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Posted on 07/18/2003 3:02:14 AM PDT by DoorGunner
The Gnostic Mytho-Logos
The Gnostic Idea or Notion was not informed by a philosophical world-view or procedure; rather, the Gnostic vision of the world was based upon the intuition of a radical and seemingly irreparable rupture between the realm of experience (pathos) and the realm of true Being, i.e., existence in its positive, creative, or authentic aspect. The problem faced by the Gnostics was how to explain such a radical, pre-philosophical intuition. This intuition is 'pre-philosophical' because the brute experience of existing in a world that is alien to humankind's aspirations may submit itself to a variety of interpretations; and the attempt at an interpretation may take on the form of either muthos or logos -- either a merely descriptive rendering of the experience, or a rationally ordered account of such an experience, including an explanation of its origins.
The ancient Greek explanation of this experience was to call it a primal 'awe' or 'wonder' felt by the human being as he faces the world that stands so radically apart from him, and to posit this experience as the beginning of philosophy (cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 982b 10-25 and Plato, Theaetetus 155d). But the Gnostics recognized this 'awe' as the product of a radical disruption of the harmony of a realm persisting beyond becoming -- that is, beyond 'becoming' in the sense of pathos, or 'that which is undergone'.
The muthos always corresponds to the 'first-hand' account rendered by one who has undergone, immediately, the effect of a certain event. The myth is always an explanation of something already known, and therefore carries its truth-claim along with it, just as the immediacy of an event forbids any doubt or questioning on the part of the one undergoing it.
The logos, on the other hand, is the product of a careful reflection (dianoia), and refers, for its truth-value, not to the immediate moment of 'grasping' a phenomenon (prolêpsis), but to the moment of reflection during which one attains a conceptual knowledge of the phenomenon, and first comes to 'know' it as such -- this is gnôsis: insight. The direct result of this gnôsis is the emergence from the sense of existence as pathos, to the actuality of being as aisthêsis -- that is, reception and judgment of experience by way of purely rational or divine criteria. Such criteria proceeds directly from the logos, or divine 'ordering principle,' to which the Gnostics believed themselves to be related, by way of a divine genealogy.
Although Gnostic onto-theology proceeds by way of an elaborate myth, it is a myth informed always by the logos, and is, in this sense, a true mythology -- that is, a rendering, in the immediacy of language, of that which is ever-present (to the Gnostic) as a product of privileged reflection.
The Myth of Sophia
According to Gnostic mythology (in general) We, humanity, are existing in this realm because a member of the transcendent godhead, Sophia (Wisdom), desired to actualize her innate potential for creativity without the approval of her partner or divine consort.
Her hubris, in this regard, stood forth as raw materiality, and her desire, which was for the mysterious ineffable Father, manifested itself as Ialdabaoth, the Demiurge, that renegade principle of generation and corruption which, by its unalterable necessity, brings all beings to life, for a brief moment, and then to death for eternity. However, since even the Pleroma itself is not, according to the Gnostics, exempt from desire or passion, there must come into play a salvific event or savior -- i.e., Christ, the Logos, the "messenger," etc. -- who descends to the material realm for the purpose of negating all passion, and raising the innocent human "sparks" (which fell from Sophia) back up to the Pleroma (cf. Apocryphon of John [Codex II] 9:25-25:14 ff.).
This process of re-integration with/in the godhead is one of the basic features of the Gnostic myth. The purpose of this re-integration (implicitly) is to establish a series of existents that are ontologically posterior to Sophia, and are the concrete embodiment of her 'disruptive' desire -- within the unified arena of the Pleroma. Indeed, if the Pleroma is really the Fullness, containing all things, it must contain the manifold principles of Wisdom's longing. In this sense, we must not view Gnostic salvation as a simply one-sided affair. The divine "sparks" that fell from Sophia, during her "passion," are un-integrated aspects of the godhead. We may say, then, that in the Hegelian sense the Gnostic Supreme God is seeking, eternally, His own actualization by way of full self-consciousness (cf. G.W.F. Hegel, History of Philosophy vol. 2, pp. 396-399). But it is not really this simple. The Supreme God of the Gnostics effortlessly generates the Pleroma, and yet (or for this very reason!) this Pleroma comes to act independently of the Father. This is because all members of the Pleroma (known as Aeons) are themselves "roots and springs and fathers" (Tripartite Tractate 68:10) carrying Time within themselves, as a condition of their Being.
When the disruption, brought about by the desire of Sophia, disturbed the Pleroma, this was not understood as a disturbance of an already established unity, but rather as the disturbance of an insupportable stasis that had come to be observed as divine. Indeed, when the Greeks first looked to the sky and admired the regularity of the rotations of the stars and planets, what they were admiring, according to the Gnostics, was not the image of divinity, but the image or representation of a 'divine' stagnancy, a law and order that stifled freedom, which is the root of desire (cf. Jonas, pp. 260-261).
The passion of Sophia -- her production of the Demiurge, his enslavement of the human "sparks" in the material cosmos, and the subsequent redemption and restoration -- are but one episode in the infinite, unfolding drama of spiritual existence. We, as human beings, just happen to be the unwitting victims of this particular drama. But if, as the Gnostics hold, our salvation consists in our becoming gods (Poimandres 26) or "lord[s] over creation and all corruption" (Valentinus, Fragment F, Layton) then how are we to be confident that, in ages to come, one of us will not give birth to another damned cosmos, just as Sophia had done?
(Excerpt) Read more at utm.edu ...
This demonstrates clearly, why Gnosticism cannot be imagined to be Biblical Christianity.
DG
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