Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/673

 his followers worshipped under the form of Athena, the goddess of wisdom. According to Valentinus's system, as described by Hippolytus (Book VI, xxv–xxvi), Sophia is the youngest of the twenty-eight aeons. Observing the multitude of æons and the power of begetting them, she hurries back into the depth of the Father, and seeks to emulate him by producing off-spring without conjugal intercourse, but only projects an abortion, a formless substance. Upon this she is cast out of the Pleroma. According to the Valentinian system as described by Irenajus (op. cit., I) and Tertullian (Adv. Valent., ix), Sophia conceives a pas- sion for the First Father himself, or rather, under pretext of love she seeks to know him, the Unknowable, and to comprehend his greatness. She would have suffered the consequence of her audacity by ultimate dissolution into the immensity of the Father, but for the Boundary Spirit. According to the Pistis Sophia (ch. xxix) Sophia, daughter of Barbelos, originally dwelt in the highest, or thirteenth heaven, but she is seduced by the demon Authades by means of a ray of light, which she mistook for an emanation from the First Father, Authades thus enticed her into Chaos below the twelve Æons, where she is imprisoned by evil powers. According to these ideas, matter is the fruit of the sin of Sophia; this, however, was but a Valentinian development; in the older speculations the existence of matter is tacitly presupposed as eternal with the Pleroma, and through her sin Sophia falls from the realm of light into the Chaos or realm of darkness. This original dualism, however, was overcome by the predommant spirit of Gnosticism, pantheistic emanationism. The Sophia myth is completely absent from the Basilidian and kindred systems. It is suggested, with great verisimilitude, that the Egyptian myth of Isis was the original source of the Gnostic "lower wisdom". In many systems this is sharply distinguished from the Higher Wisdom mentioned above; as, for instance, in the magic formula for the dead mentioned by Irenæus (op. cit., I, xxi, 5), in which the departed has to address the hostile archons thus: " I am a vessel more precious than the female who made you. If your mother ignores the source whence she is, I know myself, and I know- whence I am and invoke the incorruptible Sophia, who is in the Father, the mother of your mother, who has neither father nor husband. A man-woman, born from a woman, has made you, not knowing her mother, but thinking herself alone. But I invoke her mother." This agrees with the system minutely de- scribed by Irenæus (op. cit., I, iv–v), where Sophia Achamoth, or Lower Wisdom, the daughter of Higher Wisdom, becomes the mother of the Demiurge; she being the Ogdoad, her son the Hebdomad, they form a counterpart of the heavenly Ogdoad in the Pleromata. This is evidently a clumsy attempt to fuse into one two systems radically different, the Basilidian and the Valentinian; the ignorance of the Great Archon, which is the central idea of Basilides, is here transferred to Sophia, and the hybrid system ends in bewildering confusion.

(c) Soterilogy.—Gnostic salvation is not merely individual redemption of each human soul ; it is a cosmic process. It is the return of all things to what they were before the flaw in the sphere of the Æons brought matter into existence and imprisoned some part of the Divine Light in the evil Hyle. This setting free of the light sparks is the process of salvation ; when all light shall have left Hyle, it will be burnt up, destroyed, or be a sort of everlasting hell for the Hylicoi. In Basilidianism it is the Third Filiation that is captive in matter, and is gradually being saved, now that the knowledge of its existence has been brought to the first Archon and then to the Second Archon, to each by his respective Son; and the news has been spread through the Hebdomad by Jesus the Son of Mary, who died to redeem the Third Filiation. In Valentinianism the process is extraordinarily elaborate. When this world has been born from Sophia in consequence of her sin. Nous and Aletheia, two ^ons, by command of the Father, produce two new ^ons, Christ and the Holy Ghost; these restore order in the Pleroma, and in consequence all Æons together produce a new Æon, Jesus Logos, Soter, or Christ, whom they offer to the Father. Christ, the Son of Nous and Aletheia, has pity on the abortive substance born of Sophia and gives it essence and form. Whereupon Sophia tries to rise again to the Father, but in vain. Now the Æon Jesus-Soter is sent as second Saviour, he unites himself to the man Jesus, the son of Mary, at his baptism, and becomes the Saviour of men. Man is a creature of the Demiurge, a compound of soul, body, and spirit. His salvation consists in the return of his or spirit to the Pleroma; or if he be only a Psychicist, not a full Gnostic, his soul shall return to Achamoth. There is no resurrection of the body. (For further details and differences see .)

In Marcionism, the most dualistic phase of Gnosticism, salvation consisted in the possession of the knowledge of the Good God and the rejection of the Demiurge. The Good God revealed himself in Jesus and appeared as man in Judea; to know him, and to become entirely free from the yoke of the World-Creator or God of the Old Testament, is the end of all salvation. The Gnostic Saviour, therefore, is entirely different from the Christian one. For (1) the Gnostic Saviour does not save. Gnosticism lacks the idea of atonement. There is no sin to be atoned for, except ignorance be that sin. Nor does the Saviour in any sense benefit the human race by vicarious sufferings. Nor, finally, does he immediately and actively affect any individual human soul by the power of grace or draw it to God. He was a teacher, he once brought into the world the truth, which alone can save. Asa flame sets naphtha on fire, so the Saviour's light ignites predisposed souls moving down the stream of time. Of a real Saviour who with love human and Divine seeks out sinners to save them, Gnosticism knows nothing. The Gnostic Saviour (2) has no human nature, he is an æon, not a man ; he only seemed a man, as the three Angels who visited Abraham seemed to be men. (For a detailed exposition see {{sc|Docetæ) The -Eon Soter is brought into the strangest relation to Sophia: in some systems he is her brother, in others her son, in others again her spouse. He is sometimes identified with Christ, sometimes with Jesus; sometimes Christ and Jesus are the same aeon, sometimes they are different; sometimes Christ and the Holy Ghost are identified. Gnosticism did its best to utilize the Christian concept of the Holy Ghost, but never quite succeeded. She made him the Horos, or Methorion Pneuma, the Boundary-Spirit, the Sweet Odour of the Second Filiation, a companion æon with Christos, etc., etc. In some systems he is entirely left out.

(d) Eschatology.—It is the merit of recent scholarship to have proved that Gnostic eschatology, consisting in the soul's struggle with hostile archons in its attempt to reach the Pleroma, is simply the soul's ascent, in Babylonian astrology, through the realms of the seven planets to Anu. Origen (Contra Celsum, VI, xxxi), referring to the Ophitic system, gives us the names of the seven archons as Jaldabaoth, Jao, Sabaoth, Adonaios, Astaphaios, Ailoaios, and Oraios, and tells us that Jaldabaoth is the planet Saturn. Astaphaios is beyond doubt the planet Venus, as there are gnostic gems with a female figure and the legend , which name is also used in magic spells as the name of a goddess. In the Mandsean system Adonaios represents the Sun. Moreover, St. Irenæus tells us: "Sanctam Hebdomadem VII Stellas, quas dicunt planetas, esse volunt." It is safe, therefore, to take the above seven Gnostic names as designating the seven stars, then considered planets, Jaldabaoth ({{hebrew missing}}—child of Chaos?—Saturn, called "the Lion-