it will be seen that among the elder members of each group, that is, the three first syzygies, Nous-Aletheia, Logos-Zoe, and Anthropos-Ecclesia, the name of the male member of each syzygy is always that of an actual and concrete concept—the Mind, the Word, and Man,—showing perhaps how thought and speech all marked different stages in the evolution of the being called the Perfect Man[[362]]; while the appellatives of the females of each syzygy—Truth, Life, and the Church—all connote abstract ideas[[363]]. With the Decad put forth by Nous and Aletheia, i.e. Bythios-Mixis, Ageratos-Henosis, Autophyes-Hedone, Acinetos-Syncrasis, and Monogenes-Macaria, every male aeon, as M. Amélineau has pointed out, has for name an adjective, while the females are all described by substantives[[364]]. But the names of the male aeons are all epithets or attributes peculiar to their father Nous, who is thus said to be the abysmal, never-ageing, creator of his own nature, immovable, and unique, and those of the female aeons are descriptive of different states or conditions arising from his action[[365]]. M. Amélineau thinks that the names of these last describe a successive degradation of the Divine Nature; but this does not seem to have been Valentinus’ intention, and it is hard to see for instance why Syncrasis or blending should be more unworthy than Mixis or simple mixture. Moreover, this group of aeons, unlike the six preceding them, are not reproductive and no direct descendants follow from their conjugation. Perhaps then we may best understand Valentinus’ nomenclature as a statement that the coming together of Mind and Truth produced Profound Admixture, Never-ageing Union, Self-created Pleasure, Unshakeable Combination, and Unique Bliss. In like manner, the names of the members of the Dodecad or group of twelve aeons proceeding from Logos and Zoe may be read as describing the Comforting Faith, the Fatherly Hope, the Motherly Love[[366]], the Everlasting Comprehension, the Elect Blessedness, and the Longed-for Wisdom arising from the conjugation of the Word and Life or, in one word, from the Incarnation[[367]].
To return now to the fall of Sophia which, in the system of Valentinus, as in that of the Ophites, brought about the creation of the universe. All the accounts of Valentinus’ teaching that have reached us seem to agree that Sophia’s lapse was caused, according to him, not by accident as with the Ophites, but by her own ignorance and emulation. Leaving the Dodecad, “this twelfth and youngest of the aeons,” as Hippolytus describes her[[368]], soared on high to the Height of the Father, and perceived that he, the Unknowable Father, was alone able to bring forth without a partner[[369]]. Wishing to imitate him, she gave birth by herself and apart from her spouse, “being ignorant that only the Ungenerated Supreme Principle and Root and Height and Depth of the Universes can bring forth alone.” “For,” says he (i.e. Valentinus), “in the ungenerated (or unbegotten) all things exist together. But among generated (or begotten) things, it is the female who projects the substance, while the male gives form to the substance which the female has projected[[370]].” Hence the substance which Sophia put forth was without form and unshapen—an expression which Valentinus seems to have copied, after his manner, from the “without form and void” (ἄμορφος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος) of Genesis[[371]].
This Ectroma or abortion of Sophia, however, caused great alarm to the other members of the Pleroma, who feared that they might themselves be led into similar lapses, and thus bring about the destruction of the whole system. They accordingly importuned Bythos, who ordered that two new aeons, viz. Christos or Christ and the Holy Spirit, should be put forth by Nous and Aletheia to give form and direction to the Ectroma and to alleviate the distress of Sophia[[372]]. This was accordingly done, and this new pair of aeons separated Sophia from her Ectroma and drew her with them within the Pleroma, which was thereupon closed by the projection by Bythos of yet another aeon named the Cross (Σταυρός)[[373]], whose sole function was apparently to preserve the Pleroma or Divine World from all contamination from the imperfection which was outside[[374]]. This last aeon being, says Hippolytus, born great, as brought into existence by a great and perfect father, was put forth as a guard and circumvallation for the aeons, and became the boundary of the Pleroma, containing within him all the thirty aeons together. Outside this boundary remained Sophia’s Ectroma, whom Christ and the Holy Spirit had fashioned into an aeon as perfect as any within the Pleroma; and she, like her mother, is now called Sophia, being generally distinguished from “the last and youngest of the aeons” as the Sophia Without[[375]].
This Sophia Without the Pleroma was by no means at peace within herself. She is represented as having been afflicted with great terror at the departure of Christos and the Holy Spirit from her, when they left her to take their places within the Pleroma, and as grieving over her solitude and “in great perplexity” as to the nature of the Holy Spirit. Hence she turned herself to prayers and supplications to Christos, the being who had given her form, and these prayers were heard. Meanwhile, the thirty aeons within the Pleroma had resolved, on finding themselves safe within the guard of Stauros, to glorify the Father or Bythos by offering to him one aeon who should partake of the nature of each, and was therefore called the “Joint Fruit of the Pleroma[[376]].” This was Jesus “the Great High Priest,” who, on coming into existence was sent outside the Pleroma at the instance of Christos in order that he might be a spouse to the Sophia Without and deliver her from her afflictions[[377]]. This he did, but the four passions of Sophia, namely, fear, grief, perplexity, and supplication, having once been created could not be destroyed, but became separate and independent beings. Thus it was that matter came into being, and was itself the creation of the Deity, instead of being, as in the earlier systems, of independent origin. For Jesus “changed her fear into the substance which is psychic or animal (οὐσία ψυχικὴ), her grief into that which is hylic or material, and her perplexity into the substance of demons[[378]].” Of her supplication, however, Jesus made a path of repentance (ὁδὸν ἐπὶ μετάνοιαν) and gave it power over the psychic substance. This psychic substance is, says Valentinus, a “consuming fire” like the God of Moses, and the Demiurge or Architect of the Cosmos, and is called the “Place” (τόπος) and the Hebdomad or Sevenfold Power, and the Ancient of Days, and is, if Hippolytus has really grasped Valentinus’ opinions on the point, the author of death[[379]]. He and his realm come immediately below that of Sophia Without, here somewhat unexpectedly called the Ogdoad, where Sophia dwells with her spouse Jesus[[380]]. His sevenfold realm is, it would seem, the seven astronomical heavens, of which perhaps the Paradise of Adam is the fourth[[381]]. Below this again comes this world, the Cosmos, ruled by a hylic or material Power called the Devil (Διάβολος) or Cosmocrator, not further described by Valentinus but apparently resembling the Satan of the New Testament[[382]]. Lowest of all is unformed and unarranged matter, inhabited by the demons, of whom Beelzebub, as in the Gospels, is said to be the chief[[383]]. We have then four “places” outside the Pleroma or Godhead, arranged in a succession which reckoning from above downwards may be thus summed up:
1. The Heaven of Sophia called the Ogdoad, wherein dwell Sophia Without and her spouse Jesus[[384]].
2. The Sevenfold World called the Hebdomad created and ruled by the Demiurge or Ancient of Days.
3. Our own ordered world or Cosmos created by the Demiurge but ruled by the Devil.
4. Chaos or unarranged Matter ruled by Beelzebub, Prince of the Demons.
Much of this may be due to the desire apparently inborn in natives of Egypt to define with excessive minuteness the topography of the invisible world; but the disposition of these different Rulers was by no means a matter of indifference to mankind. The Demiurge, as in the Ophite system, was not, indeed, bad, but foolish and blind, not knowing what he did, nor why he created man. Yet it is he who sends forth the souls of men which reach them at their birth and leave them at their death. Hence, says Hippolytus, he is called Psyche or Soul as Sophia is called Pneuma or Spirit. But this soul of man is little else than what we call the life, and here as in all else the Demiurge is controlled without knowing it by his mother Sophia, who from her place in the Heavenly Jerusalem directs his operations. The bodies of men the Demiurge makes from that hylic and diabolic substance which is matter[[385]], and the soul which comes from him dwells within it as in an inn, into which all may enter. Sometimes, says Valentinus—and in this instance at least we know it is he, not one of his followers, who is speaking—the soul dwells alone and sometimes with demons, but sometimes with Logoi or “words,” who are heavenly angels sent by Sophia Without and her spouse the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma into this world, and who dwell with the soul in the earthly body, when it has no demons living with it.[[386]] After leaving the body of matter, the soul will even be united with its especial angel in a still more perfect manner, as is a bridegroom with his bride[[387]], a state which is sometimes spoken of as “the Banquet,” and seems connected with what has been said above about the meeting of Jesus the Joint Fruit with the Sophia Without[[388]]. Yet this is not a question of conduct or free will, but of predestination, and seems to mark the chief practical difference between Valentinus on the one hand and the Ophites and the pre-Christian Gnostics on the other. The Ophites, as we have seen, believed in the threefold nature of the soul, or its composition from the pneumatic or spiritual, the psychical or animal, and the choic or earthly, all which elements were thought to be present in everyone. But they held, following their predecessors the Orphici, that these divisions corresponded to what may be called degrees of grace, and that it was possible for man to pass from one category to the other, and become wholly pneumatic or psychic or earthly. Valentinus, however, introduces a different idea and makes the distinction between the three different categories of human souls one not of degree, but of essence[[389]]. Men have not a threefold soul, but belong to one of three classes, according to the source of their souls. Either they are pneumatic, i.e. spiritual, belonging wholly to Sophia, or psychic, that is animated by the Demiurge alone and therefore like him foolish and ignorant although capable of improvement, or hylic, that is formed wholly of matter and therefore subject to the power of the demons[[390]]. Nothing is said explicitly by Hippolytus as to how this division into classes is made; but we know by other quotations from Valentinus himself that this is the work of Sophia who sends the Logoi or Words into such souls as she chooses, or rather into those which she has created specially and without the knowledge of the Demiurge[[391]].
The consequences of this division upon the future of mankind generally also differed materially from that of the Ophitic scheme. Only the pneumatics or spiritual men are by nature immortal or deathless, and when they leave the material body go on high to the Ogdoad or Heaven of Sophia, where she sits with Jesus the “Joint Fruit” of the Pleroma[[392]]. The hylics or men who are wholly material perish utterly at death, because their souls like their bodies are corruptible[[393]]. There remain the psychic—the “natural men” of the New Testament[[394]]—who are not so to speak “saved”; but are yet capable of salvation. How was this salvation to be brought about?