Other Gnostics, who had not been followers of the Mosaic religion, but who had, at an earlier period, framed to themselves an oriental Gnosis, regarded the Demiurge as a being absolutely hostile to the Supreme God. He and his angels, notwithstanding their finite nature, wish to establish their independence: they will tolerate no foreign rule within their realm. Whatever of a higher nature descends into their kingdom, they seek to hold imprisoned there, lest it should raise itself above their narrow precincts. Probably, in this system, the kingdom of the Demiurgic Angels corresponded, for the most part, with that of the deceitful Star-Spirits, who seek to rob man of his freedom, to beguile him by various arts of deception, and who exercise a tyrannical sway over the things of this world. Accordingly, in the system of these Sabæans, the seven Planet-Spirits, and the twelve Star-Spirits of the zodiac, who sprang from an irregular connection between the cheated Fetahil and the Spirit of Darkness, play an important part in everything that is bad. The Demiurge is a limited and limiting being, proud, jealous, and revengeful; and this his character betrays itself in the Old Testament, which, the Gnostics held, came from him. They transferred to the Demiurge himself, whatever in the idea of God, as presented by the Old Testament, appeared to then defective. Against his will and rule the [Greek: υνη] was continually rebelling, revolting without control against the dominion which he, the fashioner, would exercise over it, casting off the yoke imposed on it, and destroying the work he had begun. The same jealous being, limited in his power, ruling with despotic sway, they imagined they saw in nature. He strives to check the germination of the divine seeds of life which the Supreme God of Holiness and Love, who has no connection whatever with the sensible world, has scattered among men. That perfect God was at most known and worshipped in Mysteries by a few spiritual men.
The Gospel of St. John is in great measure a polemic against the Gnostics, whose different sects, to solve the great problems, the creation of a material world by an immaterial Being, the fall of man, the incarnation, the redemption and restoration of the spirits called men, admitted a long series of intelligences, intervening in a series of spiritual operations; and which they designated by the names, The Beginning, the Word, the Only-Begotten, Life, Light, and Spirit [Ghost]: in Greek, [Greek: Άρχή, Δόγος, Μονογενής, Ζωή, Φώς] and [Greek: Πνεϋμα], [Archē, Logos, Monogenēs, Zōe, Phōs, and Pneuma]. St. John, at the beginning of his Gospel, avers that it was Jesus Christ who existed in the Beginning; that He was the WORD of God by which everything was made; that He was the Only-Begotten, the Life and the Light, and that He diffuses among men the Holy Spirit [or Ghost], the Divine Life and Light.
So the Plēroma [Greek: Πλήρωμα], Plenitude or Fullness, was a favorite term with the Gnostics, and Truth and Grace were the Gnostic Eons; and the Simonians, Dokētēs, and other Gnostics held that the Eon Christ Jesus was never really, but only apparently clothed with a human body: but St. John replies that the Word did really become Flesh, and dwelt among us; and that in Him were the Plēroma and Truth and Grace.
In the doctrine of Valentinus, reared a Christian at Alexandria, God was a perfect Being, an Abyss [Greek: Βυθός].. Buthos], which no intelligence could sound, because no eye could reach the invisible and ineffable heights on which He dwelt, and no mind could comprehend the duration of His existence; He has always been; He is the Primitive Father and Beginning [the [Greek: Προπατωρ] and [Greek: ροαρχή].. Propatōr and Proarchē]: He will BE always, and does not grow old. The development of His Perfections produced the intellectual world. After having passed infinite ages in repose and silence, He manifested Himself by His Thought, source of all His manifestations, and which received from Him the germ of His creations. Being of His Being, His Thought [Greek: Έννοια].. Ennoia] is also termed [Greek: Χάρις] [Charis], Grace or Joy, and [Greek: Σιγή], or [Greek: Άρρητον] [Sigē or Arrēton], Silence or the Ineffable. Its first manifestation was [Greek: Νους] [Nous], the Intelligence, first of the Eons, commencement of all things, first revelation of the Divinity, the [Greek: Μονογενής] [Monogenēs], or Only-Begotten: next, Truth [Greek: Άλήθεια] .. Alētheia], his companion. Their manifestations were the Word [Greek: Λογος].. Logos] and Life [Greek: Ζοή].. Zoe]; and theirs, Man and the Church [Greek: Ανθροπος] and [Greek: Έκκλησία].. Anthrōpos and Ekklēsia]: and from these, other twelve, six of whom were Hope, Faith, Charity, Intelligence, Happiness, and Wisdom; or, in the Hebrew, Kesten, Kina, Amphe, Ouananim, Thaedes, and Oubina. The harmony of the Eons, struggling to know and be united to the Primitive God, was disturbed, and to redeem and restore them, the Intelligence [Greek: Νούς] produced Christ and the Holy Spirit His companion; who restored them to their first estate of happiness and harmony; and thereupon they formed the Eon Jesus, born of a Virgin, to whom the Christos united himself in baptism, and who, with his Companion Sophia-Achamoth, saved and redeemed the world.
The Marcosians taught that the Supreme Deity produced by His words the [Greek: Λογος] [Logos] or Plenitude of Eons: His first utterance was a syllable of four letters, each of which became a being; His second of four, His third of ten, and His fourth of twelve: thirty in all, which constituted the [Greek: Πλήρωμα] [Plēroma].
The Valentinians, and others of the Gnostics, distinguished three orders of existences:—1st. The divine germs of life, exalted by their nature above matter, and akin to the [Greek: Σοφία] [Sophia], to the mundane soul and to the Plēroma:—the spiritual natures, [Greek: φύσεις πνεματικαί] [Phuseis Pneumatikai]: 2d. The natures originating in the life, divided from the former by the mixture of the [Greek: ύλη]—the psychical natures, [Greek: φύσεις ψυχικαί] [Phuseis Psuchikai]; with which begins a perfectly new order of existence, an image of that higher mind and system, in a subordinate grade; and finally, 3d. The Ungodlike or Hylic Nature, which resists all amelioration, and whose tendency is only to destroy—the nature of blind lust and passion.
The nature of the [Greek: πνευματικόν] [pneumatikon], the spiritual, is essential relationship with God (the [Greek: όμοούσιον τώ θεώ].. Homoousion tō Theō): hence the life of Unity, the undivided, the absolutely simple (ούσία ένική, μονοειδής.. Ousia henike, monoeides).
The essence of the ψυχικοί [psuchikoi] is disruption into multiplicity, manifoldness; which, however, is subordinate to a higher unity, by which it allows itself to be guided; first unconsciously, then consciously.
The essence of the ύλικοì [Hulikoi] (of whom Satan is the head), is the direct opposite to all unity; disruption and disunion in itself, without the least sympathy, without any point of coalescence whatever for unity; together with an effort to destroy all unity, to extend its own inherent disunion to everything, and to rend everything asunder. This principle has no power to posit anything; but only to negative: it is unable to create, to produce, to form, but only to destroy, to decompose.
By Marcus, the disciple of Valentinus, the idea of a Λογος του οντος [Logos Tou Ontos], of a WORD, manifesting the hidden Divine Essence, in the Creation, was spun out into the most subtle details—the entire creation being, in his view, a continuous utterance of the Ineffable. The way in which the germs of divine life [the σπέρματα πνευματικά.. spermata pneumatika], which lie shut up in the Eons, continually unfold and individualize themselves more and more, is represented as a spontaneous analysis of the several names of the Ineffable, into their several sounds..An echo of the Plēroma falls down into the ύλη [Hule], and becomes the forming of a new but lower creation.