Church History (Vol.1-3). J. H. Kurtz
the Father’s unapproachable and incomprehensible essence, and about the reason and end of the Syzygies. Then they all, amid hymns of praise and thanksgiving, present an offering to the Father, each one of the best that he has, and form thereof an indescribably glorious æon-being, the Ἄνω Σωτήρ, and for his service myriads of august angels, who bow in worship before him.—The basis for the origination of the sensible world, the Ὑστέρημα, consist of the Enthymesis ejected from the Pleroma into the desert, void and substanceless Kenoma, which is by it for the first time filled and vitalized. It is an ἔκτρωμα, an abortion, which however retains still the æon nature of its divine present, and as such bears the name of Ἔξω (κάτω) Σοφία or Ἀχαμώθ (הַחָכְמוֹת). Hence even the blessed spirits of the Pleroma can never forsake her. They all suffer with the unfortunate, until she who had sprung from the Pleroma is restored to it purified and matured. Hence they espouse her, the Ektroma of the last and least of the æons, to the Ano-Soter, the noblest, most glorious and most perfect being in the æon-heaven, as her redeemer and future husband. He begins by comforting the despondent and casting out from her the baser affections. Among the worst, fear, sorrow, doubt, etc., is found the basis of the hylic stage of existence; among the better, repentance, desire, hope, etc., that of the psychic stage of existence (φύσεις). Over the beings issuing forth from the former presides Satan; over the psychical forms of being, as their highest development, presides the Demiurge, who prepares as his dwelling-place the seven lower heavens, the Hebdomas. But Achamoth had retired with the pneumatic substratum still remaining in her into the Τόπος τῆς μεσότητος, between the Pleroma and the lower world, whence she, inspired by the Ano-Soter, operates upon the Demiurge, who, knowing nothing of her existence, has no anticipation thereof. From the dust of the earth and pneumatic seed, which unobserved she conveys into it, he formed man, breathed into him his own psychical breath of life, and set him in paradise, that is, in the third of his seven heavens, but banished him to earth, when he disobeyed his command, and instead of his first ethereal garment clothed him in a material body. When men had spread upon the earth, they developed these different natures: Pneumatical, which free from the bondage of every outward law and not subject to the impulses of the senses, a law unto themselves, travel toward the Pleroma; next, the Hylic, which, hostile to all spirit and law, and the sport of all lusts and passions, are doomed to irremediable destruction; and finally, the Psychical, which under the discipline of outward law attain not indeed to a perfect divine life, but yet to outward righteousness, while on the other hand they may sink down to the rank and condition of the Hylic natures. The Psychical natures were particularly numerous among the Jews. Therefore the Demiurge chose them as his own, and gave them a strict law and through his prophets promised them a future Messiah. The Hylic natures which were found mostly among the heathens, were utterly hateful to him. The Pneumatical natures with their innate longing after the Pleroma, he did not understand and therefore disregarded; but yet, without knowing or designing it, he chose many of them for kings, priests, and prophets of his people, and to his amazement heard from their lips prophecies of a higher soul, which originated from Achamoth, and which he did not understand. When the time was fulfilled, he sent his Messiah in the person of Jesus. When he was baptized by John, the heaven opened over him and the Ano-Soter descended upon him. The Demiurge saw it and was astonished, but submitted himself awe-stricken to the will of the superior deities. The Soter remained then a year upon the earth. The Jews, refusing to receive him, nailed his organ, the psychical Messiah, to a cross; but his sufferings were only apparent sufferings, since the Demiurge had supplied him in his origin with an ethereal and only seemingly material body. In consequence of the work of the Ano-Soter the Pneumatical natures by means of the Gnosis taught by him, but the Psychical natures by means of Pistis, attain unto perfection after their kind. When once everything pneumatical and psychical which was bound up in matter, has been freed from it, the course of the world has reached its end and the longed-for time of Achamoth’s marriage will have come. Accompanied by myriads of his angels, the Soter leads the noble sufferer into the Pleroma. The pneumatical natures follow her, and as the Soter is married to Achamoth, the angels are married to them. The Demiurge goes with his tried and redeemed saints into the Τόπος τῆς μεσότητος. But from the depths of the Hyle breaks forth a hidden fire which utterly consumes the Hylic natures and the Hyle itself.40
§ 27.5. According to Hippolytus the Valentinian school split up into two parties—an Italian party, the leaders of which, Heracleon and Ptolemæus [Ptolemy], were at Rome, and an Eastern party to which Axionicus and Bardesanes belonged. Heracleon of Alexandria was a man of a profoundly religious temperament, who in his speculation inclined considerably toward the doctrine of the church, and even wrote the first commentary on the Gospel of John, of which many fragments are preserved in Origen’s commentary on that gospel. Ptolemæus [Ptolemy] drew even closer than his master to the church doctrine. Epiphanius quotes a letter of his to his pupil Flora in which, after Marcion’s example (see § 27, 11), the distinction of the divine and the demiurgical in the Old Testament, and the relation of the Old Testament to the New, are discussed. A position midway between that of the West and of the East is apparently represented by Marcus and his school. He combined with the doctrine of Valentinus the Pythagorean and cabbalistic mysticism of numbers and letters, and joined thereto magical and soothsaying arts. His followers, the Marcosians, had a form of worship full of ceremonial observances, with a twofold baptism, a psychical one in the Kato-Christus for the forgiveness of sins, and a pneumatical one for affiance with the future heavenly syzygy. Of the Antiochean Axionicus we know nothing but the name. Of far greater importance was Bardesanes, who flourished according to Eusebius in the time of Marcus Aurelius, but is assigned by authentic Syrian documents to the beginning of the third century. The chief sources of information about his doctrine are the 56 rhyming discourses of Ephraem [Ephraim] against the heretics. Living at the court and enjoying the favour of the king of Edessa, he never attacked in his sermons the doctrinal system of the church, but spread his Gnostic views built upon a Valentinian basis in lofty hymns of which, besides numerous fragments in Ephraem [Ephraim], some are preserved in the apocryphal Acta Thomae (§ 32, 6). Among his voluminous writings there was a controversial treatise against the Marcionites (see § 27, 11). In a Dialogue, Περὶ εἱμαρμένης, attributed to him, but probably belonging to one of his disciples named Philippus, from which Eusebius (Præp. Ev. vi. 10) quotes a passage, the Syrian original of which, “The Book of the Laws of the Land,” was only recently discovered,41 astrology and fatalism are combated from a Christian standpoint, although the author is still himself dominated by many Zoroastrian ideas. Harmonius, the highly gifted son of Bardesanes, distinguished himself by the composition of hymns in a similar spirit.
§ 27.6. The Ophites and related Sects.—The multiform Ophite Gnosis is in general characterized by fantastic combinations of Syro-Chaldaic myths and Biblical history with Greek mythology, philosophy and mysteriosophy. In all its forms the serpent (ὄφις, נָחָשׁ) plays an important part, sometimes as Kakodemon, sometimes as Agathodemon. This arose from the place that the serpent had in the Egyptian and Asiatic cosmology as well as in the early biblical history. One of the oldest forms of Ophitism is described by Hippolytus, who gives to its representatives the name of Naassenes, from נָחָשׁ. The formless original essence, ὁ προών, revealed himself in the first men, Ἀδάμας, Adam, Cadmon, in whom the pneumatic, psychical and hylic principles were still present together. As the instrument in creation he is called Logos or Hermes. The serpent is revered as Agathodemon; it proceeds from the Logos, transmitting the stream of life to all creatures. Christ, the redeemer, is the earthly representative of the first man, and brings peace to all the three stages of life, because he, by his teaching, directs every one to a mode of life in accordance with his nature.—The Sethites, according to Hippolytus, taught that there were two principles: an upper one, τὸ φῶς, an under one, τὸ σκότος, and between these τὸ πνεῦμα, the atmosphere that moves and causes motion. From a blending of light with darkness arose chaos, in which the pneuma awakened life. Then from chaos sprang the soul of the world as a serpent, which became the Demiurge. Man had a threefold development: hylic or material in Cain, psychical in Abel, and pneumatical in Seth, who