Evil and Its Sources in Gnostic Traditio

Die Wurzel allen Übels
Vorstellungen über die Herkunft des Bösen

und Schlechten in der Philosophie und Religion
des 1.–4. Jahrhunderts.
Ratio Religionis Studien III
Herausgegeben von
Fabienne Jourdan und Rainer Hirsch-Luipold
Mohr Siebeck
Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

Fabienne Jourdan, geboren 1978; 2001 Agregation in Altphilologie; 2007 Promotion in Philo-
sophie der Antike; 2007–08 Humboldtstipendiatin; seit 2008 Wissenschaftlerin am CNRS in
Paris.
Rainer Hirsch-Luipold, geboren 1967; Studium der Ev. Theologie und Griechischen Philo-
logie; 2001 Promotion; 2010 Habilitation; seit 2011 Ordentlicher Professor für Neues Testa-
ment an der Universität Bern.
ISBN 978-3-16-152908-5
ISSN 1436-3003 (Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum)
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen National-
bibliographie; detaillierte bibliographische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de
abrufbar.
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Inhalt
FABIENNE JOURDAN & RAINER HIRSCH-LUIPOLD

Vorwort .................................................................................................................. VII
I. Einführung
KARIN ALT
Zum Phänomen des Bösen in der späteren Antike.
Generelle Fragen, Voraussetzungen und ein Ausblick auf
zwei Philosophen des 3. Jahrhunderts n.Chr. ....................................................... 3
II. Hintergründe
LUC BRISSON
Whence Comes Evil in Plato ................................................................................. 21
TROELS ENGBERG-PEDERSEN
Is the Stoic Account of the Origin of Evil Good Enough?
On Seneca’s De Providentia and Hercules Furens ............................................. 41
THOMAS RÖMER
The Origin and the Status of Evil According to the Hebrew Bible .................. 53
III. Die Herkunft des Bösen und Schlechten

in der Literatur des 1.–3. Jahrhunderts n.Chr.
FOLKER SIEGERT
Die theoretische Bewältigung des Bösen bei Philon .......................................... 69
DAVID T. RUNIA
Clement of Alexandria and the Origin of Evil .................................................... 87

VI Inhalt
ZLATKO PLEŠE
Evil and Its Sources in Gnostic Traditions......................................................... 101
FABIENNE JOURDAN
Materie und Seele in Numenios’ Lehre vom Übel und Bösen ....................... 133
DENIS O’ BRIEN
Plotinus on Matter, Non-Being and Evil ........................................................... 211
IV. Ausblicke
MARIE HÉLÈNE CONGOURDEAU

Ursprung des Bösen und körperliche Existenz ................................................ 245
BERNHARD NEUSCHÄFER
Der menschliche Wille als Wurzel des Bösen
Augustins willenstheoretischer Lösungsversuch
des unde malum-Problems ................................................................................. 261
DOROTHEE PIELOW
Vorstellungen über „das Böse“ im Koran ......................................................... 279
Register ................................................................................................................... 293

Evil and its Sources in Gnostic Traditions
ZLATKO PLEŠE
But if they had known the scriptures and had been taught
the truth, they would know that God is not like men and
that his thoughts are not like human thoughts.
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.13.3
A great deal of recent scholarship on Gnosticism has been concerned with

dismantling this modern typological coinage1 – a misleading label, so we
are told, that reifies a wide array of diverging theological positions, ethical
orientations, and ritual practices. The present study, as indicated by its
title, does not follow such a radical deconstructionist program. While
acknowledging numerous doctrinal divergences in the available primary
sources, it still argues that multiple Gnostic traditions share a distinctive
world-hypothesis and a unified set of presuppositions concerning the
sources and nature of evil. Evidence for this claim comes not only from
original Gnostic works, mostly preserved in Coptic translation, but also
from a number of ancient anti-Gnostic treatises penned by Christian
heresiologists and philosophically-minded pagan intellectuals. The first
part of this study deals with various authors engaged in anti-Gnostic
polemics and with their surprisingly uniform account of the “errors” of
Gnostic theodicy. In the second part, this account will be tested against the
selection of passages excerpted from genuine Gnostic texts. Comparison of
these two bodies of evidence reveals a coherent doctrine of evil as
derivative from a spiritual source and permeating all domains of a
multiple-layered reality. Underlying this doctrine is the systematic appli-
cation of a principle of transitivity and homologation, which postulates
1
The term ‘Gnosticism’ was coined by the Cambridge Platonist Henry More (1614–
1687) in the context of anti-Christian polemic, and was applied as a generic label for
idolatrous heresy, both old (ancient Christian non-orthodox movements) and modern
(Catholicism).

102 Zlatko Pleše
“the same structure in the universe and in each living creature” (Plot. Enn.
II.9.7.25–27).
Evidence from Hostile Sources:

Anthropomorphic Fallacies of Gnostic Theodicy
The way in which various Gnostic traditions approached the problem of

evil was harshly criticized by their proto-orthodox Christian contempo-
raries. On Tertullian’s account, all heretics “morbidly brood over the
question of the origin of evil” (Marc. 2.2) and share the same “unhealthy”
conviction that the whole physical world is irreparably flawed and affected
by evil. Some drew the origin of evil from the chaotic state of matter
(Hermogenes),2 some again blamed it on the conflicting propensities of the
2
Tert. Herm. 2.4: “All good and excellent things should have been made by him (sc.
God) according to his very condition; but evil things, too, have been found as made by
him, yet certainly not by his decision and his will – for on those conditions he would not
have made anything unfitting or unworthy of himself. Therefore, whatever he has not
made by his decision must be understood to have become from the faultiness of
something – which means, no doubt, from matter”. Hermogenes considers both prin-
ciples, viz. God and matter, as non-generated and eternal (ibid. 5.1; 7.1–2), but while God
has a unique substance and is unchangeable and indivisible (39.1), matter is portrayed in
a typical Middle Platonist fashion as infinite in its everlastingness (38.2), as divisible and
malleable (39.1), as moving in a disorderly and turbulent fashion (41.1), and as neither
corporeal nor incorporeal (35.2) – probably in the Aristotelian sense of being potentially
body (Arist. GC 2.1.329a32–33; cf. e.g. Alcin. Did. 8.163.7–8). Matter is devoid of
qualities and therefore neither good nor evil (37.1): “for if it were good, it would not
require to be set in order by god; and if it were evil by nature, it would not have admitted
of improvement”. Hermogenes explains this neutral condition of matter as the result of
its opposite drives – viz. its turbulent motion resisting God’s ordering activity and its
simultaneous desire to be set in order by God (42.1 desiderare componi a deo; cf. 43.1).
The closest analogue to this interesting assertion is Aristotle’s concept of “unruly” matter
resisting the mastery of form yet “yearning like a mother for what is divine and good”
(Arist. Ph. 1.9.192a13–18), which probably reached Hermogenes filtered through the
Platonist grid. An interesting parallel can be found in Plutarch’s treatment of Egyptian
religion in On Isis and Osiris, where he interprets the goddess Isis as typifying “matter in
a homonymous sense” (Is. 58.374E–375A), that is, matter in its focal meaning of an
unformed substrate striving for form and purpose. Back to Hermogenes’ explanation of
evil, he laid both of its principal forms, viz. physical and moral, to the charge of matter –
with regard to physical evil, to its random disorder which is only partly made subservient
to God’s rational causation, and in the case of moral evil, to its giving birth to man’s
“material soul” which is naturally prone to sin (Tert. Marc. 2.9.1–2; An. 1.1, 3.4, 11.2).
But in neither case is matter itself viewed as positively or deliberately evil. For Her-
mogenes, see a recent edition of his fragments and their detailed analysis by F. C HAPOT,
L’hérésie d’Hermogène. Fragments et commentaire, RecAug 30 (1977) 3–111.

Evil and Its Sources in Gnostic Traditions 103
“just” god of Jewish scripture (Marcion).3 But the Gnostics, says Tertullian,
went a step further by laying the ultimate responsibility for evil to the
charge of a higher divine power and its presumptuous reasoning.4 They
agreed with other heretics that matter and the biblical creator-god are the
immediate and necessary causes of evil in the physical world, but they
made both of them derivative of a higher cause – of a “miscarried
calculation” (Praescr. 7.5: de enthymesi et ectromate) attempted by a power
residing in the spiritual realm. The existential problem unde malum et qua
re (ibid.), which Tertullian sees as the main concern of all heretics, acquires
among the Gnostics an ontological dimension and becomes virtually
synonymous with a more profound metaphysical question: Whence then is
matter, and whence the creator god? Unde materia atque deus creator?
Like other heresiologists, Tertullian ascribes such “morbid” preoc-
cupations with evil to uncritical appropriation of contemporary philo-
sophy, “that rash interpreter of the divine nature and order (7.1)”.
Following the standard anti-heretical topos of assigning each heresy to a
3
Tert. Marc. 1.2.2: “Like many in our days, and heretics in particular, Marcion had an
unhealthy interest in the problem of evil and its origin … So when he found the Creator
declaring, ‘It is I who create evil’ (Isa 45:7) … he interpreted with reference to this
Creator ‘the evil tree that bears evil fruits’ (Luke 6:43), namely evil things in general, and
assumed that there had to be another god for ‘the good tree bearing good fruits.’” On this
account, Marcion exposed the God of the Jews as the sole cause of evil by juxtaposing
seemingly analogous statements from Jewish scripture and from his abridged version of
the Gospel of Luke. But this simple dualist distinction between a good God and an evil
creator God is complicated by Tertullian’s claim (ibid. 1.15.5) that Marcion imputed
physical evil, ineradicable from the created world, to “unbegotten, uncreated, and eternal
matter”. Marcion’s radical dualism is further made problematic by his alleged designation
of the creator God as Lawgiver and as a cruel but just Judge (Tert. Marc. 2.11–19). This
would imply that the Old Testament God is not solely responsible for the imperfection of
the world and the fallen state of carnal humanity, and that his retributive justice, however
cruel and condescending, is in fact an attempt to mitigate the malefic influence exerted
by evil matter. The problem was recently explained away by positing various stages in the
development of Marcionite theology, from Marcion’s original doctrine of two gods to a
gradual elaboration on the part of his followers of a more complex, tripartite scheme, in
the form of either ‘good God – just God – evil matter’ or ‘good God – just God – evil
God; cf. S. M OLL, The Arch-Heretic Marcion, WUNT 250, Tübingen 2010.
4
Strictly speaking, the main target of Tertullian’s invectives is Valentinus and the
cohort of his followers. But unlike many modern scholars, Tertullian is not concerned
with drawing clear typological distinctions between the “Valentinians” and other Gnostic
groups; in his view, they all share the same distinctive world-hypothesis. Cf. Scorp. 1.1:
“When, therefore, faith is greatly agitated and the Church burning, as represented by the
bush (Ex 3:2), then the Gnostics break out, then the Valentinians creep forth, then all the
opponents of martyrdom bubble up, being themselves also hot to strike, penetrate, kill”;
Val. 39: “As a result the Valentinian doctrines, which budded in the manner described
above, have attained their full growth as a forest of Gnostic doctrines”.

104 Zlatko Pleše
specific philosophical school,5 he classes Gnostic speculative theology and

theodicy with Platonism. This is not an arbitrary claim, for contemporary
Platonists indeed criticized the Gnostics for their misuse of Plato’s genuine
teachings. In a spirited polemic Against the Gnostics (Enn. II.9 [33]),
Plotinus disparages his opponents as pretentious innovators “pulling to
pieces” and “degrading” Plato’s opinions “as if they had understood the
intelligible nature but he and other philosophers had not” (II.9.6.24–28).
Underlying the Gnostic solemn claim to novelty are the genuine teachings
of Plato – for instance, the distinction between the intelligible and the
perceptible realm, the immortality of the soul, and the dualism of soul and
body – but each and every one of them distorted, devoid of argumentative
rigor, and replete with extravagant jargon (6.1–10; 10.1–17). The outcome
of this intentional misreading of Plato is a corrective amalgam of non-
Platonic deductions concerning the nature of god, soul, the cosmos, and
the underlying material substrate:
On the points on which they wish to oppose the ancient teachings, they introduce all
sorts of coming into being and passing away, and disapprove of this universe, and blame
the soul for its association with the body, and censure the organizer of this universe, and
identify the demiurge with the soul, and attribute to this universal soul the same
affections as those given to the individual souls (6.57–62).
All these instances of Gnostic misprision of Plato stem from a perspectival

shift that did not pass unnoticed by Plotinus – a shift toward the
homologation of various dimensions of reality (intelligible and sense-
perceptible, macro-and micro-cosmic, divine and human), which Platon-
ism considered mutually dependent yet ontologically distinct from one
another. Plotinus refers to this fallacy of transitivity when censuring the
Gnostic proliferation of intelligible realities as an unfounded attempt to
“bring the intelligible nature into the likeness of the inferior sense-
perceptible world” (6.29–31). He raises the same objection against the
Gnostic equation of the world soul and individual human souls, which
Plato explicitly denied in the Timaeus:
But to assume, starting from our soul, homology with the Soul of the All is as if somebody
were to take the class of potters and smiths in a well-ordered city and make them a reason
for blaming the whole. But one must consider the differences between the universal soul
and ours, in its management of body; for it does govern it in the same manner and is not
bound to it. … The Soul of the All could not be bound by the things it binds itself because
it dominates them. Therefore it is unaffected by them while we, in turn, are not their
masters (7.4–15).
5
See esp. A. LE BOULLUEC, La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque IIe–IIIe
siècles, Paris 1985, 119–135.

According to Plotinus, no serious follower of Plato would relinquish the

superordination of intelligible over sense-perceptible or argue for “the
same structure in the all and in each living creature (7.25–27)”.6 To claim
otherwise would entail the erosion of the whole Platonic schema of
ordering built upon dissimilarity, subordination, and limited participation.
The obliteration of every distinction between the cosmic soul and its
human counterpart, as advocated by the Gnostics, not only exposes the
former to “the same (bodily) affections as those given to the individual
souls (6.62)”, but also splits it from within into the rational and the
irrational domain,7 makes its rational kind prey to misguided deliberation,8
and even compromises the status of the world it governs – no longer a
well-founded Platonist copy of the preordered ideal pattern, but a distant
simulacrum of an already imperfect rational representation of the
intelligible model.9 To this scenario Plotinus opposes his view of the
cosmic soul as partly transcendent and partly bound to body, free of
deliberation and irrational impulses, which eternally contemplates the
intelligible forms and communicates them, in the guise of normative
6
Some Middle Platonists, however, did not always maintain this distinction; compare,
for instance, Plato’s pronouncement about the human soul as “no longer so pure” as the
world-soul, “but second or third in degree of purity” (Ti. 41d4–7), with Alcinous’s
statement that “both the soul of the universe and that of man would be of this kind (viz.
non-generated and indestructible) insofar as partaking of the same mixture” (Did.
25.178.18–21).
7
Enn. II.9 [33] 4.1–2: “But if they are going to say that the soul has made the world
when it had, so to speak, ‘shed its wings’ (Phdr. 246c), this does not happen to the Soul of
the All”; 5.8–16: “(They even say) that their soul, and the soul of the meanest of men, is
immortal and divine, but that the whole heaven and the stars there have no share in the
immortal soul, even though they are made of much better and purer material … as if the
immortal soul had taken care to choose the worse place and opted to retire from the
better in favor of the mortal (sc. material) soul!”
8
Enn. II.9 [33] 4.15–17: “For if it (sc. the world soul) made the world by discursive
thinking (διανοίᾳ) and the making was not in its nature and its power was not a
productive one, how could it have made this universe?”; 6.1–5: “And what should one say
of the other hypostases they introduce – exiles, antitypes, repentances? For … they say
that these are affections of the soul when in repentance and antitypes when it
contemplates some sort of images of realities but not the realities themselves”.
9
Enn. II.9 [33] 8.18–22: “But it is false to say that the copy does not resemble (sc. the
intelligible); for nothing has been left out which a fine natural image could have; for the
copy (μίμημα) has to exist necessarily, and not as a result of discursive thinking and
contrivance; and indeed, the intelligible could not be the last, having as it were a double
activity: one in itself and one directed to something else”; 11.8–11: “But if it was by
forming a rational conception of the world that it (sc. the world soul) was able to illumine
as a result of its reasoning (λογισμός), why did it not make the world while illumining but
rather waited for the generation of the semblances (εἴδωλα)”?

106 Zlatko Pleše
rational standards (logoi), to its inferior power of growth and generation.10

As he states at the outset of his anti-Gnostic polemic (2.10–18),
The soul that is not a part (the Soul of All) and of which we, too, are not a part remains in
the most beautiful. It has granted to the whole of body the possession of whatever it can
hold from it yet remains itself untroubled, not governing by deliberation nor setting
anything right, but rather ordering it all with a wonderful power, by contemplating that
which precedes it. The more it is directed to that contemplation, the fairer and more
powerful it is; and receiving from there it gives to what comes thereafter, and is always
illuminated as it illuminates.
A radical anthropomorphic reconfiguration of Platonic hierarchies affects

even the way in which Gnostics conceived of their supreme deity. The
Gnostic god is neither the Platonic-Aristotelian all-perfect and undivided
intellect, “the best of the ever-being intelligibles” (Ti. 36e6–37a2), nor the
Plotinian One eternally producing without deliberation and self-alteration,
but a self-searching absolute, a mind in potentiality which, in the process
of its gradual self-actualization, experiences the same changing dispo-
sitions and affections as the mind of the developing human. The inap-
propriateness of such psychologizing analogies was exposed by yet another
anti-Gnostic polemicist, the proto-orthodox theologian Irenaeus (Adv.
haer. 2.13.3):
Indeed, they (sc. the Valentinians) apply to the Father of All things that occur in humans
and they declare him to be unknown to all, denying even that he himself made the world
out of fear that he might look weak, yet still endowing him with human dispositions and
passions. But if they had known the scriptures and had been taught by the truth, they
would know that God is not like men (Num 23:19) and that his thoughts are not like
human thoughts (Isa 55:8–9). For the Father of All is at a vast distance from mental
dispositions and passions befalling human beings. He is simple, non-composite, and
without diverse parts, entirely alike and equal to himself, since he is all intellect, all spirit,
all intellection, all conception, all reason, all hearing and all seeing, all light and entirely
the source of all good things.
Such a systematic application of anthropological categories to the physical

and metaphysical domains has important repercussions for the Gnostic
understanding of evil.
If the cosmic soul has the same constitution as its human counterpart,
then it must be endowed with an irrational aspect that brings disorder into
corporeality and acts as a positive source of evil in all domains of phenol-
10
See, for instance, Enn. II.3[52]17.1–9: “That which makes naturally is not
intellection or vision, but a power capable of modifying matter, which does not know but
only acts … while something else, different from what is called the power of growth and
generation, supplies it with what is required for this making. If this is so, the ruling
principle of the soul will make by modifying the generative soul in matter”.

menal reality, including human beings.11 If the rational aspect of the

cosmic soul undergoes the same cognitive development as human
rationality, then its initial contact with transcendent forms faces the risk of
“generating a phantom or falsehood” (Pl. Tht. 150b9–c3) rather than their
accurate rational presentation.12 And if God is no longer a perfect unitary
intellect that cannot tolerate change and internal differentiation, but rather
a developing mind that moves from its initial indetermination and the
primal state of involution toward self-exteriorization and self-knowledge,
then evil is to be blamed on God’s abortive desire to comprehend his
incomprehensible nature.
In conclusion, we may say that ancient polemicists stand in substantial
agreement about the central presuppositions and salient features of
Gnostic theodicy. Evil is the product of an erroneous judgment originating
in the intelligible realm, a figment of thought that manifests itself as an
active force in all segments of reality. This central presupposition gives rise
to the following set of propositions, each concerned with a distinct onto-
logical level and each arising from a conscious misprision of Plato and the
Platonic tradition:
(i) Evils, as Plato said, “have no place in the divine (intelligible) realm”
(Tht. 176a7–8), but their origin can still be traced all the way back
to that realm.
11
A similar analogy between the cosmic and the individual soul seems to have guided
Plutarch’s speculations about the pre-cosmic soul, viz. the “soul in itself” (An. procr.
6.1014B) or “soul in the simple sense” (23.1024A), as a “disorderly and indeterminate but
self-moved and motive principle” (6.1014B) that is “from the beginning intimate with
body and sensitive to it” (28.1026E) and “has in herself the portion of evil” (28.1027A).
12
Plutarch attributes to his pre-cosmic soul (cf. n. 11) “inarticulate opinions and
disorderly motions, most of them dreamlike, deranged, and disturbing corporeality save
in so far as it would by chance encounter what is better (sc. the intelligible) – for it was
intermediate between the two and had a nature sensitive and akin to both, with its
perceptive faculty laying hold on matter and with its discerning faculty on the
intelligible” (An. procr. 23.1024B; cf. 24.1024E). Only when “a superior principle”, or
divine “intellect” (27.1026E), gets into this simple soul and “makes her turn towards
himself” (24.1024D–E) will such an ordered world-soul obtain “a (circular) motion which
is intellective and results in knowledge” (23.1024A). For the discerning faculty of the
“simple soul” which allows her to have “chance encounters” with the intelligible realm cf.
M. BALTES, La dottrina dell’anima in Plutarco, Elenchos 21 (2000), 245–270. For the
controversy among modern scholars over the simple soul’s access to the superordinate
forms see J. O PSOMER, Plutarch’s De animae procreatione in Timaeo. Manipulation or
Search for Consistency?, in: P. A DAMSON/H. BALTUSSEN/M.W.F. STONE (edd.), Philoso-
phy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries, vol. 1, London
2004, 137–162.

108 Zlatko Pleše
(ii) The cosmic soul is not “the best of the things generated” (Ti. 37a1–
3) leading “a ceaseless and intelligent life” (ibid. 36e4–5), but an
imperfect communicator of misconceived forms onto the corporeal
substrate.
(iii) Evil in the sensible realm is not to be imputed to the necessity of
material causes (Ti. 47e–48a, 68e–69a) but to an irrational aspect of
the world-soul, or else to a separate evil soul-principle13.
(iv) Inasmuch as this irrational principle is inherent in corporeality,
human proneness to evil cannot be explained by “an ill disposition
of the body and bad education” (ibid. 86e1–2).14
Evidence from Primary Sources: Gnostic Taxonomies of Evil
A complex theodicy that emerges from the anti-Gnostic polemical treatises

must now be tested against the first-hand Gnostic accounts. Due to a
significant amount of relevant sources,15 the ensuing discussion provides
only a sample of illustrative passages taken from multiple Gnostic tra-
ditions, which modern scholars often schematize under two rubrics,
‘Sethian’ and ‘Valentinian’. The argument in this section closely follows a
derivational model of Gnostic semiosis – a hierarchy of multiple levels of
reality unfolding from a distant and unfathomable first principle down to
its entropic stage – and discusses Gnostic approaches to evil at the four
distinct levels specified in the previous section: metaphysical, psycho-
logical, physical and ethical.
13
According to a standard partition of Gnostic treatises into ‘Sethian’ vs.
‘Valentinian’, the first solution belongs to the latter group while the second reflects the
dualistic psychology of various ‘Sethian’ traditions.
14
These four postulates correspond to the arguments which Plotinus sets out to refute
in his late treatise On What and Whence are Evils (Enn. I.8 [51]). For Plotinus, who posits
matter as absolute evil, or “evil itself”, and as source of evil in the soul, (i) no evil exists
among things intelligible (I.8.2); (ii) the perfect (intelligent) soul is completely defined by
intellect and never approaches evil (8.4); nor can evil be imputed to its innate weakness,
and to its giving way to precipitous assent, confused imagination, and erroneous
judgment (8.14); (iii) there is no evil soul, but soul can only become evil by coming into
contact with matter (8.4); (iv) evil in humans can be mastered by that power in them
which is not in matter, viz. intellect (8.5): one must fly from wickedness (8.6) and win
virtue by separating oneself from the body (8.7).
15
Sources include not only genuine Gnostic treatises but also verbatim citations and
summaries in ancient heresiologists. For an overview see, e.g., Z. P LEŠE, Gnostic
Literature, in: R. H IRSCH-LUIPOLD/H. G ÖRGEMANNS/M. VON A LBRECHT (edd.), Religiöse
Philosophie und philosophische Religion der frühen Kaiserzeit: Literaturgeschichtliche
Perspektiven, Tübingen 2009, 163–198, esp. 168–174.

1. Malum Metaphysicum
Irrespective of their numerous doctrinal divergences, multiple Gnostic
traditions articulate reality as a multi-layered construction derivative of a
single transcendent principle beyond being and intellection. This
apophatic view of the first principle is deduced from two Platonic
postulates: first, that unity is not identical with anything and thus cannot
imply many; and second, that every attempt at determining this unity
amounts to its negation.16 The principal problem facing such a strong
monistic claim is how to account for the transition from unity to a finite
multitude of subordinate layers of reality. Since the Gnostic first principle
is superior to both being and intellect, this problem cannot be resolved by a
typical Middle Platonist formula, also appropriated by many proto-
orthodox theologians, of a self-thinking Intellect endowed with impreg-
nable stability of its thoughts and acting, often through intermediaries, as
the final cause of the universal order. In Gnostic systems, dialectical
deduction gives way to a symbolic narrative and the use of dynamic
analogies borrowed from physical, biological, linguistic, and psychological
domains. The passage from the original unity to plurality is thus variously
portrayed in terms of irradiation, emanation, elemental expansion, sexual
differentiation, sound articulation, and mental development. The following
excerpt from the Apocryphon of John, a fully narrated version of the classic
(‘Sethian’) Gnostic myth, illustrates this amalgamation of heterogeneous
metaphors and analogies (BG 2, p. 25,9–27,15; NHC III,1, p. 6,2–7,19) con-
veying the inner life of the absolute first principle:
It searches (αἰτεῖν) for its own self in the fullness of the light. It shall conceive (νοεῖν) the
unmixed life, the immeasurable greatness … It conceives (νοεῖν) its own self in its own
(ἴδιον) light that surrounds it, the fountain (πηγή) of the living water, the light full of
purity. The fountain (πηγή) of the spirit (πνεῦμα) streamed from the living water of the
light. And it was supplying (χορηγεῖν) all aeons (αἰών) and worlds (κόσμος). In every way
it conceived (νοεῖν) its own image (εἰκών) by seeing it in the pure luminous water that
surrounds it. And its conception (ἔννοια) became actual and was shown forth, and she
stood firm in his presence, in the brilliance (λαμπηδών) of the light – that is, the power
prior to the entirety, which was shown forth; the perfect forethought (πρόνοια) of the
entirety; the light, the likeness of the light, the image (εἰκών) of the invisible one; the
perfect (τελεία) power, Barbelo, the perfect aeon (αἰών) of the glory.
Two kinds of analogies dominate this passage: one that emphasizes God’s
superabundance and the excess of creative power (“the fountain of the spirit
streaming from the living water of the light) and the other expressing the
inner tension of antagonistic drives – the duality of involution and expansion,
16
These two postulates are clearly articulated in Plato’s first deduction about the
“one” in Parmenides, 137c–142a.

110 Zlatko Pleše
or of self-preservation and self-differentiation – which will be resolved

through a gradual externalization of God’s infinite potential. The text
describes the very first moment in this process, a transition from “searching
itself” to “seeing itself” as an “image” and to forming the primal “self-con-
ception”. This self-transforming event entails a series of subsequent move-
ments, similar to the acquisition of self-knowledge in the developing human
being, by which the God gradually actualizes his inner dispositions and
generates reality as his own symbolic representation. According to a heavily
mythologized version of this process in the Apocryphon of John, God and his
first Conception, Ennoia-Barbelo, give birth to Christ the Self-Originate who,
by acquiring Intellect and Reason as his “coworkers”, fills out a vague pre-
conception of God with a set of stable predicates, or “aeons”, epitomized in
the figure of Sophia as a feminine personification of God’s discursive self-
knowledge.
The idea of a self-differentiating God appears to have been a common
Gnostic solution to the problem of how plurality arose from primal unity,
cutting across the modern scholarly divide of ‘Sethian’ and ‘Valentinian’
traditions. We have already seen how Irenaeus criticized the Valentinians
for “endowing God with human dispositions and passions” (Adv. haer.
2.13.3). To this charge of anthropomorphic fallacy Irenaeus also adds that
of “an improper use of emissions”, which perverts the proper sequence of
mental process by depriving intellect of its “chief ruling rank” (2.13.1) and
by relegating its activities to later stages of cognitive development. As
summarized by Irenaeus, this perverted sequence unfolds in the same way
as in the Apocryphon of John:
But those (sc. Valentinians) who say that Conception (Ennoea) was emitted from God,
and Intellect (Nus) from Conception, and from these Reason (Logos), are in the first
place to be refuted for their improper use of emission (viz. placing Conception before
Intellect) and, in the next place, for describing dispositions, passions, and intentions of
the human mind (mens), while knowing nothing about God.
Just like the account of God’s internal development in the Apocryphon of

John, the Valentinian “order of emissions" (God-Conception-Intellect-
Reason) also highlights the pre-conceptual and pre-perceptual nature of
God’s initial state of involution and absolute indetermination. Self-
perception, intellectual introspection, and rational apprehension play a
role only at the subsequent stages of God’s acquisition of self-knowledge.17
17
This common tendency among the Gnostics to describe God in terms of human
psychology not only bears witness to the essential unity and continuity of their theology
but also indicates a serious engagement with contemporary epistemological and ethical
theories. A cognitive model likely to have informed this peculiar developmental theology
is a Platonizing revision of the Stoic theory of “self-conciliation” (oikeiôsis), of a kind

The problem, of course, is that the Gnostic first principle is beyond intel-
lect and reason, so that its attempt at self-determination ends up, on one
hand, in the manifestation of its positive characteristics, symbolically
represented as the spiritual realm (plêrôma), and, on the other, in the
discovery of the unfathomable kernel that cannot be rationally articulated.
This dark side of God’s nature, variously described in Gnostic accounts as
deficiency, darkness, ignorance, miscarriage, shadow, or non-being, will be
“cut off” from the spiritual realm and serve as the material substrate of the
visible world.
We are now in the position to propose the first postulate of Gnostic
theodicy, as evidenced in both ‘Sethian’ and ‘Valentinian’ sources:
attested in the work of Antiochus of Ascalon. Knowledge acquisition in human beings,

according to Antiochus, is a long lasting process of stepwise affiliation to reason and
virtue, which very much resembles the sequence of God’s mental development in Gnostic
speculations. In Antiochus’ account, mental faculties emerge only gradually, triggered by
their respective objects – the faculty of sense-perception by sensible objects, the faculty of
intellection by primal conceptions of these objects, and the faculty of discursive
reasoning by the need to sort out and systematize the accumulated conceptions. The final
stage of cognitive development is the impregnable knowledge of the world and oneself – a
stable condition described as “perfected reason” or “wisdom” (sapientia). See esp. Cic.
Luc. 30: “For the intellect itself (mens; νοῦς), which is the source of the senses and is even
itself a sense, has a natural power that it directs (intendit) at the things by which it is
moved. Thus it seizes on some visual impressions (visa) so as to use them at once, while
storing away (recondit; ἐναποκεῖσθαι) others as the source of memory. The rest, again, it
constructs by means of resemblances, and from these are formed the conceptions of
things that the Greeks sometimes call ennoiai and sometimes prolêpseis. With the
addition of reason (ratio; λόγος) and logical proof and a wealth of countless facts, there
comes apprehension (perceptio, κατάληψις) of all these facts, and this same reason,
having been perfected (perfecta) by these stages (his gradibus), achieves wisdom
(sapientia)”. Antiochus’ version of oikeiosis would be equally at home in the Stoic (and
Peripatetic) tradition save for the initial stage, which the Stoics describe as that of self-
perception and self-awareness and Antiochus as the natural drive of self-love and self-
preservation independent of perception and conscious participation. Cf. Cic. Fin. 5.41:
“Suppose that at the moment of our birth each of us were able to recognize and evaluate
our nature both as a whole and in its individual parts: in that case we would immediately
see what we are searching for, the ultimate goal of our objects of desire, and we would be
unable to go wrong in any point. But as it is our nature is strangely hidden from us at
first, and cannot be perceived or understood. But as we gradually mature, little by little,
or else quite slowly, we come to know ourselves as it were. Hence the initial affection that
we naturally feel for ourselves is vague and obscure, and the first impulse of our soul acts
only to keep us safe and preserved. But when we begin to discern and become aware of
what we are and how we differ from the other animals, at this point we start to pursue the
ends for which we are born”. This primal state of involution and self-affection (commen-
datio), which Antiochus characterizes as non-reflected and instinctive, is precisely the
original condition of the Gnostic first principle.

112 Zlatko Pleše
The ontological roots of evil lie in the miscarried attempt on the part of the
transcendent One to comprehend and explicate its incomeprehensible
ground of existence. This necessary move towards selfrealization and self-
knowledge yields not only a positive thought-content (the spiritual realm or
“fullness”) attained by intellection but also the entropic residue (prime
matter or “deficiency”), which resists rational identification and is conse-
quently secluded from the spiritual realm.
2. Malum Ratiocinativum
Now it appears that the Gnostics were generally aware of the dangerous
consequences of presenting God as a developing human and the reality he
creates as a sequence of cognitive dispositions and qualities. Pursuing this
analogy would make God the sole cause of an ever-increasing disorder in
his spiritual edifice. For this reason, many Gnostic authors turned God’s
mental faculties – intellect, reason, discursive thinking, wisdom – into
independent entities (hypostases) responsible for all negative aspects
involved in the dissolution of God’s unity into plurality. Tertullian explains
this turn from introspective theology to mythological genealogy as a
doctrinal development within the Valentinian “school of thought”. As we
read in his brief historical survey of Valentinianism (Tert. Val. 4.1–4),
Valentinus had originally “included the aeons in the totality of the godhead
as mental states (sensus), dispositions (affectus), and movements (motus)”,
but then his student Ptolemy took a different turn and “segregated the
aeons by names and number” (Tert. Val. 4.2).18 This projection of
personified “aeons” apart from their divine source, characteristic not only
for the protology of Ptolemy and his followers but also for contemporary
‘Sethian’ accounts, delivers a system of rational mythology in which
individual hypostases act as fully autonomous agents guided by their
specific purposes and their increasingly problematic impulses. Among
these multiple agents, it is the ones positioned near the lower limits of the
spiritual realm that play a subversive role of disclosing its fragile equi-
librium and its dark, unruly ground. This brings us to the second postulate
of Gnostic theodicy:
The immediate responsibility for the generation and the subsequent
illumination of a dark residue, or prime matter, is laid to the charge of God’s
rational faculty hypostasized as wisdom (Sophia) or discursive reason
18
A thorough analysis of the two types of “Valentinian protology” can be found in
E. T HOMASSEN, The Spiritual Seed. The Church of the ‘Valentinians’ (NHMS 60), Lei-
den/Boston 2006, 263–268.

(Logos) – more specifically, to its presumptuous will to mediate and

externalize the unfathomable ground of God’s existence.
As shown in the first part of this study, ancient polemicists identified
precisely this failure of reasoning to give an adequate account of God’s
inexpressible nature as a salient feature of Gnostic theodicy. In the Gnostic
narratives, the error of miscarried calculation is blamed on the rational
agent in the spiritual realm who is set at the farthest distance from God.
The ‘Valentinian’ Tripartite Tractate, for example, portrays a free-willed
Logos engaged in a vain effort to “inquire into the hidden order” and grasp
the unfathomable totality of the Father. Failing to “produce something
perfect from a union in which he did not share”, the Logos experiences a
“division and a turning away” from the spiritual realm and gives birth to
the shadow of the Real – a terrifying primeval chaos of “phantoms,
shadows, and imitations” of “the things he wished to attain and grasp”
(NHC I,5, p. 75,27–77,20):
For this aeon was from among those to whom wisdom was given … He received a natural
wisdom in order to inquire into the hidden order, being as it were a fruit of wisdom. For
the autonomous will (piouwye n+aute{u}xousios) which had been born along with
the entireties was a cause for this one to do what he wanted, with no one holding him
back. Now the intention (προαίρεσις) of this Logos was good inasmuch as he rushed to
glorify the Father, even though <he> undertook a task beyond his power and desired to
produce something perfect from a union in which he did not share … He acted with a
presumptuous thought out of an excessive love and rushed toward him who surrounds
the perfect glory … But the things he had wished to attain and grasp he begot as shadows,
semblances (εἴδωλον), and imitations, for he could not bear to look toward the light but
looked instead at the deep (βάθος), and he repented.
In most other Gnostic narratives, this misguided attempt at attaining God

by rational means is linked to the feminine figure of Sophia, the youngest
aeon in the spiritual domain who will later assume the role of a rational
cosmic soul. Sophia’s motives and actions closely resemble those given to
the Logos in the Tripartite Tractate, but, as befits a female character, bear
stronger sexual connotations. Thus, in the Apocryphon of John, Sophia’s
motivation is conveyed in images belonging to the sphere of biological
reproduction as well as that of human psychology – both as her wanton
desire to “bring forth” an image without the consent of her “consort” and
as her autonomous will to “conceive a thought” of her divine source by
means of “rational consideration” (NHC II,1, p. 9,25–10,14; cf. BG 2, p.
36,16–38,6; NHC III,1, p. 14,9–15,16):
And the Wisdom (σοφία) of afterthought (ἐπίνοια), being an aeon, conceived a thought
from herself and her rational consideration (ἐνθύμησις) of the Invisible Spirit and
Foreknowledge. She wanted to show forth a likeness (eine) out of herself without the
Spirit’s will – for he had not approved (εὐδοκεῖν) – and without her consort and without
his consent … And although she had not discovered her partner, she assented

114 Zlatko Pleše
(κατανεύειν) without the Spirit’s will and without the acquaintance (sooun, γνῶσις) with
her partner, and she brought forth. And because of the invincible power in her, her
rational consideration (meeue, ἐνθύμησις) did not remain unrealized. And out of her
was shown forth an imperfect product that was different from her form (smot), because
she had made it without her consort; and compared to the likeness of its mother it was
misshapen, having another form (μορφή). And when she saw that her will had changed
into a shape (τύπος) of a lion-faced serpent … she cast it away from her, outside those
places, so that none of the immortals might see it; for she had made it in ignorance.
The line of causation leading to Sophia’s “miscarriage” combines the

biological model of spontaneous generation, in which the female factor
assumes the unlikely role of an active cause, with the intellectualist account
of human action as a voluntary assent given to an impulse to act in
accordance with a rational impression.19 Sophia’s fatal mistake lies in her
impulse to “show forth a likeness” without gaining consent from God, or
“the Invisible Spirit”. The “likeness” she wishes to externalize is “a thought
she conceived from herself and her rational consideration” (ἐνθύμησις) – a
rational construct of the first principle and all of its previously manifested
dispositions or “aeons”. But Sophia’s discursive thought fails to “discover
her partner” inasmuch as it cannot give a rational account of the obscure
ground of his existence. Her rash and precipitate assent (κατανεύειν) to
this uncertified “likeness” of God is accompanied by a spontaneous miscar-
riage of the dark kernel of God’s being which Sophia could not com-
prehend. The product of this self-induced generation is later described as
“dark miscarriage” (BG 2, p. 46, 10) or “the garment of darkness” (NHC
II,1, p. 13,33) which gives out a distorted reflection of Sophia’s “likeness”.
19
For its blending of epistemology and sexual metaphors, the description of Sophia’s
situation leading to her fatal miscarriage closely resembles the Platonic image of the
soul’s “travails of birth” in Plato’s Theaetetus (147c–151d) and the situation of Socrates’
disreputable students after abandoning their teacher, a sort of “spiritual midwife”, and
“giving birth to a phantom and falsehood”. Cf. Socrates’ words in 150b9–c3: “The highest
point of our art (of midwifery) is the power to test, by any means, whether the though
(διάνοια) of a young man gives birth to a phantom and falsehood (εἴδωλον καὶ ψεῦδος)
or something fertile and true”. The same theme of the individual soul’s passage from the
fixed state of unity with God to the unbalanced and alienated state of a thinking subject
producing false value-judgments about God is scattered throughout the work of Philo of
Alexandria. Here is the passage that illustrates Philo’s distinction between the virginal
soul living in the organic unity with god and the soul living in the state of an impious
“self-love” and self-conceit, constantly asserting its epistemological autonomy (LA 1.52):
“One has to think of God as without qualities and one and incorruptible and un-
changeable. Whoever does not conceive in this way fills his soul with a false and godless
opinion. Did you not see that, even if He brings us into virtue and even if, when brought
in, we plant no fruitless thing but ‘every tree good for food’, He yet bids us ‘thoroughly to
cleanse its uncleanness’ (Lev 19:23)? Indeed, he demands the cutting away of self-conceit
(ἀποτεμεῖν οἴησιν); and self-conceit is in its nature unclean”.

Just as God’s prior attempt at attaining self-knowledge by his intellect

revealed the duality of his positive thought-content, hypostasized as the
eternal realm of “aeons”, and his dark unruly ground, so does Sophia’s
desire to form a rational account of a transcendent divine source gives rise
to yet another, ontologically inferior duality: on one hand, her rational
“likeness” of the eternal realm and, on the other, a dark residue in which
this “likeness” is reflected as a terrifying theriomorphic (“a lion-faced
serpent”) apparition. Other ‘Sethian’ narratives convey this duality in
spatial categories, distinguishing between a “heavenly likeness” conceived
by Sophia, which served as a “veil” separating the superior reality, and a
“shadow”, also called “darkness” and “limitless chaos”, which is projected
from that veil to the inferior space. The Hypostasis of the Archons describes
this differentiation as follows (NHC II,4, p. 94,2–19):
Within limitless aeons exists incorruptibility. Sophia, who is called Pistis, wanted to
create something, alone without her consort, and her product became a heavenly likeness.
A veil (καταπέτασμα) exists between the superior realm and the inferior aeons. And
shadow came into being beneath the veil, and that shadow became matter (ὕλη), and that
shadow was cast apart (ἐν μέρει). And what she (sc. Sophia) created (i.e., the heavenly
likeness) came to be a product in matter, like a miscarriage (houhe, ἔκτρωμα). And it
received shape (τύπος) from the shadow, and it became a self-willed (αὐθάδης) beast
resembling a lion; it was androgynous … because it came forth from matter.
Compared with the account of Sophia’s fault in the Apocryphon of John, the
passage outlines more clearly a three-level ontological hierarchy dependent
on the transcendent first principle. The highest level is the “incorruptible”
realm of “limitless aeons”; the intermediate soul-level is “a heavenly
likeness” of these aeons, such as conceived by Sophia; the lowest level is a
“shadow” resulting from the blockage of divine light by the opaque
“heavenly likeness” interposed as a “veil”. Secluded or “cast apart” from the
superior levels, this “shadow” becomes “matter”, taking on impressions
from Sophia’s “heavenly likeness” and reflecting them as a distorted or
“miscarried” semblance.20 What thus emerges from the “shadow” is yet an-
20
This ontological hierarchy, ultimately grounded in Plato’s onto-cosmological
distinction between the ideal model, its well-founded resemblance (the world-soul), and
its false semblance or simulacrum (the pre-cosmic chaos), corresponds rather closely to a
monistic reinterpretation of the Timaeus in the light of Plato’s discussion of the One and
the Other in the second part of the Parmenides (135d–166c), of a kind advanced in con-
temporary Neopythagorean circles. Particularly interesting for comparative purposes is
Simplicus’ summary of the metaphysical system of Moderatus of Gades (Simpl. In Ph.
230,34–231,24 Diels): “He (sc. Moderatus) declares that … the first One is above Being
and all essence; the second One, which is truly real and intelligible, is on his account the
forms; and the third, which is the level of soul, participates in the One and in the forms;
following this, the last nature, which is that of sensible things, does not even partake (of

116 Zlatko Pleše
other duality, the last in a series of internal cleavages defining the Gnostic
model of procession, which distinguishes between a pre-cosmic corporeal
substrate and a “self-willed lion-like beast” reminiscent of Plato’s “multi-
form beast” as a metaphor for the irrational soul (R. 9.590a8).21 It is only at
this lowest level and at the stage immediately preceding the formation of
phenomenal reality that the principle of evil, conceived as a positive
irrational force, comes into being, creates the sense-perceptible world, and
bears ultimate responsibility for its malfunctioning and imperfection. As
the Hypostasis of the Archons goes on to explain (NHC II,4, p. 94,19–95,5):
the higher levels) but is ordered according to their reflection (κατ’ ἔμφασιν ἐκείνων); and
matter in them is a shadow (σκίασμα) of Not-Being, whose primary form is Quantity, but
this matter has descended still further even from that (sc. Quantity)”. Simplicius next
adduces a passage from Porphyry’s On Matter, which clarifies Moderatus’ distinction
between Quantity as the formal expression of Not-Being and the derivative “matter” as its
“shadow”. The former stands for the intelligible or prime matter, bears the characteristics
of Plato’s “receptacle of becoming” from the Timaeus, and is “conceived by privation of
the unitary Logos (κατὰ στέρησιν τοῦ ἑνιαίου λόγου) which comprises in itself all rational
principles (λόγοι) of beings”. The latter, in turn, is “the matter of bodies, also called
quantity … yet not as a form but rather by privation and dissolution and extension and
dispersion and on account of deviation from Being”, so that it “also seems evil since it
flees from the Good”. Structural similarities between Moderatus’ system and the Gnostic
derivational model are indeed striking, and so are those between their respective accounts
of the derivation of the intelligible matter from the ordering rational principle
(Moderatus’ “unitary Logos” and Sophia or Logos in Gnostic texts). Similar, too, is their
“morally” loaded view of the material substrate of bodies as somewhat responsible for evil
in the sensible reality; but whereas Moderatus blames this evil on matter’s not partaking
of forms (contrary to its intelligible counterpart), on its dyadic propensity to “dissolution,
extension, and dispersion”, and on its “deviation from Being and fleeing from the Good”,
Gnostic theodicies conceive matter as evil insofar as it is dominated by the irrational soul
as a positive evil force.
21
Compare the way in which the treatise On the Origin of the World (II,5 p. 98,23–
99,22) describes the emergence of the same duality out of the projected shadow: “Now the
eternal realm has no shadow <within> it, for the immeasurable light is everywhere within
it; but its exterior is a shadow, which has been called darkness. From it there appeared a
power set over the darkness, and the powers that came afterward called the shadow
limitless chaos. … Then shadow perceived that there was something stronger than it and
so became jealous. And when it became pregnant of its own accord, suddenly it gave birth
to Envy. Since then the principle of Envy has appeared among all the aeons and their
worlds. And that Envy was found to be an abortion without any spirit in it: it came to be
as a shadow in a vast watery substance. Then <matter> that had come into being out of
shadow was cast into a part of chaos. Since that day, watery substance has become visible;
and what sank in it flowed out, being visible in chaos. Just as a woman gives birth to a
child and her residues flow out, so matter came to be out of shadow and was cast out.
Matter, however, did not depart from chaos; rather, it was in chaos, being in a part (ἐν
μέρει) of chaos”. Cf. Iren. Adv. haer. 1.4.5.

It (sc. the lion-like miscarriage) opened its eyes and saw a vast limitless matter (ὕλη). And
it became arrogant, saying, “It is I who am God, and there is none but me (Isa 45:5–6,
46:9)”. When it said this, it sinned against the (spiritual) entirety. And a voice came forth
from above the tyrannical realm (αὐθεντία), saying: “You are mistaken (πλανᾶσθαι),
Samael” – which means ‘blind god.’ And it said, “If anything exists before me, let it be
shown forth to me!” And immediately Sophia stretched out her finger and brought light
into matter; and she pursued it down to the region of chaos (χάος). And she returned up
to her light … This ruler, being androgynous, fabricated a vast aeon for itself, an expanse
(μέγεθος) without limit. And it considered fabricating for itself offspring, and it
fabricated for itself seven offspring, androgynous like their parent. And it said to its
offspring, “It is I who am the god of the entirety”.
3. Malum physicum
The establishment of an arrogant impostor intimately related to materiality
brings us to a third postulate of Gnostic theodicy:
Physical or cosmic evil (malum physicum) is not identified with the
deficiency of matter but rather lies in the egotism of an active evil cause
which, insofar as it resides in the secluded substance of matter, exercises its
propensity for absolute domination while remaining ignorant of the higher
reaches of reality.
Despite their general agreement about the presence of an autonomous evil
force in matter, multiple Gnostic traditions offer diverging accounts of its
nature, activity, and sphere of influence. As shown in the preceding
sections, the ‘Sethian’ accounts personify this evil force as a monstrous
impostor, variously called Ialdabaoth, Saklas, Samael, or Nebro, who
combines the negative characteristics of the biblical creator god (jealousy,
envy, self-proclaimed unity) with the faculties of the Platonic non-rational
or “mortal” soul (ignorance of forms, reliance on sense impressions, carnal
desire, disorderly motion). Driven by the undifferentiated pulsation of his
blind drives, this ugly mutant is initially incapable of any creative activity.
Only upon receiving (or “stealing”) a portion of Sophia’s spiritual power,
he is moved to action and fabricates the visible world as a third-rank
semblance, a simulacrum, of Sophia’s rational conception of the spiritual
realm. The imperfection of phenomenal reality is thus attributed not to
material or mechanical causes (negative evil) but to the inadequacy of its
creator (positive evil). Separated from the eternal model and completely
devoid of rationality, the ‘Sethian’ demiurge must settle for ordering a
distant and chaotic “likeness” of this model, as reflected in the mirror of
dark matter, and operate within the confines of his unfounded imagina-

118 Zlatko Pleše
tion.22 As stated in the longer redaction of the Apocryphon of John (II,1 p.

12,33–13,5),
He (i.e. Ialdabaoth) ordered (tseno) all things according to the likeness of the original
aeons (kata pine n+n+y or_p[n+]aiwn) which had come into being, with the intention to
create them (i.e. all things) in the incorruptible manner. Not that he had seen the
incorruptible ones, but it was the power within him, which he had taken from his mother,
that produced in him the semblance of the ordered world (pine m+ptseno). 23
Whereas the ‘Sethian’ accounts tend to portray the demiurge as an

autonomous semblance-maker stirred by the irrational impulses of his
appetitive soul, various ‘Valentinian’ cosmogonies consider the cosmic
craftsman to be an imperfect yet reliable mediator between the superior
world and the realm of matter – ignorant of the ideal forms, yet obediently
following the rational principles of world-creation conceived by a higher
power (Logos or Sophia). In the Tripartite Tractate, for instance, he acts
“like a hand” of the superior Logos “ordering and working on the things
below” (Tri. Trac. NHC I,5, p. 100,30–33), and presides over a multitude of
powers or “archons” in charge of the celestial sphere. The Valentinian
demiurge cannot thus be viewed as either good or bad. He is the “just” god
of the Old Testament, both merciful and severe, embodying the salient
traits of the Platonist “mettlesome” soul – “not purely affective but
frequently has a mental image of what is fair, though one commingled with
the irrational yearning for retribution” (Plu. Qu. Plat. 9.1.1008C–D). Pure
evil cannot be found in his intermediate or “psychic” domain but only
below that order, in the realm of matter derived from the Logos’ abortive
conception of the spiritual fullness and populated by the powers born out
of his “illusory imitation” (Tri. Trac. NHC I,5, p. 82,19–20 ouPantasia
n+t e outant_n). Following the general plan of salvation designed by the
Logos, these “simulacra (eidwlon), shadows (haibes), and illusions
22
In the ‘Sethian’ tract Zostrianos (NHC VIII,1, p. 10,1–7), the demiurge’s inferior
status of an incompetent semblance-maker is described in the following fashion: “He saw
a reflection (εἴδωλον), and with reference to the reflection (εἴδωλον) that he saw in
himself, he fabricated the world (κόσμος). With a reflection (εἴδωλον) of a reflection
(εἴδωλον) he worked upon the world, and then even the reflection (εἴδωλον) of what had
appeared was taken away from him”.
23
This Platonic distinction between accurate resemblance (εἰκών) and perverted
semblance (φάντασμα or εἴδωλον), such as outlined in the Sophist (235a–236c, 239b–
242c), is rendered in Coptic as a hierarchy of two kinds of “likenesses” (ine): the
“likeness” of Sophia’s rational conception to its superior model vs. the remote “likeness”
of Ialdabaoth’s ordered world, which is two degrees removed from the original.
Ialdabaoth is virtually identified with Plato’s “painter” (R. 10.597b–598d), the producer
of deceiving simulacra, and with the “sophist” engaged in “the craft of semblance-
making” (Sph. 239c–242b).

(Pantasia) deprived of reason (logos) and light (p. 78,33–35)” will

subsequently be arranged by the Demiurge and the devil, his obedient
“servant” or “hand”,24 into three different regions that together constitute
the sublunary realm (p. 103,13–104,3):
Now the whole constitution of matter is tripartite. The [first] powers, which the spiritual
Logos (πνευματικός λόγος) brought forth according to imagination (φαντασία) and
presumption, he (sc. the demiurge with the devil as his “hand”) placed in the first
spiritual order (τάξις πνευματική). The ones that these next brought forth in their desire
for dominion he placed in the middle space (χώρα) as powers of desire for dominion, so
that they might govern and command the constitution below them with necessity
(ἀνάγκη) and compulsion. And those that had come to be from envy (φθόνος) and
jealousy, and all the progeny from this sort of condition, he placed as a servant order
(τάξις) in charge of the lowest ones and commanding all that exists and all generation.
From them arise the diseases, for they are, as it were, quick to destroy, eager to procreate
but having no permanence in the place from which they slip away and to which they will
again dissolve. And for this reason he placed over them commanding powers that
continuously work on matter (ὕλη), so that the offspring of those coming into being may
also continuously come into existence. For this is their glory.
The purpose of the demiurge’s organization of matter is not to annul the

evil inherent in it but to bring its chaotic “powers” in conformity with a
tripartite division of reality into the spiritual, animate, and material
domains. The order imposed on matter creates an effect of resemblance to
this overarching structure, but such an effect is delusional and conceals
what is, in fact, the relationship of dissimilitude and difference. The high-
est “spiritual order” (τάξις) in this “pit of ignorance” (p. 89,25) is nothing
but a fraudulent imitation of the spiritual realm, contrived by the Logos’
presumptuous thought and presided over by the devil.25 The “middle
space” is assigned to “powers of desire for dominion”, which are the in-
ferior replicas of the demiurge’s host of celestial (psychic) powers. Finally,
24
The demiurge uses the devil as his “hand” and “mouth”, which is exactly the way in
which he himself is used by the superior Logos. The interaction between the members in
each couple is defined by recourse to the Middle Platonist theory of πρόσχρησις and to its
basic principle that, in a multi-layered universe, a superior cause remains active in the
next subordinate layer by “making use” of its presiding power. Numenius of Apamea
applies the same principle to resolve the paradox of the transcendent first god who, albeit
“inactive”, can still be viewed as productive in the sense of “using” the creative capacity of
the second god (Fr. 12 des Places). Philo of Alexandria also speaks of the divine Logos as
the cause ᾧ καθάπερ ὀργάνῳ προσχρησάμενος (θεὸς) ἐκοσμοποιεῖ (Deus 57).
25
The devil, also called the “world-ruler” (κοσμοκράτωρ), is a mixture of two
substances, spiritual and material, and in this way both inferior and superior to the
demiurge – inferior in rank and substance because his superordinate creator is made of a
more refined soul-substance, but also superior inasmuch as endowed with the spiritual
element issued from the Logos’ presumptuous thought and thus not as completely
ignorant as the demiurge of “the superior (spiritual) things”; cf. Iren. Adv. haer. 1.5.4.

120 Zlatko Pleše
the lowest order consists of the powers of “envy and jealousy” that
constantly labor on a “fluent matter” (p. 104,4), perpetuating the change of
its elemental constituents and maintaining the continuity of their genera-
tion and passing away.26
The passage contains a number of overt references to the world-model
outlined in the Timaeus and thus provides an excellent case in point for
assessing the key divergences between the Platonic and Gnostic views of
the sublunary world. The “spiritual Logos” acts very much like the Platonic
craftsman, ordering the material realm and informing it with a specific
finality (οἰκονομία); the irrational powers “commanding the constitution
below them with necessity” (ἀνάγκη) personify the mechanical processes
which Plato attributes to an unintelligent “errant” cause (Ti. 47e–48b); and
the lowest or “servant” powers are subject to the same continuous process
of generation and destruction as Plato’s shifting images of elemental bodies
that appear in and slip away from the cosmic receptacle (49d–52c). The
idea that the sublunary realm is filled with various “orders” of powers has
no explicit correlate in Plato, but it could easily have been derived from the
later Platonist dogma that “no part of the world is without a share in soul
or in a living being superior to mortal nature” (Alcin. Did. 15, 171.18–19).
What is profoundly non-Platonic, however, is a morbid condition that
permeates the Valentinian physical universe, instigated by the cosmocrator
and his “spiritual order”. Confusion and indetermination that characterize
only the initial condition of Plato’s phenomenal world, prior to the demi-
urge’s imposition of geometrical configurations on the pre-cosmic flux of
elemental vestiges, continue to dominate the Valentinian realm below the
heaven until its final dissolution into nothingness. In this radical re-
configuration of Platonic hierarchies, the physical world retains, for as long
as it lasts, the status of a simulacrum, filled with “phantoms, shadows, and
illusions … whose end will be like their beginning: coming from what was
not, they will return to what will not be “ (Tri. Trac. NHC I,5, p. 78,32–
79,3). The imperfection of this perverted semblance of perfect reality
cannot be identified with negative evil, in the Platonic sense of a necessary
defect in the spatial realization of the ideal pattern. We are dealing here
26
For a very similar description of the three domains within the sublunary realm, see
Clement of Alexandria’s Excerpts from Theodotus 48.2–3: “And of the material elements
he (sc. the demiurge) made one out of grief, creating according to substance “the spiritual
forces of wickedness with whom is our contest” (Eph 6,12) … And another he made from
fear, the wild beasts, and yet another from consternation and perplexity, the elements of
the (physical) world”. Cf. also Iren. Adv. haer. 1.5.4. For the figure of the devil in
Gnosticism and in various other currents of second-century Christianity see esp. A.
O RBE, En torno al Diablo, in: id., Estudios sobre la teología cristiana primitiva, Madrid
1994, 187–235.

with an irreparable deficiency stemming from the Logos’ misconstruing of

the spiritual “fullness” – a mental construct (ἐννόημα)27 conjured up and
sustained by the disorderly movements and irrational impulses of his
presumptuous thought (p. 80,30–81,1):
For since the Logos was in such an unstable condition, he no longer attempted to bring
forth in the manner of emissions (προβολαί), which are fullnesses (πληρώματα) of glory
originated for the glory of the Father; rather, he brought forth weak and small creatures,
infected with the same sicknesses with [which] he himself had been infected.
4. Malum morale
In addressing the problem of human evil and its etiology, multiple Gnostic
traditions looked for solutions that could simultaneously resonate with
Platonist psychological doctrines and with Judeo-Christian conceptions of
the origin, nature, and destiny of the human being. This ambitious
intertextual enterprise had an important precedent in the Alexandrian
tradition of biblical interpretation, best evidenced in the monumental
exegetical work of Philo of Alexandria, where the Genesis account of the
creation of Adam and his threefold makeup (God-inbreathed spirit – soul
– flesh) was accommodated and partly integrated to Plato’s tripartite
anthropology (intellect – soul – body). The adoption of this hybrid blend
of two structurally analogous but conceptually diverging positions per-
mitted Gnostic authors a considerable degree of latitude in their expla-
nations of human condition and its evil inclinations. By constantly shifting
between Jewish and Platonist traditions of theodicy, Gnostic narratives of
incarnate humanity produce a parallax effect in which evil is alternately
blamed on the recalcitrant substrate (corporeal matter or flesh), on exter-
27
Cf. Plot. Enn. 2.9 [33] 11.24–27: “But if it (sc. the “image of Soul”, or the reflection-
in-matter of Sophia’s rational conception of the universe) is a concept (ἐννόημα), first of
all they must explain the meaning of this name, and then how it exists, unless one will
give the thought power to make; but how can the making be attributed to a figment of
thought (πλάσμα)?” The Gnostics probably borrowed the term ἐννόημα from Stoic
epistemology, where it designates the product of empty imagination (τὸ φανταστικόν), a
class of universal concepts (e.g. universal Man) or fictitious entities (e.g. the Giants) that
have no reality outside the mind. The physical world as the solidified construct of an
illicit deliberation by the Logos (or by Sophia in other ‘Valentinian’ accounts) is an
ontological chimaera (ἐννόημα) which, similarly to the Stoic concept of the “all” (a
fictitious combination of the corporeal universe and the incorporeal void that surrounds
it), transgresses both physical and conceptual boundaries between bodies and
incorporeals. See, for instance, Exc. Theod. 46, where the Savior is said to “have drawn
these (sc. Sophia’s passions) and changed them from incorporeal and accidental passion
into matter as yet incorporeal, and next, in the same fashion, into compounds and
bodies”.

122 Zlatko Pleše
nal agency (celestial rulers, the devil, demonic powers), and on human
choices (the lower or irrational soul, the spirit of wickedness).
The revisionist interpretation of the biblical story of Adam in the
‘Sethian’ Apocryphon of John provides an illustrative example for this
constant shifting of exegetical viewpoints. Two accounts of the creation of
Adam in the opening chapters of Genesis, first of “the man after image”
(Gen 1,26–27) and then of the “molded man” (2,7), are interpreted not as
complementary versions of the same event, but rather as consecutive
moments in a gradual formation of a tripartite human being. The under-
lying exegetical framework for this curious cut-and-paste approach to the
biblical text is made up of heterogeneous textual segments borrowed from
Plato’s narrative of the creation of man in the Timaeus (69c–d; 73b–76e),
Philo of Alexandria’s philosophically-driven interpretations of the same
biblical verses (e.g. Opif. 134; LA 1.31–42; Det. 82–83), and various
versions of the astrological doctrine of planetary melothesia. Filtered
through this intertextual grid, the creation of Adam is turned into a three-
stage process which unfolds in the following fashion (BG 2, p. 47,14–55,18;
NHC III,1, p. 21,16–27,4; NHC II,1, p. 14,13–21,16):
(i) the molding of Adam’s “psychic body” and its sevenfold framework
by the irrational demiurge and his seven celestial archons after the
image of a spiritual prototype (“Geradamas”), which is then pro-
jected onto the primeval water (Gen 1,26–27);
(ii) the correction of the resulting incongruity between the spiritual
prototype and its psychic replica, unable to stand up and move, by
the demiurge’s inadvertent infusion of his spiritual “power”,
previously taken from Sophia, into the psychic Adam (Gen 2,7);
(iii) the relegation of the spirit-endowed psychic Adam to the realm of
matter on the part of the demiurge and his planetary rulers and the
subsequent formation of Adam’s material body (Gen 2,7).28
28
The distinction between the archetypal Adam (“Geradamas”) and his molded copy
is Philonic (cf. Opif. 134), and so is the correction of the gap between the two by the act
of divine “inbreathing”; cf. Det. 82–83 and esp. LA 1.36–38: “Now the expression
‘breathed into’ is equivalent to ‘inspired’ or ‘be-souled’ that which is inanimate … The
expression reveals some more physical rationale; for there must be three things, that
which breathes in, that which receives, and that which is inbreathed. Now that which
breathes in is God, that which receives is the (inactive) intellect, and that which is
inbreathed is the spirit. What then is to be inferred from these premises? A union of the
three comes about, as God extends the power that proceeds from him through the spirit,
which is the intermediary, until it reaches the subject. And for what purpose save that we
may obtain a conception of him? For how would the soul have conceived of God if he had
not breathed into it and touched it according to his power?” The order of composition of

The end product of this complicated duel of wits between the cosmic and
spiritual powers is a composite being that internalizes all levels of the
Gnostic ontological hierarchy: the spiritual (pneumatic) level of the trans-
cendent One and its aeons; the intermediary animate (psychic) realm of the
demiurge and his minions in charge of the celestial sphere; and the
material (hylic) world below the moon. Among these constitutive aspects
of the protoplast human, the psychic body stands out as his original and
distinctive nature, a sort of receptacle for the other two substances, spirit-
ual and material, which will be acquired in the next two formative stages.
By its median position and its mediating function, Adam’s soul-element
closely corresponds to a “mortal kind of soul” of the Timaeus, deliberately
“built on” by the lesser cosmic gods (69c–d) to ensure the intellect’s
control over the body; and it also corresponds, to the extent allowed by the
counter-pressure of the Genesis narrative, to the Middle Platonist
construct of a “simple” soul – an entity intermediate between the intel-
ligible and the material domains, laying hold on both and serving as a locus
of their struggle for mastery.29
Adam’s body (animate body – spiritual power – material body) reflects the sequence that
Plato’s postulated for the framing of the visible world (Ti. 30b–c): (i) creation of soul; (ii)
intellect fashioned within soul; (iii) soul fitted within body. The creation of the seven
parts of Adam’s psychic body and its subsequent incarnation is based on Plato’s account
of how the lesser gods “built on the mortal kind of soul” for a newly incarnated
“immortal principle of soul” (Ti. 69c–d) and then encompassed these two kinds of soul
within a sevenfold bodily frame (73b–76e). In the Apocryphon of John, as well as in Philo,
the exigencies of exegesis led to the suppression of any reference to Plato’s doctrine of the
pre-incarnate individual soul and its descent into the body. (Interestingly, this classical
Platonic doctrine of the pre-existent intellectual souls entering the physical body will be
introduced in the later sections of the Apocryphon of John to explain the formation and
composite makeup of the post-Adamic lineage; cf. II,1 p. 24,26–25,9). In both instances,
the archetypal Adam figures as the model for the creation of its imperfect copy, but this
spiritual prototype does not get dragged down into a disorderly material substrate.
Finally, the fashioning of each of Adam’s seven psychic bodily elements by a different
heavenly ruler reflects the astrological rule whereby the individual constituents of the
human physique belong to a separate celestial power. For various forms of planetary
melothesia, see for instance Ptol. Tetr. 3.11; Hermippus 1.13 and 2.3 (18–20, 37–39 Kroll);
Herm. Iatromath. 1.1–6 (Phys. med. gr. min. 1, 387); Procl. In Ti. 42e (3, 354–355 Diehl).
A more detailed account of various traditions that contributed to this creative misprision
of two Genesis accounts of the creation of Adam in the Apocryphon of John, see Z. PLEŠE,
Poetics of the Gnostic Universe. Narrative and Cosmology in the Apocryphon of John,
Leiden/Boston 2006, 200–210.
29
For the “simple soul” in Plutarch, see the passages cited supra n. 11; for Atticus, cf.
Fr. 11 and 15 des Places. It is true that, in contrast to Adam’s psychic body, this simple
soul is “from the beginning intimate with body” (Plut. An. procr. 28.1026E) and thus, as
Atticus put it, “irrational and disorderly” (Fr. 11). As already suggested, the neutral status

124 Zlatko Pleše
The imprisonment of Adam into the material body, or his “second

modeling” (ἀνάπλασις), is provoked by the archons’ bitter realization that
their own product has been granted the spiritual power and thus made
intellectually superior to them. Cast into a disorderly mélange of primal
elements, Adam’s soul falls prey to violent affections which threaten to
sever its newly acquired fellowship with the inbreathed spiritual power.
The disruption of this fragile communion with the spiritual agency is
prevented by the providential visitation of a feminine power (“luminous
afterthought” or “the thought of the first light”) from the higher realm (BG
2, p. 55,2–17; NHC III,1, p. 26,13–27,4):
They (sc. the seven archons) saw the human being: he was superior to them. They made a
plan with all the host of angels belonging to the archons and with the rest of their powers.
Then they mixed fire and earth with water and flame. They seized them together with the
four winds blowing with fire, joining them with one another and [causing a great]
turmoil. They brought him into the shadow of death. They performed once more yet
another act of modeling (πλάσις) from earth, water, fire, and spirit (πνεῦμα) – that is,
from matter (ὕλη) and darkness and desire (ἐπιθυμία) and the adversary spirit
(ἀντικείμενον πνεῦμα; NHC III,1: their counterfeit spirit, ἀντίμιμον πνεῦμα). This is the
bond, this is the cave (m+haou; NHC III,1: σπηλαῖον) of the modeled form (πλάσμα) of
the body (σῶμα) in which they clothed the human being for (his) bondage to matter
(NHC III,1: the bond of forgetfulness λήθη). This is the first one who descended and the
first to separate. But in him was the thought (ἔννοια) of the first light, raising his
thinking.
The passage is filled with the Platonist and biblical clichés for the physical
body and the material world (“the shadow of death”, “cave”, “the bond of
forgetfulness”), suggesting that the deficiency of the earthly Adam and his
progeny results from the accretion of material elements. But the elemental
mélange is not the only ingredient used in Adam’s “second modeling”, and
certainly not the principal cause of irrational affections (“desire”) that give
rise to disorderliness, vice, and the loss of superior knowledge (“forget-
fulness”). Matter is the locus of evil in the earthly Adam as well as its
necessary precondition, but the true cause of evil lies in the “adversary” or
“counterfeit” spirit which takes up residence in the material body to
counteract the beneficent work of Adam’s spiritual helper and to prevent
his deliverance from the inexorable laws of physical fate.
The same counterfeit spirit exerts its nefarious influence in the sub-
sequent history of earthly humanity and constitutes an inextricable part of
its material condition. Interestingly, the formation of individual members
of the human race does not reflect the pattern applied to the creation of
of Adam’s soul-substance (neither rational nor irrational but capable of moving in either
direction) probably results from a mutual readjustment of the base biblical text and the
superimposed Platonist model.

Adam (“psychic body” or the mortal soul – spiritual element – material

body), but follows instead the Platonic scenario of pre-existent immortal
souls descending into physical bodies. Originally the residents of the
spiritual domain, where they were already grouped according to the
duration of their future incarnate existence (“the souls of the saints” which
will be saved at once and the “repentant souls” caught in the cycles of
reincarnation), these immortal souls are sent down to the material realm,
“made to drink water of forgetfulness by the first ruler so that they might
not know where they had come from” (NHC III,1, p. 25,7–9), and sub-
jected to the chain of natural causality (“fate”) and the counterfeit spirit as
its principal agency. Created by the archons “in imitation of the spirit
which has descended” (BG 74,6ff; NHC III,1, p. 38,17ff), this “counterfeit”
spirit “befouls the souls” by ruse and subversion, and replaces their
spiritual yearning for truth with sexual desire (ἐπιθυμία). Just as the
demiurge and his archons govern the physical world by the rule of fate
(εἱμαρμένη), so does the imitative spirit act on every embodied soul, “steers
(it) into temptation” (BG 2, p. 75,1; NHC III,1, p. 39,3: “distraction”), and
makes it an accomplice in its own imprisonment “down to the present
time” (BG 2, p. 75,10; NHC III,1, p. 39,10–11).
As in the case of Adam, the negative influence of the counterfeit spirit is
countered by a providential activity of a spiritual emissary (“the after-
thought of light”), who imparts “the spirit of life” to every incarnate soul in
order to “rectify the posterity and heal it of the deficiency” (NHC II,1, p.
25,13–14). As a result, the human soul, even though confined within the
sphere of physical fate and exposed to constant assaults of bodily affect-
tions, is granted autonomy in the choice of its sublunary existence: either a
complete divestment of the affections and the striving for immortality or a
willful enslavement to appetite and vice.30 Since the rule of physical fate is
30
The Apocryphon of John appears to follow the Middle Platonist formula of
conditional fate whereby, in the realm of human rational decision, the chain of causation
becomes ineluctable only upon being triggered by acts of free will. The general laws of
consequence in the physical realm are firmly established, including the insertion of the
pre-existent souls into bodies, but thanks to the activity of a higher providence, it is “in
our power” (τὸ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν) to choose between these two causal patterns – “one of divine
happiness and the other of godless misery” (Plato, Tht. 176d–e; cf. Ti. 42a–b). Cf. Alcin.
Did. 26,179.3–13: “For fate occupies the status of a law: it does not say, as it were, that
this person will do this and the other will suffer that, for that would entail an infinity of
possibilities … and then what is in our power would also vanish as well as praise and
blame and everything like that; but (fate rather says) that if a soul chooses this or that
kind of life and performs such-and-such deeds, such-and-such consequences will follow
for it”; Ps.-Plutarch, De fato 6.571D: “Of these (species of contingency) what is in our
power is the more general; for it has two kinds, the one arising from passion and anger

126 Zlatko Pleše
subordinate to “providential care” (BG 2, p. 68,10 ἐπισκοπή), the majority

of embodied souls will be healed of their deficiency and ascend to their
spiritual abode – some at once (“the souls of the saints”, or “the seed of
Seth”) and others (“the repentant souls”) after a long process of purifica-
tion in the cycles of reincarnation.31
Indeed, the power (δύναμις) will descent unto everyone, for without it no one is able to
stand up. And after they are begotten, then, if the spirit (πνεῦμα) of life increases, the
power comes and strengthens that soul (ψυχή), and nothing can mislead it into the works
of wickedness (πονηρία). But those upon whom the counterfeit spirit (πνεῦμα) descends
are drawn by it and led astray. … In the case of those others (who have not known to
whom they belong), the despicable spirit (πνεῦμα) has increased within them while they
were going astray; and it weighs down (βαρεῖν) the soul (ψυχή) and beguiles it into the
work of wickedness (πονηρία), and it casts it into forgetfulness. And after it has come out
(of the body), it is handed over to the authorities (ἐξουσία) that came into being through
the ruler (ἄρχων), and they bind it with bonds and cast it (again) into the prison. And
they go around with it until it awakens out of forgetfulness and takes knowledge unto
itself. (NHC II,1, p. 26,12–27,10; cf. BG 2, p. 68,4–69,12)32
and desire, and the other from rational calculation or mind; of these we can speak as a
matter of choice (κατὰ προαίρεσιν)”.
31
Eternal punishment is reserved solely for the apostates, or those who “have gained
knowledge” but thereupon, on their own will, “turned away from it” (NHC II,1, p. 27,21–
30).
32
Striking similarities between the opposite spirits in the Apocryphon of John and the
Qumran Instruction on the Two Spirits, the spirit of truth and the spirit of wickedness
(1QS 3:13–4:26) have not passed unnoticed by scholars; cf. e.g. A. BÖHLIG, Zum
antimimon Pneuma in den koptisch-gnostischen Texten, in: Id., Mysterion und
Wahrheit, Leiden 1968, 162–174, esp. 173–174. Affinities are striking indeed, and so are
divergences – thus, in the Qumran text, the dualism of the opposite spirits is instituted
and enforced by a single divinity; cf. J.J. C OLLLINS, The Origin of Evil in Apocalyptic
Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls, in: Id., Seers, Sybils, and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman
Judaism, Leiden 1997, 287–299, esp. 292–296. The hypothesis of a direct borrowing does
not seem as plausible as that of a common source. In all likelihood, this source is Jewish
wisdom tradition, which also posits a radical antagonism of the opposite forces at all
levels of creation: ethical and physical, cosmological and psychological. As stated by Ben
Sira, “All things are twofold, one opposite to the other, and he has made nothing
deficient” (Sir 33:9); see J. FREY, Different Patterns of Dualistic Thought in the Qumran
Library, in: M. BERNSTEIN/F. G ARCÍA M ARTÍNEZ/J. K AMPEN (eds.), Legal Texts and Legal
Issues, Leiden 1997, 275–335. In the case of the Apocryphon of John, this multidimen-
sional pattern of dualism is incorporated into a Platonist cosmological framework and its
distinction between physical fate and metaphysical providence. An important inter-
mediary in this process of the creative fusion of heterogeneous traditions might have
been Philo of Alexandria, whose exegesis of Exodus 12,23 (“The Lord will pass over that
door and will not let the destroyer enter your houses to strike”), preserved only in
Armenian translation, offers an attractive intertextual link between Platonist philosophy,
Wisdom literature, the Instruction on the Two Spirits from Qumran, and the Apocryphon

Other ‘Sethian’ narratives do not appear to share such an inclusive view of

salvation as the matter of individual choice. The Hypostasis of Archons, for
instance, draws a sharp dichotomy between the fallen “spiritual” race of
Seth, whose true “abode is in incorruptibility” (II,4 p. 93,29), and the rest
of “mortal humanity” (96,26–27), which is further divided into two
historical lineages: one born of Cain, “carnal” and fully enslaved to the
dominance of physical fate, and the other derived from Abel, or “psychic”,
which is capable of deliberately choosing virtue over vice. In spite of their
capacity for moral improvement, the members of the “psychic” race can
never “ascend into the limitless light where the posterity (of Seth) belongs”
(97,7–9). Their souls are of a mortal kind, fashioned by the cosmic rulers,
so that, after leaving their bodies at death, they can only be elevated to the
outer surface of heaven.33 The “spiritual” humans, in contrast, possess the
souls that “are come from above, out of the incorruptible light” (96,21–22).
Imprisoned in the cosmos, but never fully dominated by its rulers, they will
be awakened into clear perception by angelic visitations and return to their
supra-celestial abode. As the great angel Eleleth explains it to Norea, the
sister of Seth and the member of the superior “spiritual” generation,
Do you think that these (cosmic) archons (ἄρχων) have any power over you? None of
them can prevail against the root of truth; for on its account he (the Savior) has appeared
of John: “But as for the deeper meaning (of Ex 12,23), this must be said. Into every soul at
its very birth there enter two powers, the salutary and the destructive. If the salutary one
is victorious and prevails, the opposite one is too weak to see. And if the latter prevails,
no profit at all or little is obtained from the salutary one. Through these powers the world
too was created. People call them by other names: the salutary one they call powerful and
beneficent, and the opposite one unbounded and destructive. … But the nation is a
mixture of both, from which the heavens and the entire world as a whole have received
this mixture. Now, sometimes the evil becomes greater in this mixture, and hence (all
creatures) live in torment, harm, ignominy, contention, battle and bodily illness. … And
this mixture is in both the wicked man and the wise man, but not in the same way. For
the souls of foolish men have the unbounded and destructive rather than the powerful
and salutary (power), and it is full of misery when it dwells with earthly creatures. But the
prudent and noble (soul) rather receives the powerful and salutary (power) and, on the
contrary, possesses in itself good fortune and happiness, being carried around with the
heaven because of kinship with it” (Quaest. Ex. 1.23 Marcus).
33
The intermediate or “psychic” kind of human beings has its cosmic counterpart in
Sabaoth, the son of the supreme cosmic ruler (Ialdabaoth). According to Eleleth’s
revelatory account, Sabaoth came to understand the limitations of his father’s animate
nature. Upon “condemning his father and his mother matter”, he was appointed by
Sophia “in charge of the seventh heaven, below the veil between above and below”, and
was even instructed about the things that exist in the “eight haven” (95,13–96,3). Sabaoth
thus attains the status of an intermediary “between the cosmic and spiritual realms, but
because of his inferior nature (the son of Ialdabaoth and matter) he is unable to ascend to
“the limitless light” and join the “spiritual” race.

128 Zlatko Pleše
in the final ages (καιρός), and these authorities (ἐξουσία) will be dominated. And these
authorities cannot defile you or that race (γενεά); for your abode (μονή) is in
incorruptibility, where the virgin spirit (πνεῦμα παρθενικόν) dwells, which is superior to
the authorities of chaos (χάος) and to their world (κόσμος). (93,22–32)
The same division of humankind into three kinds or races – “pneumatic”,

“psychic”, and “hylic” – is a trademark of ‘Valentinian’ anthropology and
soteriology. The principle underlying this classification follows the pattern
of asymmetrical division which governs the Stoic scale of nature, and
whereby each higher class of beings possesses in addition to its own
distinctive characteristic all the properties of the inferior classes.34 In the
‘Valentinian’ version of this theory, the lowest position in the scale is
assigned to the hylic race, with materiality, irrationality (the “material
soul”), and propensity for evil as their defining traits.35 The psychic or
animate race is a mixed molding of the material body and a mortal soul
confected by the demiurge,36 and so it is simultaneously inclined toward
evil and capable of discerning and striving for what is good.37 Members of
the pneumatic race are in addition endowed with a superior spiritual
element, also called a “living” (immortal) soul, which enables them to
eradicate harmful passions, move beyond their putative beliefs, and attain
the impregnable knowledge of spiritual “fullness”.38 According to the
34
For the Stoic scale of nature and the logic of asymmetric dichotomy see D. H AHM,
Self-Motion from Aristotle to Newton, Princeton 1994, 175–225; various Gnostic
appropriations of this classification are discussed in A. O RBE, La definición del hombre
en la teología del s. II., Gregorianum 48 (1967) 522–576.
35
For the concept of the “material soul” see Exc. Theod. 50.1: “’Taking dust from the
earth’ (Gen 2,7) – not of the dry land but a portion of manifold and variegated matter –
he fashioned a soul, earthly and material, irrational and consubstantial with that of the
beasts. This is the man ‘according to the image’ (Gen 1,26)”; ibid. 50.2: “the material soul
which is the body of the divine soul”; cf. also Plotinus’s critique of this Gnostic construct
in Enn. II.9 [33] 5.16–22: “Foolish, too, is their introduction of this other soul, which they
compose of the elements; for how could the compound of the elements have any sort of
life? … And how can the soul be what holds the four elements together if it has come to
be out of them? And what can one say when they attribute to that soul apprehension and
deliberation and countless other things as well?”
36
For the Platonist background of this “mortal kind of soul” cf. supra, pp. 122–123.
37
Cf. e.g. Tri. Trac. (NHC I,5) p. 106,9–14: “Regarding the substance (οὐσία) of these
psychic ones, its condition is twofold, for it has an understanding and acknowledgment
(ὁμολογία) of what is superior, but it also inclines toward evil because of the inclination
of the (erroneous) thought”.
38
Many scholars maintain that the differences between the three races are not genetic
but rather behavioral. But this non-deterministic reading of the extant evidence can
hardly explain the following account of a threefold Adamic lineage from Exc. Theod.
55.2–56.3: “Therefore Adam sows neither from the spirit nor from that which was
breathed into him (the soul); for both are divine and both are put forth through him and

author of the Tripartite Tractate, the substantial differences between the

three classes of human beings can best be discerned in their specific re-
actions to the Savior’s redemptive advent to the world (NHC I,5, p. 118,14–
119,16):
Now humanity came to exist as three kinds according to substance (οὐσία) – spiritual,
animate, and material – reproducing the pattern (τύπος) of a threefold disposition
(διάθεσις) of the Logos, from which there came forth material, animate, and spiritual
beings. Each substance of the three races (γένος) is known from its fruit. And they were
not known at first, but (became so) only through the advent of the Savior, who
enlightened the saints and revealed what each one was. The spiritual race is like light
from light and like spirit from spirit. … It received knowledge (saune, γνῶσις) at once
from the (Savior’s) revelation. The animate race, again, being like light from fire, tarried
before receiving the knowledge of him who had appeared to it, and still more before
rushing to him in faith (nahte, πίστις). … As for the material race, it is alien in every
way, like darkness that avoids the irradiation of light because it is dissolved (καταλύειν)
by its appearance; for it did not accept his <coming> … and is hateful towards the Lord
because he appeared.
The passage provides a handy summary of the ‘Valentinian’ dialectic of

human predestination and freedom. The hylic race is “hateful” toward the
incarnate Savior because it is “alien in every way”: not only is it deprived of
the Savior’s spiritual and animate components but it also cannot match the
impassible and sinless condition of his material body. The psychic race is
granted the autonomy of choice and so can transcend its material con-
dition, but, inasmuch as lacking the spiritual element, it will not ascend to
the spiritual fullness.39 The pneumatic humans are predestined to attain
full salvation on account of their spiritual element. The other two compo-
nents of their natural constitution are nothing but temporary limitations,
not by him. But his material element is active toward seed and generation, as though
mixed with seed and unable to separate from this linkage in physical life. In this sense
Adam is our father, ‘the first man from the earth, a man of dust’ (1Cor 15,47). Now if it
had sown from the animate element and the spiritual in the same way as from the
material, they (his offspring) would all have become equal and righteous and the teaching
would have been in all. For this reason, many are material, but not many are animate, and
only few are spiritual. Now the spiritual is saved by nature, but the animate is free-willed
and has the capacity for faith and incorruptibility as well as for unbelief and corruption
according to its own choice; but the material perishes by nature”.
39
See Tri. Trac. (NHC I,5) p. 122,12–27: “Now the Election (viz. the pneumatics) is of
the same body (σῶμα) and substance (οὐσία) with the Savior, being like a bridal chamber
on account of its oneness and unity with him; for more than anything else it was for its
sake that Christ came. The Calling (viz. the psychics), in its turn, occupies the region
(χώρα) of those who rejoice at the bridal chamber, and who are content and happy about
the union of the bridegroom and the bride. Thus, the place (τόπος) that the Calling will
come to possess is the aeon (αἰών) of the images (εἰκών), where the Logos has not yet
been united with the fullness (πλήρωμα)”.

130 Zlatko Pleše
already neutralized by “the knowledge (they) received from the Savior’s

revelation”, and then completely overcome in their final reintegration
(ἀποκατάστασις) with the spiritual fullness. For the pneumatic race, in
short, evil is a transient disposition; for psychics, the matter of rational
choice; for material humans, an enduring and irreversible condition.
The above passage is remarkable, too, for its strong affirmation of the
Gnostic rule of transitivity and homologation. A tripartite division of
humanity, as we are told, “reproduces the pattern (τύπος) of a threefold
disposition (διάθεσις) of the Logos” – a sequence of three mental affections
of the self-willed Logos consequent of his misguided attempt to compre-
hend the unfathomable Father.40 The first is erroneous judgment, or
“presumptuous thought”, which leads to ignorance and various emotional
disturbances. The second is repentance (μετάνοια), the acknowledgement
of the evil condition and a turning away from it, which brings up the
Logos’ remembrance of the spiritual realm. The final affection is joy, a
positive emotion felt toward the heavenly Savior and his disclosure of the
spiritual world. Out of the three races of humans, only the pneumatics are
predestined to reenact in full this pattern and joyfully respond to the
advent of the Savior. The problem, however, is whether the analogy with
the threefold “pattern” of the Logos can be extended all the way back to the
initial state, prior to the pneumatics’ entry into matter and oblivion, so as
to make them guilty of the same willful transgression and of the same
erroneous judgment as the Logos, their divine archetype. The Tripartite
Tractate remains non-committal on this point, and so is the case with
other ‘Valentinian’ (and ‘Sethian’) accounts, including those which resort
to the Platonist imagery of the pre-existent intellectual soul descending
into the body. Thus, in the probably ‘Valentinian’ Exegesis on the Soul, the
immortal soul, originally “a virgin” and “alone with the Father,” is
portrayed as “entering this (bodily) life” and “falling into the hands of
numerous robbers” (NHC II,6, p. 126,22–27), but no hint is given that her
embodiment is the consequence of a mistaken judgment, of some sort of
mental derangement or deviation.41 What is emphasized instead, here as
well as in other Gnostic narratives, is a providential dimension of the
descent. The immortal spiritual race (pre-existent souls) is sent to the
physical world on the same redemptive mission as its divine counterparts
40
Cf. supra, pp. 112–114, 118–121.
41
In Iamblichus’s survey of previous theories of the soul’s descent, “the Gnostics” are
presented as laying blame precisely on mental derangement and deviation from
normality (An. 24: κατὰ δὲ τοῦς Γνωστικοὺς παρανοίας ἢ παρεκβάσεως; but it may well
be that Iamblichus summarizes here the myth of Sophia and her wrongful motivation,
and not the motivation of individual human souls).

(the heavenly Seth, Jesus the Savior, etc.): to enter the contest with the
cosmic rulers and their demonic powers; to experience evil and im-
perfection in order to re-assert its own perfection; to renounce the illusory
nature of the material world as a complete perversion of the true ideal
order;42 and, finally, to receive the gift of knowledge, through divine re-
velation and the mystery of baptism, and thereby to exchange this material
deficiency, to sublate it so to speak, for spiritual incorruptibility.43 By
entering this burdensome “ministry of exchange” (cf. 2Cor 5,18: διακονία
τῆς καταλλαγῆς), immortal humanity becomes an indispensable agency in
the universal design of salvation (οἰκονομία); the fate of this world and the
final restoration of spiritual unity depend on its actions.
Human wickedness (malum morale) results from the malignant activity of a
deceptive irrational force inherent in matter, which perpetuates the
imprisonment of humanity in the material body through the rule of physical
fate. Those humans who possess an immortal soul (or spiritual power, or
intellect) are capable of choosing between good and evil, but only upon being
“awakened” to salvation through a redemptive visitation from the spiritual
realm. They are the agents of universal salvation (“reintegration with the
fullness”) and their renunciation of the physical world contributes to its
ultimate perdition.
42
See, for instance, the following section from the ‘Valentinian’ Authoritative
Teaching (NHC VI,3, p. 31,24–32,15): “But the (immortal) soul who has tasted these
things (viz., fleshly desires induced by the Adversary) has come to understand that sweet
passions (πάθος) are transient. She had learned about evil (κακία), forsaken these
passions, and adopted a new conduct (πολιτεία). Following this, she disdains this life
because it is transient, and she seeks the kinds of food (τροφή) that will bring her life; she
leaves behind the food of falsehood and learns about her light; she walks about stripped
off this world (κόσμος) and her true garment clothes her within … and she learns about
the deep (βάθος) and runs into her sheepfold as the shepherd stands at the door. For all
the shame and scorn that she has received in this world (κόσμος) she received ten
thousand times as much grace (χάρις) and glory”.
43
Cf. e.g. the ‘Sethian’ Gospel of the Egyptians, NHC III,2, p. 63,4–18: “He (the great
Seth) passed through the three advents (παρουσία) … to save that (race) which went
astray (πλανᾶσθαι), by way of the exchange (hwtp, καταλλαγή) of the world (κόσμος)
and baptism (βάπτισμα) through a Logos-born (λογογενής) body (σῶμα) that the great
Seth prepared for himself, secretly through the virgin (παρθένος), in order that the holy
ones may be born (again) through the holy spirit, by invisible (ἀόρατον) secret symbols
(σύμβολον), through the exchange of one world (κόσμος) for the other world (κόσμος),
and by renunciation (ἀποτάσσεσθαι) of the world and the god of the thirteen aeons
(αἰών)”. The passage seems indebted to Paul’s dialectic of redemptive participation and
exchange (sublation, reconciliation); cf. 2Cor 5,17–21.

132 Zlatko Pleše
Conclusion
There is one recurrent theme, a Leitmotiv, that characterizes the Gnostic

accounts of evil – the theme of ignorance (ἄγνοια) as the symptom of an
internal split, of a divided self. This ignorance manifests itself already at
the level of the absolute One, in the impossibility of closing the irreducible
gap between its unlimited potency that lacks ontological consistency and
its inadequate symbolic (“aeonic”) representation. At the level of the
rational cosmic agency (Sophia, Logos), ignorance arises from an
impetuous attempt at articulating the transcendent One – an attempt
which collapses back into itself and ends up in the cleavage between a
flawed idealized projection (rational “likeness”) of the One and its
unaccountable remainder (“dark matter”). Finally, ignorance defines the
situation of the immortal souls sent down to the world on a salvific
mission, but soon finding their true spiritual ‘selves’ disoriented and
divided, seduced by the cunning power of their bodily prison. Ignorance,
in short, is a state of disjuncture, the sickness of mind accompanied with
emotional disturbances and with a wrongful desire, the ultimate sign of
sickness, to cover the gap and to reconcile the contradiction. This is the
reason why the absolute One proliferates its thought-content (“aeons”), in
its futile attempt to reach the ultimate ground of its existence; this is why
Sophia illuminates the darkness of matter, only to discover that her
corrective act has given life to an aggressive impostor, a positive force of
evil, and thus come to serve the consuming fire of his irrational and brutal
impulses; and this is also why the captive souls are ready to accept their
own bodily imprisonment and become, so to speak, their own tormentors.
Evil, thus, is not a mere privation of good, but rather a misguided attempt
to reconcile spirit with matter, soul with body, intellect with irrational
passion. This theosophical answer to the problem of evil is nowhere more
clearly and masterfully expressed than in the following passage from the
Gospel of Truth (NHC I,3, p. 17,4–20):
Inasmuch as the entirety has searched for the one from whom they had come forth – and
the entirety was inside of him, the inconceivable uncontained, who is superior to all
thought – ignorance of the father caused agitation and fear. And the agitation grew dense
like fog, so that no one could see. For this reason error (πλάνη) found strength and
labored at her matter (ὕλη) in emptiness. Without having learned to know the truth, it
came to dwell in in a molded form (πλάσμα), preparing by means of the power, in beauty,
a substitute for truth.44
44
Translated by B. LAYTON, The Gnostic Scriptures, New York 1987, 253.

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Die Wurzel allen Übels

Vorstellungen über die Herkunft des Bösen

Ratio Religionis Studien III

Fabienne Jourdan und Rainer Hirsch-Luipold

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

© 2014 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen. www.mohr.de

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

FABIENNE JOURDAN & RAINER HIRSCH-LUIPOLD

III. Die Herkunft des Bösen und Schlechten

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

MARIE HÉLÈNE CONGOURDEAU

Register ................................................................................................................... 293

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

A great deal of recent scholarship on Gnosticism has been concerned with

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

Evidence from Hostile Sources:

The way in which various Gnostic traditions approached the problem of

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

specific philosophical school,5 he classes Gnostic speculative theology and

All these instances of Gnostic misprision of Plato stem from a perspectival

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

According to Plotinus, no serious follower of Plato would relinquish the

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

rational standards (logoi), to its inferior power of growth and generation.10

A radical anthropomorphic reconfiguration of Platonic hierarchies affects

Such a systematic application of anthropological categories to the physical

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

menal reality, including human beings.11 If the rational aspect of the

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

Evidence from Primary Sources: Gnostic Taxonomies of Evil

A complex theodicy that emerges from the anti-Gnostic polemical treatises

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

or of self-preservation and self-differentiation – which will be resolved

Just like the account of God’s internal development in the Apocryphon of

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

attested in the work of Antiochus of Ascalon. Knowledge acquisition in human beings,

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

(Logos) – more specifically, to its presumptuous will to mediate and

In most other Gnostic narratives, this misguided attempt at attaining God

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

The line of causation leading to Sophia’s “miscarriage” combines the

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

Just as God’s prior attempt at attaining self-knowledge by his intellect

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

tion.22 As stated in the longer redaction of the Apocryphon of John (II,1 p.

Whereas the ‘Sethian’ accounts tend to portray the demiurge as an

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

(Pantasia) deprived of reason (logos) and light (p. 78,33–35)” will

The purpose of the demiurge’s organization of matter is not to annul the

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

with an irreparable deficiency stemming from the Logos’ misconstruing of

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

The imprisonment of Adam into the material body, or his “second

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlags

Adam (“psychic body” or the mortal soul – spiritual element – material