin of the
latter to God, of the former to His helpers in the work of creation.
The earliest Gnostic sects ascribe the work of creation to angels, some of them using the same passage in Genesis.
So
Irenaeus
tells
of the system of
Simon Magus,
of the system of Menander,
of the system of Saturninus, in which the number of these angels is
reckoned as seven, and
of the system of
Carpocrates. Again, in his report of the system
of
Basilides,
we are told that our world was made by the angels who occupy the lowest
heaven; but special mention is made of their chief, who is said to have
been the God of the Jews, to have led that people out of the land of
Egypt, and
to have given them their law. The prophecies are ascribed not to the
chief but to the other world-making angels.
The Latin translation, confirmed by
Hippolytus,
[18] makes Irenaeus state that according to
Cerinthus
(who shows
Ebionite influence), creation
was made by a power quite separate from the Supreme God and ignorant of
Him.
Theodoret,
who here copies Irenaeus, turns this into the plural number “powers,”
and so
Epiphanius
represents Cerinthus as agreeing with Carpocrates in the doctrine that
the world was made by angels.
Yaldabaoth
In the
Ophite and
Sethian systems, which have many affinities with that last mentioned, the making of the world is ascribed to a company
of seven
archons, whose names are given, but their chief,
“Yaldabaoth,” comes into still greater prominence.
In the
Apocryphon of John circa 120-180 AD, the Demiurge arrogantly declares that he has made the world by himself:
“Now the archon (ruler) who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas (“fool”), and the third is Samael.
And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, ‘I am
God and there is no other God beside me,’ for he is ignorant of his
strength, the place from which he had come.”
He is Demiurge and maker of man, but as a ray of light from above enters the body of man and gives him a soul, Yaldabaoth is filled with envy; he tries to limit man's knowledge by forbidding him the fruit of
knowledge in paradise. The Demiurge, fearing lest Jesus, whom he had
intended as his Messiah, should spread the knowledge of the Supreme God,
had him crucified by the Jews. At the consummation of all things all
light will return to the Pleroma; but Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge, with the
material world, will be cast into the lower depths.
In
Pistis Sophia Yaldabaoth has already sunk from his high estate and resides in chaos, where, with his forty-nine demons, he tortures wicked souls in boiling rivers of pitch, and with
other punishments (pp. 257, 382). He is an archon with the face of a
lion, half flame and half darkness.
Yaldabaoth is frequently called "the Lion-faced",
leontoeides, with the body of a serpent. We are told also,
that the Demiurge is of a fiery nature, the words of Moses being
applied to him, “the Lord our God is a burning and consuming fire,” a
text used also by Simon.
Under the name of “Nebro” (rebel), Yaldabaoth is called an angel in the
apocryphal Gospel of Judas. He is first mentioned in “The Cosmos, Chaos, and the Underworld” as one of the twelve angels to come “into
being [to] rule over chaos and the [underworld]”. He comes from heaven,
his “face flashed with fire and whose appearance was defiled with
blood”. Nebro creates six angels in addition to the angel
Saklas to be his assistants. These six in turn
create another twelve angels “with each one receiving a portion in the
heavens.”
Names
- The most probable derivation of the name “Yaldabaoth” is that given by Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler, “Son of Chaos,” from Hebrew yalda bahut, ילדא בהות.
- “Samael” literally means “Blind God” or “God of the Blind” in Aramaic (Syriac sæmʕa-ʔel). This being is considered not only blind, or ignorant of its own origins, but may in
addition be evil; its name is also found in Judaica
as the Angel of Death and in Christian demonology.
This leads to a further comparison with Satan.
- Another alternative title for the Demiurge, “Saklas,” is Aramaic for “fool” (Syriac sækla “the foolish one”).
Marcion
According to
Marcion, the title God was given to the Demiurge, who was to be sharply distinguished from the higher Good God. The former was
díkaios, severely just, the latter
agathós,
or loving-kind; the former was the "god of this world" (
2 Corinthians 4:4), the God of
the
Old Testament, the latter the true God of the
New
Testament. Christ, though in reality the Son of the Good God,
pretended to be the Messiah of the Demiurge, the better to spread the
truth concerning His heavenly Father. The true believer in Christ
entered into God's kingdom, the unbeliever remained forever the slave of
the Demiurge.
Valentinus
It is in the
system of Valentinus that the name
Dēmiourgos is used, which occurs nowhere in Irenaeus except in connexion with the Valentinian system; and we may reasonably conclude that it was
Valentinus who adopted from Platonism the use of this word. When it is
employed by other Gnostics it may be held either that it is not used in a
technical sense, or that its use has been borrowed from Valentinus. But
it is only the name that can be said to be specially Valentinian; the
personage intended by it corresponds more or less closely with the
Yaldabaoth of the Ophites, the
great Archon
of Basilides, the Elohim of Justinus, etc.
The Valentinian theory elaborates that from Achamoth (
he káta sophía or lower wisdom) three kinds of substance take their origin, the spiritual (
pneumatikoí), the animal (
psychikoí) and
the material (
hylikoí). The Demiurge belongs to the second kind,
as he was the offspring of a union of Achamoth with matter.
And as Achamoth herself was only the daughter of
Sophía the last
of the thirty Aeons, the Demiurge was distant by many emanations from
the Propatôr, or Supreme God.
The Demiurge in creating this world out of Chaos was unconsciously influenced for good by Jesus Soter; and the universe, to the surprise even of its Maker, became almost perfect. The Demiurge regretted even
its slight imperfection, and as he thought himself the Supreme God, he
attempted to remedy this by sending a Messiah. To this Messiah, however,
was actually united Jesus the Saviour, Who redeemed men. These are
either
hylikoí, or
pneumatikoí.
The first, or material men, will return to the grossness of matter and finally be consumed by fire; the second, or animal men, together with the Demiurge as their master, will enter a middle state, neither
Pleroma nor
hyle; the purely spiritual men will be completely
freed from the influence of the Demiurge and together with the Saviour
and Achamoth, his spouse, will enter the Pleroma divested of body (
hyle)
and soul (
psyché).
In this most common form of Gnosticism the Demiurge had an inferior
though not intrinsically evil function in the universe as the head of
the animal, or psychic world.
The devil
Opinions on the devil, and his relationship to the Demiurge, varied. The Ophites held that he and his demons constantly oppose and thwart the human race, as it was on their account the devil was cast down into
this world.
According to one variant of the Valentinian system, the Demiurge is
besides the maker, out of the appropriate substance, of an order of
spiritual
beings, the devil, the prince of this world, and his angels. But the
devil, as being a
spirit of wickedness, is able to recognise the
higher spiritual world, of which his maker the Demiurge, who is only
animal, has no knowledge. The devil resides in this lower world, of
which he is the prince, the Demiurge in the heavens; his mother Sophia
in the middle region, above the heavens and below the Pleroma.
The Valentinian
Heracleon interpreted the devil as the
principle of evil, that of
hyle (matter). As he writes in his commentary on
John 4:21,
The mountain represents the Devil, or his world, since the Devil was one part of the whole of matter, but the world is the total mountain of evil, a deserted dwelling place of beasts, to which all who lived before
the law and all Gentiles render worship. But Jerusalem represents the
creation or the Creator whom the Jews worship. . . . You then who are
spiritual should worship neither the creation nor the Craftsman, but the
Father of Truth.
Catharism apparently inherited their idea of
Satan as the creator of the evil world directly or indirectly from Gnosticism.
This vilification of the Creator was held to be inimical to Christianity by the early fathers of the church. In refuting the views of the Gnostics,
Irenaeus observed that "Plato is proved to be more
religious than these men, for he allowed that the same God was both just
and good, having power over all things, and Himself executing
judgment."
Gnosticism attributed falsehood, fallen or evil, to the concept of Demiurge or Creator (see
Zeus and
Prometheus), though sometimes the creator is from a fallen, ignorant or lesser
rather than evil perspective (in some Gnosticism traditions) such as
that of
Valentinius. The Neoplatonic
philosopher Plotinus addressed within his works what he saw as un-
Hellenic and blasphemous to the demiurge or creator of
Plato.
Gnosticism's conception of the Demiurge was criticised by the Neoplatonist philosopher
Plotinus. Plotinus is noted as the founder of
Neoplatonism (along with his teacher
Ammonius Saccas),
His criticism is contained in the ninth tractate of the second of the
Enneads.
Therein, Plotinus criticizes his opponents for their appropriation of
ideas from Plato:
From Plato come their punishments, their rivers of the underworld and the changing from body to body; as for the plurality they assert in the Intellectual Realm—the Authentic Existent, the Intellectual-Principle, the
Second Creator and the Soul—all this is taken over from the
Timaeus. (Ennead 2.9.vi; emphasis added from A. H. Armstrong's introduction to Ennead 2.9)
Of note here is the remark concerning the second
hypostasis or Creator and third hypostasis or World
Soul within Plotnius. Plotinus criticizes his opponents for “all the novelties
through which they seek to establish a philosophy of their own” which,
he declares, “have been picked up outside of the truth”; they attempt to
conceal rather than admit their indebtedness to ancient philosophy,
which they have corrupted by their extraneous and misguided
embellishments. Thus their understanding of the Demiurge is similarly
flawed in comparison to Plato’s original intentions.
Whereas Plato's demiurge is good wishing good on his creation,
gnosticism contends that the demiurge is not only the originator of evil but is evil as well. Hence the title of
Plotinus'
refutation "
Enneads" The Second Ennead, Ninth Tractate - Against
Those That Affirm the Creator of the Kosmos and the Kosmos Itself to be
Evil: [Generally Quoted as "Against the Gnostics"]. Plotinus marks his
arguments with the disconnect or great barrier that is created between
the nous or mind's
noumenon (see
Heraclitus)
and the material world (
phenomenon)
by believing the material world is evil.
The majority view tends to understand Plotinus’ opponents as being a Gnostic sect—certainly, (specifically
Sethian) several such groups were present in
Alexandria and elsewhere about the
Mediterranean during Plotinus’ lifetime, and
several of his criticisms bear specific similarity to Gnostic doctrine
(Plotinus pointing to the gnostic doctrine of Sophia and her emission of
the Demiurge is most notable among these similarities).
However,
Christos Evangeliou has contended that Plotinus’ opponents might be better described as simply “Christian Gnostics”, arguing that several of
Plotinus’ criticisms are as applicable to orthodox Christian doctrine as
well. Also, considering the evidence from the time, Evangeliou felt the
definition of the term “Gnostics” was unclear. Thus, though the former
understanding certainly enjoys the greatest popularity, the
identification of Plotinus’ opponents as Gnostic is not without some
contention. Of note here is that while Plotinus' student
Porphyry names
Christianity
specifically in Porphyry's own works, and Plotinus is to have been a
known associate of the Christian
Origen,
none of Plotinus' works mention Christ or Christianity. Whereas Plotinus
specifically addresses his target in the Enneads as the gnostics.
A. H. Armstrong identified the “Gnostics” that Plotinus was attacking as Jewish and Pagan in his introduction to the tract in
his translation of the
Enneads. Armstrong alluding to Gnosticism being a
Hellenic philosophical heresy of sorts, which later engaged Christianity
and Neoplatonism.
John D. Turner, professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska and famed translator and editor of the Nag
Hammadi library, stated that the text Plotinus and his students read was
Sethian gnosticism which predates Christianity. It appears that
Plotinus attempted to clarify how the philosophers of the academy had
not arrived at the same conclusions (such as
Dystheism or
misotheism
for the creator God as an answer to the
problem of evil) as the targets of his criticism.
the physical world was evil and created by Rex Mundi (translated from Latin as "king of the world"), who
encompassed all that was corporeal, chaotic and powerful
