In the doctrine of Valentinus, reared a Christian at Alexandria, God was a perfect Being, an Abyss [Βυθὸς . . 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 Προπάτωρand Προαρχὴ . . Propato_r and Proarche_]: 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

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creations. Being of His Being, His Thought [Ἔννοια . . Ennoia] is also termed Χάρις; [Charis], Grace or Joy, and Σιγή or Ἄρρητον [Sige_ or Arre_ton], Silence or the Ineffable. Its first manifestation was Νους [Nous], the Intelligence, first of the Eons, commencement of all things, first revelation of the Divinity, the Μονογενὴς [Monogene_s], or Only-Begotten: next, Truth [Ἀλήθεια . . Ale_theia], his companion. Their manifestations were the Word [Λόγος. . Logos] and Life [Ζωὴ . . Zoe_]; and theirs, Man and the Church [Ανθροπος and Ἐκκλησία . . Anthro_pos and Ekkle_sia]: 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 [Νοῦς] 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 Λόγος [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 Πλήρωμα [Ple_roma].

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 Σοφία [Sophia], to the mundane soul and to the Ple_roma:–the spiritual natures, φύσεις πνευματικαί [Phuseis Pneumatikai]: 2d. The natures originating in the life, divided from the former by the mixture of the ὕλη–the psychical natures, φύσεις ψυχικαὶ [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 πνευματικὸν [pneumatikon], the spiritual, is essential relationship with God (the ὁμούσιον τῷ θεῷ . . Homoousion to_ Theo_): hence the life of Unity, the undivided, the absolutely simple (οὐσία ἑνικὴ μονοειδὴς . . Ousia henike, monoeides).

 


Footnotes

568:1 The Substance, or Very Self, of which the Alohayim are the manifestations.


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