ANCIENT GREEK

PHILOSOPHY AND THE

FOUNDATIONS OF
CHRISTIANITY

A NEW SUBSTANTIALLY REVISED VERSION DEVELOPED ON

CHRISTMAS 2014 OF

A Special Public Seminar by

Dr Andrew Theophanous

Originally Presented on Thursday 20 October 2005

Sponsored by THE NATIONAL CENTRE FOR

HELLENIC STUDIES AND RESEARCH,
LATROBE UNIVERSITY
Introduction by
Professor Anastasios M. Tamis
Director, NCHSR-La Trobe University

andrewtheophanous@ozemail.com.au

1
INTRODUCTION
In considering the Foundations of Christianity, the fundamental philosophical
issue has been described thus by the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

It consisted of the fact that God came to meet Christians in a threefold figure:
(1) as Creator, Lord of the history of salvation, Father, and Judge, as revealed
in the Old Testament; (2) as the Lord who, in the figure of Jesus Christ, lived
among human beings and was present in their midst as the “Resurrected
One”; and (3) as the Holy Spirit, whom they experienced as the power of the
New life, the miraculous potency of the Kingdom of God. The question as to
how to reconcile the encounter with God in this threefold figure with faith in the
oneness of God, which was the Jews' and Christians' characteristic mark of
distinction from paganism, agitated the piety of ancient Christendom in the
deepest way. In the course of history, it also provided the strongest impetus
for a speculative theology, which inspired Western metaphysics for many
centuries.

Indeed in the first three centuries after the birth of Christ, there was
tremendous philosophical debate about the teachings of Christ and their
relationship to the then 700 year old tradition of Greek philosophy. In this
lecture/ seminar, I shall examine the role of the Greek philosophers, especially
Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides and Plato. I shall argue that the
contribution of these thinkers on the foundations of Christianity was profound.

During this time, there were two key groups around which most of the debate
took place: the Gnostic Christians and the Patristic Fathers. Until about 60
years ago, we knew of the Gnostics primarily from the denunciation of them
by the early Patristic Fathers of the church. They condemned the Gnostics as
heretics, even though the Gnostics believed themselves to be the true
followers of Christ.

However, a remarkable archaeological discovery in 1946 changed all that. At

Nag Hammadi in Egypt, a humble worker discovered in a large pot certain
amazing documents, which are generally recognized now to be a number of
the other Gospels of Christianity. These are the sacred books which were
primarily used by the Gnostics - in particular the Gospels of St. Thomas and of
Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of Truth and other works such as the critical
piece The Sophia of Jesus Christ. (see APPENDIX I for list.

These books have now become known as the Gnostic Gospels and they
reveal a quite different interpretation of the teachings of Jesus Christ. The
existence of some of these documents, such as the Gospel of Thomas, had
been testified to in earlier discoveries. Historians of Christianity understand
that the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, in making a set of dogmatic decisions

2
on Christian dogma (see section below) also rejected a number of alleged
sacred texts such as these Gospels and they were rejected for inclusion in the
New Testament of the Holy Bible. Now, after the discovery, we have been in a
position to read and study in detail what some of these Gospel texts were
saying.

The Christian Gnostics, the Patristic Fathers and Greek Philosophy

My general thesis in this seminar is that both of these groups (the Gnostic
Christians and the Patristic Fathers) incorporated into their beliefs what they
considered to be key doctrines of the ancient Greek philosophers, especially
Plato. This is despite the fact that they were very strong in their claims that
they were the true Christians, and that they differed from each other in
substantial ways. My view is that both sides of this dispute wanted to
demonstrate that their beliefs were substantially consistent with the profound
philosophical tradition which had arisen from the works of the ancient Greek
philosophers. Thus it was that, from the First to the third century AD, the
Middle and Neo Platonic movement had a major influence on these
passionate debates.

Because of the impact of Greek Philosophy on both the Gnostics and the
Patristic Fathers, its teachings played a major role in the foundations of early
Christianity. Thus it has been stated:
The Greeks interpreted the national religions of the Greek Orient chiefly in
terms of Plato's philosophical and religious concepts. Interpretation in Platonic
concepts was also the means by which the Judeo-Christian set of creeds was
thoroughly assimilated to Greek ideas by the early Christian thinkers Clement
of Alexandria and Origen. Thus, the religions had a common conceptual
framework1.

Thus my primary concern in this seminar shall be to show a key part of the
story about how the foundations of Christianity were arrived at. This requires a
discussion of the huge debates which flowed from Greek philosophy itself and
reflections on metaphysical questions such as the nature of God, the soul,
immortality and man’s place in the universe.

My argument is that the Gnostics drew extensively from the mainly Hellenistic,
Middle Platonic and later Neo Platonic philosophical tradition which flourished
in Alexandria in Egypt, especially in the second and third centuries AD. My
view here is supported by several eminent scholars, although one has to look
in the obscure realms of technical theological discourse to find them.

1
Mystery Religions and Christianity in Encyclopaedia Britannica e version

3
However, I want now to also emphasize the other side of the story: Ancient
Greek philosophy -- especially as interpreted by the Middle Platonists, was
also fundamental in establishing the foundations of the early Christian Church.
The early Church Patristic fathers -- the Apologists -- did not deal with the
Gnostics by rejecting Platonism. Rather they had their own interpretation of
Greek philosophy, which was incorporated into early Christianity. This
occurred early in the debate, as has been noted by scholars. For example:
The Christian Apologists of the 2nd century sought to drive a wedge between
the pagan religion that they abhorred and the Greek philosophy that, with
occasional reservations, they welcomed. Second-century Platonism found it
easy to think of Mind (nous) or Reason (Logos) as divine power immanent
within the world. Philo of Alexandria had spoken of the Logos as mediating
between the transcendent God and this created order. The Logos theology
was developed by Justin Martyr both to make a positive evaluation of the best
elements in the Greek philosophical tradition and to make the incarnation of
Christ intelligible to the Greek mind.2

It is not clear whether the motivation of Justin Martyr was indeed to make the
Christ ideas intelligible to the Greeks; there can be other explanations.
Nevertheless, we can see that what emerged from around 100 AD to 325 A.D.
was one of the most fervent periods of philosophical /theological debates in
history. What was at stake was the whole interpretation and direction of
Christianity. A number of groups, especially the Gnostics and the Patristic
Fathers, sought to respond to the emerging Christian movement by setting out
their own philosophical interpretations. My contention is that essentially all
these interpretations were founded on Ancient Greek philosophy -- especially
Plato.

But what were the key doctrines of Greek philosophy that were being relied
on, and what was their source? Obviously there have been many different
philosophical positions adopted by ancient Greek philosophers. But what I
shall emphasize is that there is one common thread that flows from
Pythagoras, through Heraclitus and Parmenides to Socrates/Plato and
beyond. This thread is based on the concept of God as the One, but also how
it is that the One God translates His Being into the world; and what the
relationship is between God and humanity.

What is most intriguing here is that it was not merely the beliefs of the
philosophers that was important, but also the fact that they were in
fundamental agreement about the idea that human beings could come to
have gnosis or knowledge of God: in each case, there was a twofold path: the
path of philosophical reason and the path of mysticism.

2
Ibid

4
PART I. PYTHAGORAS

Of course Pythagoras is most well-known to people for his work as the father
of mathematics and there is no doubt that mathematics was extremely
important in the thinking and traditions of the Pythagorean school. But it
should be remembered that Pythagoras himself was a mystic philosopher, a
man who was very much involved in ritual and initiation and in using
philosophy, as well as mathematics and music, as a way to understand God
and creation.

Indeed a fundamental idea in Pythagoras is that man can understand and

know the Divine and he can do so partially through the use of Reason,
especially in relation to the role of mathematics and geometry – both of which
are key aspects of the formation of the universe. Numbers in Pythagoreanism
appear to have a magical power. But this is not to be understood in terms of
our modern concept of magic. It is more that in his philosophy numbers allow
us to understand the Nature of the Supreme Being through reason.

Pythagoras believed that man had a relationship to God through the human
soul. This introduction of the soul as an immortal entity had, of course, already
been present in many of the earlier ancient religions. It is true that Pythagoras
drew some of his concept of the soul from the Egyptian traditions. (He is
reputed to have visited Egypt during his life). However the Egyptian tradition
on the fate of the soul is quite different from that which was envisaged by
Pythagoras. He understood the soul as living through a whole series of lives
on earth over historical time. Thus Pythagoras believed in a form of
reincarnation, in that the soul passed through a cycle of lives, similar to that
belief which is a major part of the Eastern religions, such as Buddhism.

Pythagoras also believed in a cosmic harmony in which numbers played a

very important role. Indeed the whole universe could be understood in terms
of the symbolism of the order and harmony of numbers. Pythagoras believed
that mathematics and music (which was also a mathematical phenomenon for
him) was the essence of the Divine Wisdom which manifested itself is the
physical universe. In fact one can envisage the physical universe as a form of
chaos which is limited and given order through for geometry and mathematics.
This is the idea that there is a source of wisdom which in a sense provides a
template for the existence of the individual phenomena of the world and gives
them order. This template can be conceived as a set of rational ideas as they
manifest themselves in the material universe; the substance of these ideas is
geometry and number.

This was a brilliant insight of Pythagoras and remains very relevant today.
Thus modern physical sciences are entirely dependent on mathematical

5
formulations to understanding the physical universe. Even the most modern
theories of space and time, of astronomy - theories such as the Big Bang and
other conceptions all the origin of the universe, all ultimately rely on the idea
that there is mathematical order in the universe. However, Pythagoras in
emphasizing this aspect of scientific knowledge, was also emphasizing the
idea that there is a Divine wisdom which is represented in the universe.

Thus Pythagoras’ doctrines went far beyond science and mathematics. He

believed that this material universe was in a sense only a reflection of the
other part of the Cosmos, the Divine realm. The existence of this Divine realm,
as distinct from the physical realm, did not mean for Pythagoras that there
were two different worlds. On the contrary, there was only one cosmos and
furthermore the principles which apply in the one realm apply in the other. As
Pythagoras put it: “As above, so below”. In his account, there was a strong
interconnection between everything in the cosmos. Thus there a relationship
between the physical realm and the soul, and between the human soul and
God or the Divine. Furthermore, he believed that the soul is also a divine
origin and that it is seeking to reunite and identify with the One Divine
Supreme Being. This was the fundamental purpose to life – the quest to
achieve the union of the individual soul with God. This is probably the most
fundamental human idea found in the ancient mysteries and mysticism –
going back even earlier than Egypt. There is no doubt that Pythagoras
embraced this idea.

However he adopted a very important additional element: From the earlier

Greek philosophers, he adopted the view that the nature of the universe could
be understood through the use of Reason, that is, the understanding that
comes from philosophy (He is reputed to have created the word philosophy in
Greek). Thus philosophy has a key role in the understanding of both the whole
cosmos and of God.
We have already mentioned some of the key ideas which Pythagoras
developed in his metaphysics. The following additional ones are also
important and relevant to the philosophical foundations of Christian thought:
1. The physical universe is real; it is not an illusion – although the way the
human being perceives it may be different from its ultimate reality.

2. Although God is the creator of the universe, the Supreme Being is not
identical to that physical universe. The Supreme Being has at least part
of its existence over and above this physical universe: it is in this sense
transcendent.

3. The universe consists of a harmonious beauty as represented in music

and Sacred Geometry. Pythagoras went further by ascribing this
musical harmony to the structure of universe itself, which is what later

6
 became to be called the ‘music of the spheres’. In doing so he put forth
the proposition that the universe as created is fundamentally precious
and therefore to be valued by humanity.

4. There is a special metaphysical relationship between the human soul

and God or the Divine. The human soul is also a divine origin and that
it is seeking to reunite and identify with the One Divine Supreme Being.
This is probably the most fundamental idea on the ancient mysteries
and mysticism.

5. For Pythagoras number was considered to be sacred in that they

represented the schema that the Divine Being had used to create the
universe. As a result for Pythagoras, number provided the rational
principle underlying not only the physical universe, but also the
contents of the human mind and the spiritual realm itself.

The philosophy of Pythagoras, while being comprehensive, left many

questions unanswered. In relation to point 4 above, a serious problem was
raised by the Gnostic Christian school of Philosophy: If the universe is such a
marvelous creation, how then can we explain the fact that there is so much
suffering, violence and even evil in the world?

While accepting that there are features of nature that are beautiful, we can
also emphasis those features of nature that are ugly and create violence. And
what of the actions of human beings and the suffering and evil which they
create? These elements of the universe, it could be argued, do not fit into the
idea of harmony as propounded by Pythagoras. Some of the Gnostic gospels
describe the created universe as having severe weaknesses.

However, the Gnostics certainly agreed with Pythagoras that reason and
philosophy by themselves were not enough. There was also another form of
contemplation required: mysticism. Thus this path to revelation in the terms of
unity with the Divine was not something that was available without effort by
the individual. It required a process of initiation and meditation – both
philosophical and mystical. Pythagoras set up his famous secret order, the
members of which were expected to undertake strict observance to
procedures and moral teaching in relation to achieving this unity with the
Divine. Thus there was a twofold path here; indeed this has been understood
as a key feature differentiating Pythagoras from his philosophical
predecessors and from ancient mysticism.

The ideas of Pythagoras had an enormous influence on Greek philosophy and

especially on Plato himself. Plato’s doctrine of ideas or Forms, which we shall

7
 speak about later, owed much to Pythagoras’ conception of mathematics, but
it went beyond this. The scholar Holger Thesleff says:
“The history of the projection of Pythagoreanism into subsequent thought
indicates how fertile some of its core concepts were. Plato is here the great
catalyst; but it is possible to perceive behind him, however dimly, a series of
Pythagorean ideas of paramount potential significance: the combination of
religious esoterism (or exclusivism) with the germs of a new philosophy of
mind, present in the belief in the progress of the soul toward the actualization
of its divine nature and toward knowledge; stress upon harmony and order,
and upon limit as the good; the primacy of form, proportion, and numerical
expression; and in ethics, and emphasis upon such virtues as friendship and
modesty”3

Pythagoras’ ideas were thus very important and significant in early

Christianity; a number of the debates drew directly on Pythagoras and not
merely on the impact he had made through Plato. As we shall see below,
Pythagoras’ thinking had an impact on both the Patristic Fathers and the
Gnostics. – even when they disagreed with him or further developed his ideas.

PART II: HERACLITUS

Pythagoras’ major successor as a philosopher, from the point of view of the

development of Christian thought, was Heraclitus. AS we shall see, the
concept of the Logos, as put forward by Heraclitus, becomes of critical
importance in the opening of the Gospel of John.

Heraclitus’ philosophy was based on the fundamental idea that everything is

in flux and in motion, which is evident in the claim “Everything flows and
nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.” In philosophy,
this idea is often seen as the theory that, at an absolute level, in
understanding the cosmos, Becoming is more fundamental than Being.

This world of Becoming encompasses the theory that everything in the

universe consists of strife and conflict of opposite forces and phenomena. For
Heraclitus, God consists of the totality of these conflicting opposites conceived
of as coming together. For God is said to contain all these opposites. “God is
day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger; but he
takes various shapes, just as fire, when it is mingled with spices, is named
according to the savour of each.”4 In this fragment, Heraclitus indicates that
God includes all of the opposing elements of the reality as they appear in the
3
Holger Thesleff, Evaluation, The Hellenistic Age, Pythagoreanism, Encyclopaedia Britannica, e
version
4
Heraclitus Fragment 67

8
eternal flux - in particular, all the things that seem to be opposite to each
other. On this view, God is everywhere and in everything, including all
processes that constitute the universe as Becoming. Thus, for Heraclitus, God
is not the transcendent Being envisaged by other philosophers (see below re
Parmenides). Rather he is to be conceived as that entity which contains within
itself the cosmos s it unfolds throughout Time.

The question that arises here, however, is: if the universe is constantly the
world of Becoming, then what is it that prevents it from collapsing into chaos –
with no order, harmony or predictability? Even if the universe is nothing but
the eternal flux, what is it that guarantees the continuity of that flux? Heraclitus
attempts to answer this question through his theory of the Logos. In
Heraclitus’ philosophy, the Logos is a transcendent entity that exists beyond
the materialistic world of change and flux.

What are the characteristics of this Logos? The Logos is a Law which dictates
the regularity, predictability, and meaningfulness of all changes in the
universe. The Logos allows the Cosmos to function “in measure”, to create
universal harmony and to provide a sense of order that arranges and
balances the tensions between opposites. It is also the fundamental principle
which provides balance and identity for all existent things.

It should be noted here that the concept of the Logos can be conceived of as
a set of transcendent ideas; they can be conceived as existing in the mind or
intelligence of God. For Heraclitus, these principles or ideas of the Logos were
considered to exist in pure form in the Divine Mind itself and were reflected in
the mind of man.
“Although this Logos is eternally valid, yet men are unable to understand it —
not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time.
That is to say, although all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos,
men seem to be quite without any experience of it — at least if they are
judged in the light of such words and deeds as I am here setting forth.”5

This concept of the Logos is very difficult for human beings to understand
because of its transcendent nature. The universal Logos manifests itself in
human beings on two different levels. On one level, human intelligence is a
weak manifestation of the universal Logos.6 Unfortunately, this leads to most
of us being blinded by our own apparent wisdom. On this level, the common
Logos uses the “criterion of truth”7, but actually condemns us to an illusion of
this truth. On another level, the truly wise individual is one who transcends his
perceptions of the world in order to embody the true nature of this Logos.
5
Heraclitus Fragment 1
6
Heraclitus Ibid (English, R.B.), p. 181
7
Heraclitus Ibid

9
Heraclitus is here saying that although the vast majority of humanity is
ignorant and/or cannot comprehend the Logos, some people, such as
philosophers (and Heraclitus himself), can and do understand it.

As already indicated, Heraclitus concept of the Logos(as adopted in later

Greek philosophy) becomes a critical idea in the development of Christianity.
In the Gospel of John, the Logos becomes identified with the metaphysical
figure of the Christ. The Logos as the foundation of the harmony, order and
coherence of the universe is now seen as the begotten son of God himself. It
is one of the two manifestations of God the father in the universe. The Logos
(Christ) becomes the assistant of God in the creation and sustenance of the
physical universe
Heraclitus’ wisdom was thus one of the precursors of what later became the
philosophy of the early Christians. Notwithstanding their differences, both the
Gnostics and the Patristic fathers adopted this concept of the metaphysical
Christ as the Logos.

In developing his theory further, Heraclitus puts forward the idea of a second
entity - the Cosmic Soul; he describes this as an entity which is limitless, fiery
in nature, also encompassing the principles of life, rationality and moral
goodness. It appears that the Cosmic Soul is not a fundamental Being, rather,
it is intrinsically linked to Heraclitus’ concept of Universal Flux, hence to his
theory of Becoming. The Cosmic Soul thus permeates through the entire
physical Cosmos, but also is responsible for reason, judgement, and divine
intelligence. Here we have the germ of an idea which is further developed in
Plato – the concept of the Universal Soul. This idea played un important role
in Gnostic Christian thinking concerning the Sophia and the Demiurge.(see
below).

Heraclitus also set out some important elementary ideas about the human
soul. The Human Soul, the second type of Soul, is manifested from the
combination of the Cosmic Soul and the ‘exhalation’ that arises from within the
human body. As a result, the Human Soul is characterised as a person’s “life
breath, his knowledge and his will.” This then produces the belief that the
source of self-intelligence comes from the Cosmic Soul, ultimately from the
universe itself. Here we have the idea that the human soul arises from a
combination of the Cosmic Soul with the human body, especially the breath of
life. This idea is further developed in Plato; the issue of the nature of the
human soul becomes one of great controversy in early Christianity.

However, we are left with an important mystery in Heraclitus’ metaphysics: If

we accept that this Logos is the foundation of the ever-changing Cosmos,
does this not mean that the Logos itself must be conceived as eternal, fixed

10
and unchanging – that is, a form of Being which is beyond Becoming? This
raises the question whether there is such a Supreme Being which is beyond
becoming. This issue was taken up in the classic and enduring work of the
great Parmenides.

PART III: PARMENIDES

Both Pythagoras and Heraclitus referred to the idea of the One God. However
it is only in the philosophy Parmenides that we find the core of this idea
expanded, clarified and philosophically justified. Like Pythagoras, Parmenides
believed in the One Supreme Being. But he believed that the One was
completely the opposite in nature to the material world that we perceive, with
all its motion and change. The nature of the One Being was that it was not the
subject of constant change and separation, as occurs in the physical world.
The One Being is separate from Heraclitus’ world of Becoming; indeed it is not
in the realm of Becoming at all. What Parmenides did was to set out through
philosophical argument, the doctrine of the One Being as a pure idea, which
he then identified as the Supreme Being and the only true reality.

For Parmenides, the material world we experience was in reality nothing but a
set of appearances, which when analyzed, did not have the same absolute
reality as the One, the Eternal.

Parmenides thus developed the idea of the One Being as the philosophical
foundation of all that is absolutely real in the universe. This concept was
further developed by Plato and other Greek philosophers and was
fundamental to the idea of God in the Jesus Philosophy. Plato called
Parmenides “a revered and awe-full figure” and it was (supposedly) the elder
Parmenides who inspired young Socrates. We have much of his famous
poem, written in the ancient style of Homer and Hesiod in hexameter metre.
Parmenides’ argument proceeds in a very interesting manner. His philosophy
is presented in the form of a poem: He describes a meeting with the goddess
ALITHEA or Truth, in which she describes the true path to philosophical
understanding and towards mystical enlightenment. This poem of
Parmenides' Peri physeōs (“On Nature”) begins with the goddess taking him
to a heavenly realm where she tells him that he is “to learn all things, both the
unshaken heart of well-rounded truth and also what seems to mortals, in
which is no true conviction”

She teaches him that there exists only One Supreme Being; this Being is
logically indivisible, permanent and non changing. All other beings we refer to
in the cosmos are in a sense secondary ‘appearances’: ultimately in an
absolute sense, this cosmos is nonexistent, when compared with the

11
Supreme Being. For Parmenides, understanding the ONE BEING required
substantial philosophical analysis:

“But only the legend remains of the Way; how it stands with being; on this
(way) there are many indications: how being, without genesis, is without
destruction, complete, alone there without tremor and not still requiring to be
finished; nor was it before, nor will it be in the future, for being present it is
entirely, unique, unifying, united, gathering itself in itself from itself (cohesive,
full of presentness).”

This idea is pursued in the poem in a series of philosophical arguments

against all other opinions. Two of the rejected other opinions are of particular
importance here:

The first rejected view is that the One Being is a concept which attaches to
the manifold existence of objects in the world, that is, Being can only be
attributable to individual material objects. Parmenides, and later his student
Zeno in his Paradoxes, wishes to argue that it is quite wrong to attribute the
concept of Being to what he sees as appearances - entities which are not part
of ultimate reality. This doctrine covers physical objects, including the human
body and its participation in the physical universe.

The second rejected view is the claim that the idea of non Being is just as
important and fundamental as the idea of Being. Parmenides thus argues
against those philosophers who maintain that to understand the nature of
ultimate reality, we must combine the idea of Being with the idea of non Being
or Nothingness. Heraclitus is said to have been guilty of this philosophical
misdeed. This is a controversial argument, although it has some force - the
idea that absolute nothingness (which is not the same as empty space) exists
in some sense does strain our understanding. For Parmenides, it was contrary
to reason.

Thus, at the level of truth, Being is all that it exists, since all other things that
exist depend on this Being for their own existence. This Being is different from
nothingness and non-existence, but this nothingness has no metaphysical
status for Parmenides (unlike later philosophers such as Hegel).

Indeed in the Poem On Nature, such nothingness is considered as an

impossibility. “It needs must be that what can be thought and spoken of is; for
it is possible for it to be, and it is not possible for, what is nothing to be.”8 Thus
Being in this sense is not just the opposite of nothingness, as the Goddess
explains to Parmenides: “I shall not let thee say nor think that it came from

8
On Nature (VI, sections 1-3)

12
what is not; for it can neither be thought nor uttered that what is not is. And, if
it came from nothing, what need could have made it arise later rather
than sooner? Therefore must it either be altogether or be not at all.”9

Notice that this argument applies to many later mystical theses which assume
that God, as the ground of Being, can nevertheless be conceived as
consisting of Nothingness. For Parmenides, while the essence of the
Supreme Being cannot be known, it nevertheless can be asserted that the
Supreme Being exists – indeed that it is all that exists in an absolute sense.

When Parmenides asserts that only Being exists as the One, he is referring to
the absolute level. What he is saying is that from the point of view of [Pure]
Reason, the only absolute knowledge is the existence of the One. According
to his view of pure reason, this is the only irrefutable proposition. Furthermore
at this level his claim that the idea of absolute nothingness is incoherent or
meaningless is also correct. The concept of nothingness applies only within
the realm of becoming and not the realm of absolute Being.

There has been a great misunderstanding of what Parmenides meant when

he said he the world of becoming ‘does not exist’. What Parmenides meant
was that, relative to the existence o the Absolute One, the world of
appearances, of becoming, of changes in time, has no absolute claim. True it
is that Parmenides does not explain what is meant by the relative or
secondary existence of the world of becoming, but this does not mean that it
is a total illusion.

On the contrary, Parmenides makes a very important distinction between true

opinion and false opinion in relation to the world of appearances or becoming
– which includes the material universe in which we live. For this reason,
Parmenides’ poem is divided into two. The first part tells us of the absolute
existence of the One being and the absurdity of holding that such a being
would be in a state of becoming. The second part of the poem tells us about
the secondary existence of the world of becoming and the importance of a
proper understanding of that world. Here Parmenides develops a whole
Cosmology in which he presents his own scientific account of this world of
becoming. Parmenides’ statements in relation to this world of becoming not
fully existing are not to be taken as suggesting that this world of appearances
has no reality whatsoever. Otherwise, the second part of the poem would not
make sense and there would be serious problems for his philosophy.

9
On Nature(VIII, sections 8-12).

13
 Nor can it be claimed that the world or becoming is nothing but an illusion as
far as Parmenides is concerned; for if this is an illusion, then one must ask in
whose mind is it an illusion? Is it an illusion in the mind of he absolute One
Being? This seems completely wrong and absurd. Perhaps then it is an
illusion in the minds of human beings. But if this were to be the case, then
human beings must have an existence beyond the realm of the illusion; there
must be a transcendent self or person who has the appearances. This would
mean that the mind or soul of the person had an existence beyond the world
of appearances. This is a point recognized by Immanuel Kant when he
proposed that the world of appearances in space and time was at least partly
constructed through the action of the human mind – although of course it is
not a total illusion.

Hence Parmenides account cannot be that the world of becoming is a total

illusion. What then can it be? The key idea here is that what is represented to
the human mind as the world of change and motion is not the absolute reality,
but a series of appearances. Thus, one of the most important points that
arises from Parmenides philosophy is therefore the distinction between the
Absolute One the Supreme being who essence is unknowable, but who
nevertheless is related to the world of appearances which has a secondary
existence. Notice here that we have the dichotomy between Being as absolute
and Becoming as appearances -a division which was not present in this form
in the philosophy of Pythagoras, For Pythagoras absolute reality contains the
world of being and the world of becoming together. There s no discontinuity.
There is simply an evolution and progression.

The views of Parmenides can be represented by the following schema:

14
SCHEMA 1 PARMENIDES

Philosophical
Understanding
(the Goddess of
TRUTH)

The
Appearances
(Illusion) of the
World of
Motion and
Change
© Andrew Theophanous

One prominent commentator has said that Parmenides account is comparable

to that of Kant. However, unlike Parmenides, Kant speaks not of one absolute
thing but rather of at least two - the absolute being of God and the absolute
existence of the soul, the latter being the spiritual side of the person which
gives rise to self consciousness10. It can be argued that for Parmenides to be
consistent, he also needs these two entities as absolutes -the One Being
[God] and the transcendent soul or self. Why is this so? A major reason is that
Parmenides’ whole thesis on knowledge is based on the idea of the existence
of reason. But what is this reason? It is a faculty of either God himself or other
transcendent minds or both. Clearly for Kant Pure Reason is a capacity of
both God and Human Beings. It is a transcendent capacity, [in Kant’s terms
naomenal as distinct from the phenomenal world].

In our view, this must also be true for Parmenides philosophy to make sense.
When the Goddess leads Parmenides through the mysterious chasms to find

10
Immanuel Kat, Critique of Pure Reason, Section on Paralogisms

15
the real Truth, she is not leading an illusion or a phantom. At the very least,
she is leading a person with a mind. It therefore follows that for an account
such as that given by Parmenides of the radical distinction between being and
becoming, it is necessary for there to be a transcendent being or self.
Furthermore it is necessary in both philosophies for this transcendent soul to
have the capacity of pure reason. We can conclude that Parmenides thesis
can be put together through an understanding of the philosophy of Kant where
he distinguishes between the role of reason in understanding the absolute
Being [God] and the role of understanding and sensibility in our awareness of
the world of becoming.
Through his extraordinary use of reason, Parmenides gave us a philosophy
from which huge questions arose which became the main concern of all
metaphysical philosophy. These questions included: If there is One
unchanging absolute Being, how then does the world of becoming arise? Why
would such a Being need to create a separate universe? What is the
metaphysical aim and direction of this created universe of becoming? These
questions were addressed in the philosophy of Plato and Socrates, as well as
by several pre-Socratic philosophers. They are also critical in understanding
the philosophy of early Christianity.

Thus Parmenides’ theory gives rise to many problems. For example, the
Problem of ‘How The Many May Arise From The One’ remains and is yet to
be explained. Associated with this is the following problem: Being in
Parmenides’ theory appears to transcend the whole of space and time. “Nor
was it ever, nor will it be; for not it is, all at once, a continuous one”11. But if
being is self contained in this way, what about the universe of space and time
in which we live? For Parmenides, the universe of change and motion is not
an absolute reality. it is a secondary reality – the world of appearances.
Parmenides believes the physical cosmos is constructed through our senses,
and our senses are unreliable. As several commentators have noted, the big
problem with this is: What is the relation between the absolute reality of being
and the secondary world of appearance in which we live? Because we have a
limited amount of the writings of Parmenides, it is unclear what his answer to
this question really is.
Furthermore there is a problem which arises when we ask: what Is the nature
of this Supreme Being? When Parmenides tries to explain this, he uses the
“language of the physical” to describe his Being which transcends the
physical. For example, he illustrates Being as a sphere that is “complete on
every side, equally poised from the centre in every direction”12 This is a
metaphor to explain the essence of Being, including completeness and
continuity. But he had stated that we can know nothing of the essence of the
Supreme Being.
11
Parmenides. On Nature (VIII, Sections 4-5
12
Ibid (VIII, Sections 43-44).

16
Parmenides argued that his One Being had no attributes or qualities which
can be attached to it. We do not know its essence. This is because human
Reason has its limits. Parmenides believes that he has shown conclusively
that we cannot know the essence of the One Being through human Reason,
that is, through philosophical understanding. This is because the human being
cannot know the real essence of the Supreme Being. Thus if we equate this
Supreme Being with God, we come to the doctrine that the essential nature of
God is unknowable to the human being. As we shall see, many of the early
fathers of Christianity (both Patristic and Gnostic) adopted this doctrine of the
nature of God as developed from Parmenides’ philosophy. For example,
consider the explanation given by Clement of Alexandria, one of the most
prominent of the Patristic Christian fathers, who lived between 150 – 215 AD:
John the apostle wrote: ‘No one has seen God at any time: it is the only-
begotten God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known’
(John 1.18). He used the word ‘heart’ of God to refer to his invisibility and his
ineffability; for this reason some people have used the word ‘depth’ to indicate
that he is inaccessible and incomprehensible but embraces and enfolds all
things. This is the hardest part of the discussion about God. The first cause of
anything is hard to discover. It is therefore particularly hard to describe the
first and original cause which is the source of the existence of everything else
that is or has been….Nor can one properly speak of him as a ‘whole’ for a
whole is a matter of size and he is ‘Father of the whole universe’. Nor can one
speak of him as having parts, for that which is One is indivisible and therefore
also infinite - infinite not in the sense of measureless extension but in the
sense of being without dimensions or boundaries, and therefore without shape
or name. If we do give it a name, we cannot do so in the strict sense of the
word: whether we call it ‘One’, ‘the Good’, ‘mind’, ’absolute being’, ‘Father’,
‘God’, ‘Creator’, or ‘Lord’, it is not a case of producing its actual name…For
taken individually none of these names is expressive of God, but taken
together they collectively point to the power of the Almighty 13.

Note here the similarity to the arguments presented by Parmenides,

concerning the unknowability of the One. It should be noted that this idea of
God as unknowable remained even after the changes to Christianity adopted
at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. Thus, one of the then fathers of the
church, Gregory of Nyssa states (Page 376d):
The vision of God consists in this; that God cannot be seen, since what we
seek is beyond all knowledge, being wholly consumed in a cloud of
incomprehensibility. Therefore St. John, who also entered into this bright mist,
says that no one has seen God at any time, meaning by this negation that the
knowledge of the divine nature is impossible not only for humans but for every
13
Quoted in GOD op cit pp 248-9

17
created intellect14.”

Note that both of these authors deny that it follows from this lack of knowledge
that God or the Supreme Being should be equated to nothingness. Thus they
are following Parmenides argument. These and other early Christian thinkers
accepted Parmenides’ view that philosophical understanding allows us to
deduce and reflect on the existence of the One. We are able to do this
because the human soul, created by God, is capable of wisdom. The
Goddess of Truth in the poem represents the path of Reason. Insofar as we
share in these insights, we are illuminated through reason concerning the
existence of the Divine Being.

In conclusion, Parmenides has left us with a tremendous new concept; that of

the One, Supreme Being that transcends space and time. However he did not
resolve the problem of what relationship there is between this one Absolute
Being and the universe of space and time in which we live. Is this one Being
the creator? If so, how does that occur? If not, how can the universe of space
and time have come into existence? After Parmenides, these questions
profoundly influenced Philosophy and Theology for 1000 years. This is
especially because the concept of the One Being became associated with the
God of creation.

Thus the huge significance of Parmenides is that his idea of the One Being
was adopted by Plato and later by the schools of Christian thought to refer to
God as the Divine ground of al Being. However, the problem that Parmenides
left us with is: what exactly is the status of the cosmos, the world of
appearances and how does it relate to the One Being? How is it that the One
Supreme Being, belonging to a realm of its own, effectively separated from
the world of appearances can exist independently of the world of becoming.
Plato later adopted this interpretation of Parmenides t- that the One Being
belongs to a separate transcendent realm. In Plato’s dialogue called The
Parmenides, we have an extensive discussion of the One God idea. However,
as we shall see, Plato’s philosophy goes further than Parmenides. He seeks
to provide an explanation as to how the One Being, while belonging to a
separate realm, can nevertheless give rise to the realm of the world of
becoming. In other words, Plato seeks to achieve a unity between the world of
absolute Being (as in Parmenides) and the world of Becoming (as in
Heraclitus).

14
Quoted in GOD ibid . p 249.

18
PART IV: PLATO

In turn now to the philosophy of Plato. I cannot, within the context within the
limitations of this seminar, provide anything but a sketch of his astounding
achievement in philosophy.

Plato sought a reconciliation of these two fundamental concepts of Being and

Becoming. Whereas Parmenides focuses on the absolute reality of Being and
is uncomfortable about giving any existential status at all to the world of
becoming, Plato seeks to provide a significant level of existential reality to this
world of phenomena, that is, the realm of Becoming. Furthermore unlike
Parmenides, Plato seeks to give an explanation of the relationship between
the two realms.

We begin with the most fundamental theory of Plato: the theory of Ideas,
known as The Forms. Like Heraclitus, Plato believed that there is a Logos, a
Wisdom and understanding which has Divine origins. In fact, he attempted to
explain the way in which the human being understands the world of
phenomena using this theory. Thus he conceived of the Forms, as a realm of
eternal and unchanging ideas. It is these Ideas or Forms which are then
imperfectly reflected in the minds of individual men and women in the world.
This concept of the unchanging Ideas, which belong to a realm of reality
different from the realm of human beings, is the Divine Wisdom which ties
back to Pythagoras’ idea of Wisdom and Heraclitus idea of knowledge of the
Logos.

These Platonic Ideas represent what we would call today “abstract concepts”
– such as the ideas of Beauty, Justice, Goodness etc. In Plato’s theory, the
human being can only grasp these Ideas in an imperfect way. When we
perceive the physical world, we do so because of the operation of these ideas
in the mind. Only through greater philosophical understanding can we gain a
contemplation of these Ideas or Forms themselves. This process can be
illustrated if we consider how St Augustine, writing 1000 years later, explains
the Idea of the Good (which he adopted from Plato). He describes how many
things are good in nature and in human world. For example:
the heart of a friend whose companionship is sweet and whose love is loyal is
good; a righteous man is good; the sky with its sun, moon and stars immune
status is good; the angels by their Holy obedience are good…
But enough! This is good and that is good; take away ‘this’ and ‘that’ and gaze
if you can upon Good itself; then you will behold God… He is the goodness of
every good … so our love must rise to God as the Good itself, not in the way
we love this or that thing….And what is that Good but God? – not the good

19
soul, the good angel, the good heavens, but the good God.15”

Looking again at our Schema 3, we can see that for Plato the human soul or
spirit interacts with the material world of objects; out of his process of
interaction, there arise concrete ideas about the world. But these concrete
ideas are not the true reality of the universe; they are like a shadow of the real
world. Plato explained this concept in his famous Analogy of the Cave in the
Republic Chapter VII. We can understand the situation of human beings if we
imagine a cave, in which people are chained so that they can only perceive
the wall in front of them. Behind them there is a bright flame which creates
shadows on the wall that they see. They cannot see the flame, or behind
them, or indeed their real self. There are men passing behind them carrying
different types of statues and figures [like puppets].The puppets and the
people cast shadows on the wall, as the fire acts like a projector. These
shadows are all that the prisoners can see. Thus they know no other world.
Plato sees the shadows as representing the physical world in which we live.
The human being in his physical existence is like a person trapped in the cave
who perceives only the shadows. He must use his mind and try to discern
from the shadows the nature of reality.

In the second stage of the Analogy, Plato imagines that a prisoner is released
from their chains. Plato describes that after the prisoner is unchained, he
stands up and looks towards the fire. The released prisoner sees the real
material things that create the shadows. He sees real people and real objects.
This stage is interpreted in metaphysical terms as the human being achieving
a closer approximation to the absolute reality of the physical world. However,
according to Plato, he is only nearer to being (Book IV, 515d)- he now
understands more of the nature of the physical universe.[see below].

In the third stage, Plato describes how the prisoner is forced out of the cave
and ascends the steep path towards the opening and into the light of what is
the outside world. Upon the prisoner’s eyesight adjusting to this outside world,
he marvels at the beauty and diversity of nature. In Plato’s metaphysics, the
ascent out of the cave represents the departure from the world of the senses
and into the intelligible world of the Forms [Pure Ideas].(Book IV, 517b-c).

Fourthly, the released prisoner gains enough courage to look up at the sun
itself – the source of the world above the cave. In most interpretations of the
Analogy, the sun is generally represented as the Form of the Good, however
as I shall indicate later, it is possible to interpret the sun as representing the
absolute “One” of Parmenides, the source of the Forms.
In the final stage of the Analogy, the prisoner returns to the cave; he now has

15
From Augustine On the Trinity 8.3 Quoted in GOD ibid p 260

20
to adjust to life back in the world of the shadows. He now sees the shadows in
the light of his true knowledge of what they really are. This puts him in a
difficult and even dangerous position (Book IV, 517 a). This person is a
symbol of Plato’s philosopher who has become educated and achieved this
enlightenment. He now knows the outline of the true reality: the One being,
the Forms and the real physical world. He understands that the world of
appearances in which human beings live is only a shadow.
The freed prisoner is like the philosopher who gains understanding and
wisdom. What this wisdom consists of is the ability to extract from life
experiences, the fact that they are a reflection of the fundamental Ideas or
Forms, such as justice, beauty and above all, goodness. For Plato, the
purpose of philosophy, and indeed the aim of life itself, is to concentrate the
mind on this philosophical contemplation.

What then is the purpose of all this? Plato believed that through this
philosophical understanding, we can gain a recognition of the general
metaphysical structure of the universe. In the works after the Republic, Plato
develops a more comprehensive account of his metaphysics – especially in
his Dialogues the Timaeus and Parmenides.
This complex structure can be summed up in our schema 2 so:

21
SCHEMA 2 PLATO

THE NOUS: The

Realm of Ideas or Pure
Forms of the Good,
Justice, Beauty etc

The Dyad: the two

powers or RECEPTA THE
principles of the CLE: Space Craftsman-
Unlimited (Life and chaotic Demiurge
and Wisdom) and Matter uses the
the Limited FORMS and
(Logos) the
Receptacle
THE WORLD
SOUL and the
Heavens

THE ACTUAL
MATERIAL WORLD in
the Receptacle as created
by the Craftsman.

The Higher Souls

[gods] who create
human beings
© Andrew Theophanous

In the Timaeus there are four basic levels of reality which give rise to 10
elements of the comprehensive Metaphysics:
Thus, in the initial phase, the Platonic philosophy appears as a synthesis of
Parmenides and Heraclitus. We have God the One as the creator of the
Forms and then we have Forms providing the basis of the creation of the
remainder of the Cosmos, including the physical world. However, in Plato,
God does not directly create the physical universe by exercising Divine
Powers. This latter idea, as we have seen, was inherent in the philosophy of
Pythagoras – where a harmonious picture is created, the move from above to

22
below; however, for Plato, this idea is too simple. It does not explain many
aspects of the whole of creation. For Plato, there is a complex intermediate
level between the Pneumatic/Spiritual level and the Physical world: This is the
PSYCHIC or SOUL LEVEL. Here there are the 10 critical elements of his
metaphysical schema.

A> THE PNEUMATIC OR SPIRITUAL LEVEL

There are two elements at this Level:

1. THE ONE DIVINE BEING [GOD] AS ABSOLUTE

Here we have the Parmenidean concept of the One Being, conceived of as
mostly unknown in its essence, but as transcendent of Time and Space. Thus,
the One is transcendent of creation in the sense that it is above and
independent of time, space and the material world. This aspect of God is
generally unknown. It is identified with Parmenides statement that the
essence of Absolute Being cannot be known.

2. THE NOUS [MIND] OF THE DIVINE BEING CONTAINS THE HIGHER

FORMS
The One has a Di vine Mind or Nous which contains the fundamental Ideas
that are the foundation of the creation of the universe, namely, the realm of
the Forms or Pure Ideas. Like Parmenides, Plato believed that Reason and
Wisdom were of Divine origins. However, as we have seen, Plato introduced
an idea of enormous importance to explain the nature of ideas, of thought and
of Reason: The Theory of the Forms. Plato proposed in his Theory of the
Forms as a metaphysical realm of eternal and unchanging ideas, which exists
independently of individual human minds. It is these Pure Ideas or Forms
which are then reflected in the minds of individual men and women when they
seek to know and understand the world. This concept of the unchanging
Ideas, which belong to a realm of reality different from the realm of human
beings, is the creation of the One Being, but is also part of the essence of that
being.

>B. THE INTERMEDIATE LEVEL: THE SOUL AND THE RECEPTACLE

There are 4 elements at this Intermediate Level here:

3. THE CREATION OF THE DYAD: THE UNLIMITED AND THE LIMITED

How does Plato argue against Parmenides that there must be something that
is absolute and real other than the One Being? Plato states that within
Parmenides concept of the One Being, there are already two ideas, rather
than one; that is, the idea of Being and the idea of the One. The latter idea is
a mathematical concept which in order to be comprehensible requires the

23
concept of that which is other than one, that is, the concept of the Dyad or
two. Plato then argues that the concept of the One Being already requires the
development of the Dyad, that is, two other fundamental ideas. For Plato,
these were the ideas of the Unlimited and the Limited. On this view, as
developed in the Philebus and Timaeus, the One is conceived as the original
Being. This Being gives rise within itself to the idea of the Unlimited, that
which encompasses all possibilities of existence. Immediately after there
arises the principle which controls the Unlimited, that is, the Limited- that
which imposes rational order on all the possibilities. These two principles
acting together play an active role in the remainder of creation.

As we shall see, these two ideas – the Unlimited and the Limited – became
identified with the Gnostic concepts of the Divine Sophia (Wisdom) and the
Logos (the Christ). It is also similar to the first two creations of God the father
in the Patristic texts (that is, the Holy Spirit and the Logos – Christ).

4. THE ONE SUPREME BEING CREATES A CHAOTIC UNIVERSE

EXTERNAL TO ITSELF IN THE RECEPTACLE OF SPACE:

After the Dyad, the Divine Being creates the receptacle of space, which
contains chaotic material disorder. This Receptacle is like a vessel which
contains both space, energy and minute elements of matter.
As the Stanford Encyclopedia says:

It appears that the receptacle is intended to serve both as the matter from
which observable particulars are constituted and as the spatial field or
medium in which they subsist. It is not clear that these two roles are
inconsistent—indeed, they appear to be mutually necessary.[22]
This is the idea that before the creation of the specific contents of the universe
there was a chaotic or formless vessel or receptacle, which nevertheless
existed in space. This idea is implied in the Genesis story. It was adopted
explicitly in several Gnostic Christian texts. Thus the Tripartite Tractate states:
“This One, however, stretched himself out and it was that which he stretched
out which gave a foundation and a space and a dwelling place for the
universe, a name of his being”

5. THE TWO POWERS UNITE TO CREATE A SPIRIT AND INTELLECT

OUTSIDE OF GOD -THE CREATIVE CRAFTSMAN [DEMIURGE}.

It might have been imagined that the two powers of the Dyad might have gone
on to create actual material world within the Receptacle. Plato sometimes
speaks as if this is the case. However the story in the Timaeus is different.

24
The two powers work together to create a further entity with a Nous or Intellect
separate from themselves and from the One Being, the ‘Father’. This new
entity is called the Demiurge or the Craftsman –it has its own will, the form of
an intellect; it contains reason. The Craftsman acts to create the physical
universe – by linking the totality of the lower Forms [ideas of spatial things]
with the material character of the Receptacle itself – including space.

However, Plato’s concept of the Craftsman or Demiurge, as the creator of the

physical universe, is considered problematic in much of the philosophical
commentary; this is because the Craftsman is not the same as the “One” in
Parmenides. Plato has thus added a creator ‘Semi-god’ who is separate from
the One Being, the foundation of all. Plato did this in order to explain the fact
that the world as created is far from perfect – that is merely a poor reflection of
the perfection found in the realm of the forms.

6. THE CRAFTASMAN/DEMIURGE CREATES THE WORLD SOUL.

Before initiating the laws for the creation of the physical universe within space-
time, the Demiurge acts to create the World Soul. This can be conceived as a
form of Embodiment, in which the Will and Intellect of the Demiurge combine
with the whole of the Receptacle of Space and time – the latter acting as the
body. This uniting of will, intellect and body gives rise to the first soul and the
introduction of an entity which links the whole material universe with the will
and mind of the Craftsman. This entity, the World Soul. then becomes the
model for all other personal beings who have will, nous [intellect] and body –
with soul as the uniting principle. This includes the human being.

This leads to the question of the nature of the Soul in Plato. He says that the soul
is an entity which relates to both the Forms and Matter. The role of the soul is in
my view best captured in Collingwood’s explanation:
For the soul belongs to a peculiar order of being: it is intermediate
between the material world, or nature as a complex of processes, and
the immaterial world, or nature a permanent and indivisible complex of
forms; hence it is both in the world and also outside it, as a man’s soul
both pervades his body and also reaches beyond it in the range of his
sight, hearing and thought. 16
It is in this part of the dialogue that Timaeus remarks that “intelligence could
not be present in nothing which was devoid of soul.” Plato also stated that the
world “became a living creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence by
the providence of God.” Thus the Soul is seen as an essential element of any
being which has intelligence and also is a material being with life.

16
ibid. 7.78

25
>C. THE LEVEL OF THE CREATION OF THE COSMOS

There are two elements here:

7. THE CRAFTSMAN CREATES THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE USING THE

FORMS AS A MODEL
To create the concrete physical universe with all its particulars, the Craftsman
initially took unformed matter in the Receptacle (which was in a state of
chaos) and combined it with aspects of the Forms. This explains why the
material world is said to be a copy of the world of the Forms. As we have
seen, the Forms were there before the Craftsman crafted the material world.
The Forms were not made as part of this creation process, they preceded
matter, cosmos, soul and body; they are eternal and belong to the highest
realm as part of the Divine Mind or Nous of God.

Thus, in the Timaeus, using steps 5, 6 and 7, Plato characterizes the

Craftsman as the assumed Creator of all that is in the realm of Becoming.
Timaeus goes on to explain that we now understand how this “vessel” can
carry something else, and could present “a strange variety of appearances,
and being full of powers” (ibid, P133). It is at this point that chaos becomes
order, through form, number and physical laws.

8. THE CRAFTSMAN/DEMIURGE CREATES OTHER MAJOR SOULS [the

gods].

In addition to the physical-biological universe, the Craftsman created higher

beings with Souls which he described as the “heavenly race of the gods”.
The gods were thought to be the greatest beings; they were beings capable of
attaining “the highest perfection.” Timaeus states that many things then came
forth into being from the gods and it is from the offspring of the gods, that a
superior race was born, to be called man.

>D. THE LEVEL OF THE CREATION OF HUMANITY

There are two more elements here:
9. THESE HIGHER SOULS ACT TO CREATE THE HUMAN BEING.

Plato explains this process thus: The Craftsman “ himself was the creator, but
the creation of the mortal he committed to his offspring. And they, imitating
him, received from him the immortal principle of the soul. And around this they
proceeded to fashion a mortal body and made it to be a vehicle of the soul”
(ibid, 2009, p 149).

26
Turning to the actual situation of man in the world, Plato believed that the
human Being has a free will; that he/she can make choices. However, as we
have seen, it can only express this will in the context of the shadows - its
physical existence is represented as given to it in a world of appearances. The
human being does not have direct access to the real nature of the physical
world as it actually exists. Its representation of the physical world in which it
lives is imperfect – like the shadows.
For Plato, the human being is a merging of part of the infinite Spirit/will and
the divine Intellect/Mind with the human body and thereby requiring the
intermediate element of the human soul (as described above). The human
being thus consists of Spirit, Mind, Soul and body – the fourfold anthropology.
It is significant that this fourfold division of the human person is found in the
letters of St Paul, in the Patristic Fathers and in the Gnostics.
10. THE WORLD OF APPEARANCES IN WHICH HUMANITY LIVES
We can see that for Plato the human soul plays an intermediate role between
Spirit/will, Mind and the human body consisting of Matter as formed within the
Receptacle. However, as we have seen, the way the human being perceives
this concrete physical reality is merely appearances: it is only a shadow of the
real physical reality. The concrete ideas of the lived experience of the
individual are not the true reality of the universe; they are like a shadow of the
real world - as Plato explained in the Analogy of the Cave.

There is a temptation in these circumstances to forget about the fact that the
human Soul is Divine, that it contains within it a Soul and a Will and Intellect
[mind]. What happens in the circumstances is that this ignorance and
forgetfulness give rise to what we call evil in the world. Evil is not attributed to
people as such; it arises because of the ignorance of man about his true
nature and his forgetfulness with respect to the Mind [Nous} and being of God
who had been the original source of his creation. For Plato, the philosopher
must live the moral life in the material world of the shadows, seek the purity of
the soul and try to achieve the knowledge of the divine forms.
In order to understand such reality, philosophy and wisdom are absolutely
essential. What this wisdom consists of is in fact the ability to extract from life
experiences the fact that they are a reflection of the fundamental Ideas or
Forms, such as justice, beauty and above all, goodness. For Plato, the
purpose of philosophy, and indeed the aim of life itself, is to concentrate the
mind on this contemplation of Forms - in such a way that the person can
recognize the nature of the universe as set out in the Schema 2.

Thus, for Plato, evil arises not so much from our actions in the world, as from
the fact that these actions represent a turning away from our true nature. To
overcome this plight, one must also look into one’s own soul. This is the

27
meaning of the Socratic statement: Know Thyself.

Thus we can say that for Plato the philosophical dialogues are a guide to
further apprehension of our Divine existence. We come to understand the
Divine Mind through the Forms and eventually gain an apprehension of the
fact that the One God exists. However, as in Parmenides, we do not and
cannot know His essence. All we can do is contemplate the Divine through the
Forms or Ideas.

Once a person recognizes that they have this philosophical understanding,

they are drawn closer to God. This deeper knowledge is not easy to achieve.
It is what the Gnostic Christians understood as ‘gnosis’ – which ids the
knowledge of divine things and the true metaphysical structure of the
universe. As we shall see further, Plato set the pattern for both the Gnostic
Christians and the Patristic Fathers.

PART V: THE GNOSTICS

As I have already indicated, following the death of Jesus and the work of the
apostles, there arose amongst those wanted to adopt the message of Jesus,
a very large debate about the fundamental philosophical and theological
issues that constituted real Christianity. It is generally acknowledged that one
of the two major movements in the philosophical interpretation of Christ’s work
and message was that of the Gnostic Christians. Even those who later
became extremely hostile to the views of the Gnostics, nevertheless concede
that a major struggle arose between the Gnostic Christians and the early
Patristic fathers – and that this itself created much of what later became
traditional Christianity.

Indeed several historians have argued that the initiative was initially seized by
the Gnostics, who had been much more in tune with philosophical trends,
especially the Greek traditions of Pythagoras, Parmenides and Plato and their
followers at the time of Jesus.

The most important historical achievement by the Gnostics was that of the
great Valentinus, whose views achieved such distinction and respect that he
was nearly elected Pope in Rome at around 150 AD. Valentinius was not
successful in this quest, but the fact that he reached such a great position
within the official Christian church indicates that the Gnostics were very
powerful force in early Christianity. Indeed this has even been conceded from
the heart of the Patristic fathers themselves, when (after Valentinus) they
directed so many resources and intellectual labor towards countering the
“threat” from the Gnostics.

28
As has often been noted, understanding the teachings of the early Patristic
Fathers therefore requires understanding their response to the Gnostics. Most
Patristic fathers considered it essential to deal with the philosophical issues
which the Gnostics had raised; otherwise the Gnostics themselves would
have triumphed.

As will be seen, it appears that the Gnostic Christians and the Patristic
Fathers based most of their thinking on Greek Philosophy. The climate at the
time in the Roman Empire was very favorable towards all the claims of various
versions and developments of Greek philosophy. Indeed Greek philosophy
was considered to be the foundation of wisdom - the Romans had even
adjusted their religious beliefs to accommodate Greek philosophy and even
Greek mythology.

Thus the response of the early Christian fathers to the Gnostic challenge was
as follows: in seeking to reply to the issues raised by the Gnostics, the
Patristic fathers did not reject everything which was in Gnostics thinking; as
we shall see, they accepted much that was in the Gnostics views. However on
certain critical points, they responded to the Gnostics by adopting virtually the
opposite position in metaphysical terms. Therefore to understand the
theological dynamic at this time, it is necessary see most of the writing of the
early Christian fathers as a response to the Gnostics.

Indeed this is the evidence of history. The works of the early Patristic Fathers,
such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and many others was
seen as wholly or primarily directed towards a response to the Gnostics’
claims. Although there is much abuse and heretical accusation in these
Patristic works, there is also a considerable positive value. Firstly, until the
discovery of the Gnostic gospels in 1945 (mentioned above}, our knowledge
of what the Gnostics believed was entirely dependent on details set out in the
works of Irenaeus and other Patristic Fathers known as the Apologists.
Secondly, we can see in the Patristic Apologists response to the Gnostics, the
emerging development of a set of theological positions which themselves also
drew on the Greek philosophers, especially Plato. The adoption of the Creed
at the Council of Nicaea in 325 was itself a further dramatic step in this
process; it was itself a response to, and a substantial revision of, the beliefs of
the Patristic fathers.

For these reasons, it is of critical importance to understand some of the major

doctrines of the Gnostics and the way in which these doctrines can be
conceived as arising, either directly or indirectly, out of Greek philosophy.
However we should keep in mind that, even in responding to the Gnostics, the

29
Patristic Fathers themselves also used Greek philosophy and especially
references to Plato.

I turn now to consider briefly the beliefs of the Gnostic Christians. However, I
must give a word of caution. The Gnostics were not one homogeneous group
who had the same beliefs. In fact, it is because they were disparate groupings
or sects that they never managed to develop a central organization to
compete with the strong organization of the traditional church.

What most of the Gnostics agreed upon, however, was the methodology of
the Greek philosophers that I have mentioned. They believed that it was
possible to know of the existence of God through reason – this was a special
kind of knowledge called gnosis. Although there are certain elements, which I
think are in common in the understanding of the Gnostics, the most important
point in their philosophy was that each individual person was capable of this
gnosis and could come to their own philosophical understanding of these
issues and also could share that knowledge with others. It is for this reason
that the Gnostics came up with a diversity of writings and debates even
amongst themselves.. As the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it:
Gnosticism, as an intellectual product, is grounded firmly in the general
human act of reflecting upon existence. The Gnostics were concerned with
the basic questions of existence or "being-in-the-world" (Dasein) -- that is:
who we are (as human beings), where we have come from, and where we are
heading, historically and spiritually (cf. Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion
1958, p. 334). These questions lie at the very root of philosophical thinking;
but the answers provided by the Gnostics go beyond philosophical
speculation toward the realm of religious doctrine and mysticism. However, it
is impossible to understand fully the meaning of Gnosticism without beginning
at the philosophical level, and orienting oneself accordingly17.

There were therefore three fundamental features of Greek philosophy which

all Gnostics adopted: Firstly, the importance of philosophical understanding
and the use of reason in knowing about God and the universe. As Stephan
Hoeller explains, these Gnostic Christians held a "conviction that direct,
personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is
accessible to human beings, and, moreover, that the attainment of such
knowledge must always constitute the supreme achievement of human life."

Secondly, the Socratic idea that it is possible to know oneself in a deep and
meaningful way – including the complex nature of the self as spirit, mind, soul
and body. Thirdly, through a combination of philosophy and mysticism, it was

17
See Edward Moore, Gnosticism, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy p 2

30
possible to gain a provisional understanding of the divine relationship between
the human being and God the Father, the One.

I turn now to an examination of the key specific doctrines of the Christian

Gnostics:

The One Supreme God, the Father

There is no doubt that Gnostics gave a major role to the doctrine of the One
Supreme Being, as developed by Parmenides and Plato. In particular, from
Parmenides they took the view that very little can be said or can be
understood by the human mind about the essence of God, the One. The One
Divine Being was absolute, indescribable and in some ways
incomprehensible.

The Gnostics adopted the term ‘The Father’ to represent this original Divine
source of the all things – as a recognition of Jesus’ teaching and the use of
the term My Father in the Gospels and in the writings of St Paul. They
emphasized those aspects of the gospel writings in which the description of
God the Father was closest to the conception of Plato himself in the dialogues
and especially in Timaeus.
However, the Gnostics view was not (with the exception of the philosopher
Basilides) that God was totally unknowable. There were certain attributes of
God which could be known – foe example, God as the Supreme Being has a
Divine Mind and a Spirit/ Will.

This is illustrated in the Gnostic gospel The Sophia of Jesus Christ, where we
have the following discussion between the apostles and Jesus:
And he said: "Peace be to you, My peace I give you!" And they all
marveled and were afraid. The Savior laughed and said to them: "What are
you thinking about? Are you perplexed? What are you searching for?"
Philip said: "For the underlying reality of the universe and the plan."
Later in the text we have:
Matthew said to him: "Lord, no one can find the truth except through
you. Therefore teach us the truth."
The Savior said: "He Who Is is ineffable. No principle knew him, no authority,
no subjection, nor any creature from the foundation of the world until now,
except he alone, and anyone to whom he wants to make revelation through
him who is from First Light.

Here Jesus states that there is a key aspect of the Divine Being which is
indeed unknowable to humans. However, a little later in the same text, Jesus
is quoted as stating that, although the essence of God is mysterious, we
nevertheless can ascribe to him certain key attributes such as unchanging

31
goodness, infinity, perfection, knowledge of his own being, and blessedness.
"And he has a semblance of his own - not like what you have seen and
received, but a strange semblance that surpasses all things and is better than
the universe. It looks to every side and sees itself from itself. Since it is
infinite, he is ever incomprehensible. He is imperishable and has no likeness
(to anything). He is unchanging good. He is faultless. He is eternal. He is
blessed. While he is not known, he ever knows himself. He is immeasurable.
He is untraceable. He is perfect, having no defect. He is imperishability
blessed. He is called 'Father of the Universe’.
This view that God has both an unknowable, as well as a knowable, aspect is
also referred to by the Patristic Fathers. We find reference to God in this way
in Justin Apologia 6 1-2 and in Theophilus Adv Autolyceum 13-4.

The Gnostics noted that, if one accepts this transcendent concept of God as
the One, as a Being not in any way affected by space and time, but who
nevertheless has positive attributes such as goodness, an immediate question
arises (which had arisen for Parmenides and Plato as well): what is the
relationship between this transcendent God and the existent universe – which
includes human beings? As one might expect from the nature of philosophical
understanding, there were differences amongst the Gnostics answer to this
question.

The differences have generally been described by dividing he Gnostic thinkers

into two main groups: The Sethians (early Gnostics) and the Valentinians. In
the remainder of my remarks on the Gnostics, I shall be guided by this
distinction.

In relation to the Sethian Gnostics, a major voluminous study by John D.

Turner entitled Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition, has established
definitively the role of Plato and Platonic philosophy in their doctrines. Turner
asserts the following conclusion:
“By now the indebtedness of the Platonizing Sethian treatises to the Platonism
of the first three centuries as well as the similarities in metaphysical and
epistemological doctrine between these treatises and certain Middle – and
Neoplatonic sources should be generally apparent. The gnostic Sethianism of
the second century CE arose within an intellectual environment stimulated by
a revived Middle Platonism descended from the Old Academy and enriched
by the Neopythagorean Platonists of the preceding two centuries”18

The Gnostic works associated with the Sethians present the major theses
generally associated with Gnosticism. I shall here outline the major Sethian

18
John D Turner, Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition, p 693.

32
doctrines here and their association with Greek philosophical themes. [Where
it is important, I shall also outline some major differences with Valentinus].

(i) The Logos [Christ] and the Divine Sophia

Like Plato, the Gnostics believed that the Supreme God created the cosmos
in stages through the process of emanation. The first emanation was similar to
Plato’s Dyad of the unlimited and the limited (as discussed above). In the
Gnostic account, it was the creation of two Divine Beings in time - Wisdom,
the Divine Sophia and the Logos [Christ], the source of order, harmony and
concrete existence. Thus, God the father began by creating a separate
heavenly realm which contained the Divine Sophia and the Logos Christ
within absolute time. This involves a process whereby the God the Father
reproduces himself [in a sense outside of his Divine Being] and there appears
two Divine Persons within the medium of Absolute Time. They then also
embody God the Father’s attributes within absolute time. These two Divine
Persons reflect the image of God, as Spirit, as Power or Vitality and as
Consciousness and [Reason with ideas].

The Gnostics’ understanding of the Introduction to the Gospel of St John that I

have referred to earlier was that it was incomplete; it only refers to the
emanation of the Word or Logos as the Christ, the only begotten son. But it
fails to refer to the role of the Divine Sophia which was equally important. The
Gnostics thus stated that the first creation of God was the Divine Sophia, also
known as the Protennoia (see below) and that this was then followed by the
creation of the Logos/Christ.

Furthermore the doctrine in St John itself echoes Plato. At the beginning of

time, the One God, the Father, creates the Logos {Christ} as his only begotten
son and together they go on to create the universe. This doctrine was adopted
in traditional Christianity; but it was understood in a special way by the
Patristic Fathers (see next Part of this paper).

The key role of the Divine Sophia (also known as Barbelo and Protennoia)

Thus in the gnostic text The Trimorphic Protennoia, she describes herself
thus:
I am the image of the Invisible Spirit, and it is through me that the All took
shape….I descended to the midst of the underworld, and I shone down upon
the darkness….It is through me that Gnosis comes forth….I walk uprightly,
and those who sleep, I awaken.

In the Apocryphon of John, another Gnostic text, she is described thus:

33
This is the first power which was before all of them (and) which came forth
from his Mind (Nous). She is the Forethought (Pronoia) of the All - her light
shines like his light - the perfect power which is the image of the invisible,
virginal Spirit (i.e. the One).

Notice that this concept of the Divine Sophia extends beyond the actual
universe to incorporate all possibilities, whether real or imagined. The Divine
Sophia is therefore the foundation for the possibility of imagination itself. It is
because of this reason that the Divine Sophia is credited not only with
wisdom, but also with the power of creativity; this is because all possible
creations in time exist within her ambiance. This is stated very clearly in the
Gnostic text, The Three Steles of Seth:

“For their sake thou (Sophia - Barbelo) hast empowered the eternal ones in
being; thou hast empowered divinity in living; thou hast empowered
knowledge in goodness; in blessedness thou hast empowered the shadows
(i.e. images) which pour from the one. Thou hast empowered this (one) in
knowledge; thou hast empowered another one in creation.”

This characterization of Wisdom as the Divine Sophia (and the source of light
and life) was not only a concept in Greek culture. It also occurs in the Judaic
tradition of the Old Testament, especially in the Book of Wisdom of Solomon.
She represents the feminine aspect of all creation, as the Logos represents the
masculine aspect. This intuition of such a feminine Being of Divine origin has
been present throughout the history of humanity and is the foundation of the
Goddess idea in ancient cultures.

There is evidence that the doctrine of the Sophia also existed amongst some
of the Patristic early Christians – but that it was later purged because of the
chauvinism of the church hierarchy. The doctrine of the Divine Sophia was
also adopted in an amended form in later Christianity, especially in the
Orthodox tradition. It was the doctrinal basis for the great Saint Sophia church
in Constantinople.

The Gnostics claimed that the Divine Sophia was believed in by Jesus and
was a key part of the early Christian theological thinking. In recent
discoveries, especially as elaborated by the philosopher Elaine Pagels, it is
asserted that the worship of the Divine Sophia was part of the teachings of
early Christianity. Indeed Pagels presents a very interesting argument about
the role of women, including divine women, amongst the early Christians. She
is very angry about what she sees as the total destruction of the references to
divine and apostolic women in the version of the accepted Gospels which was
adopted by the Council of Nicaea.

34
In any event, there seems no doubt that the Gnostics believed that women
were equal to men in nearly every respect. They believed that women could
be disciples and apostles. They believed that Mary Magdalene was the most
important of the disciples of Jesus and that she had a very special place in his
life. Some even believed that she had married Jesus.

The Logos /Christ as Divine and Eternal

The very concept of the Logos - as taken from Greek Philosophy since the
time of Heraclitus [see above]- relates to the potential existence of the Limited
within the universe, that is, the source of order, harmony and concrete
existence of all things. Thus, it was necessary to create a Divine principle in
the form of a Divine Person who, existing in Absolute Time, could be the
source of these phenomena for all creation. This Divine Person was the
Logos/Christ. Thus the Logos is the divine entity which in the gospel of John is
described as the only begotten son of God.

The Gnostics accepted that the Logos/ Christ had a critical role a the very
beginning of creation. They did not contradict the role of Christ in the Patristic
account – but rather added the creation of the Divine Sophia as a partner in
this initial stage of the creation. The Gnostics, like the Patristic fathers (but
unlike the Judaic Christians) believed that Christ did not begin his existence at
a particular historical time - when He manifested himself in the form of the
human being Jesus. On the contrary, the Gnostics argued, Christ must have
existed for all time and was eternal.

Furthermore, the Gnostics extended the majesty of the Logos/Christ as one of

the two original Divine figures in the heavenly realm of the Pleroma. Christ is
given a key role together with the Divine Sophia in the creation of everything
that has concrete existence (cf. Gospel of John). Furthermore, the Christ is
often given the major role in the creation of the other chief heavenly beings –
the major Aeons. Thus the Apocryphon of John states: “Because of the
word, Christ the divine Autogenes created everything...the twelve
aeons which attend the son of the mighty one, the Autogenes, the
Christ, through the will and the gift of the invisible Spirit.”

Although the Gnostics extended considerably beyond the four Gospels of the
new Testament in making Christ such an important metaphysical Figure, their
claims that Christ was a Divine figure were increasingly accepted by the early
Patristic church of the fathers. Thus in the second and third centuries AD, we
find amongst the Patristic Christian fathers an increasing propensity to refer to
Christ as pre-existing and as a more heavenly, greater metaphysical being.
Gradually a universal view arose that, although Christ had manifested himself
in the world in the person of Jesus at particular time, he must be a divine

35
Being, present from the beginning of time in all creation. As we shall see
below, the Gnostic Christ (like that of the Patristic fathers) plays a very big role
in the salvation of humanity – although the roles are quite different.

The creation of heavenly beings and realms - The Aeons and The angels

The majority of the Gnostic thinkers postulated that there existed in the
universe, between the Supreme Divine God the Father and humanity, several
other spiritual beings which they called the Aeons. These spiritual persons
were brought into existence as a result of the Sophia and the Logos/Christ
acting to implement the will of the One God, the Father. In the Gnostic
account, these beings existed in a hierarchical order: from the highest Aeons
to the ordinary angels. To many of the Gnostics, these aeons and angelic
beings existed in the seven heavens (as also described in the Book of
Revelations) or in the twelve heavens, as given in the Gnostic work The
Apocalypse of Paul. This idea also has foundations in Greek philosophy such
as in the works of Plato [where they are referred to as lesser gods – see
earlier discussion ] and in other religious systems, including the Jewish Old
Testament, [which refers to such beings as Archangels and Angels]. However
the Gnostics believed that the Jewish conception was inadequate and that
some of these Aeons had much greater status and power in the universe than
that attributed to the angels.

Indeed, the higher Aeons go to form the Pleroma or what is called the
Fullness, which is similar to the Kingdom of Heaven given in the traditional
Gospels. In the Gnostic text, the Dialogue of the Saviour, we have: “The
disciples said to him, ‘What is the fullness, and what is the deficiency?’ He
said to them, ‘You are from the fullness, and you dwell in the place where the
deficiency is.’ Here we have the assertion that the human being essentially
belongs to the realm of Pleroma, and has the opportunity to return there.

The Supreme God of the Gnostics effortlessly generates the Pleroma, and yet
(or for this very reason!) this Pleroma comes to act independently of the
Father. This is because all members of the Pleroma (the higher Aeons) are
themselves "roots and springs and fathers" (Tripartite Tractate 68:10) carrying
Time within themselves, as a condition of their Being.

I shall outline the other elements of Gnostic account below. However, to assist
understanding from this point, I provide the following Schema 3 which outlines
the various elements of this early Sethian Gnostic account.

SCHEMA 3: THE EARLY GNOSTIC SYSTEM

36
 THE DIVINE
The SOPHIA
LOGOS = =WISDOM THE DEMIURGE –
Begotten [BARBALO] lesser Divine Being
Son of Contains ALL and Craftsman
GOD THE possible
CHRIST knowledge and
=Worldly LIFE Principle
Knowledg
e
JESUS the
Man as
Teacher of
Gnosis and
Salvation
Material World and
Human Body – Basis of
SUFFERING and Evil

Philosophical GNOSIS
AS THE WAY TO
ESCAPE THE EVIL
WORLD © Andrew Theophanous

Up to here, there are very significant similarities between the Sethian /early
Gnostics and the Patristic Fathers. As we have seen, the major difference to
this stage is that the Patristic Fathers generally did not refer to the Divine
Sophia. However some of them referred to the third person of the holy trinity -
the Holy Spirit. It is my view that this Holy Spirit was originally the Divine
Sophia, but was converted from the feminine figure to the masculine Holy
Spirit for various reasons – one of which was anti feminine prejudices in the

37
Roman Empire.

However, from this point onwards, very significant differences arose between
the Gnostic and Patristic schools. The major reason for this was that the
Gnostics had a very different view to the Patristic Fathers as to the causes of
human suffering.
Suffering and the Miserable Situation of Man
The Gnostics, like the modern Existentialists, saw the situation in which man
found himself in this world as tragic. To them, the human spirit and soul -
which was divine as in Plato- found itself trapped in a weak, long suffering
body, subject to all sorts of external events of fate and nature, struggling to
make sense of its own existence and then apparently destroyed by physical
death. This “tragic situation” was conceived by Gnostics, not as a glorious
existence at all, but as some kind of terrible punishment. Edward Moore
describes the situation in modern terms sing the ideas of the existentialists:
The human being who identifies him/herself with the objectively existing world
comes to construct a personality, a sense of self, that is, at base, fully
dependent upon the ever-changing structures of temporal existence. The
resulting lack of any sense of permanence, of autonomy, leads such an
individual to experience anxieties of all kinds, and eventually to shun the
mysterious and collectively meaningful patterns of human existence in favor of
a private and stifling subjective context, in the confines of which life plays itself
out in the absence of any reference to a greater plan or scheme.
Hopelessness, atheism, despair, are the results of such an existence19.
Of course this is very similar to the Jewish concept of man as the fallen one –
as a miserable being condemned to punishment by God from the beginning of
the earthly world and destined to suffer in this material world, because of the
his enslavement to the dust of the earth. Having been banished from the
garden of Eden, and as the bearer of the original sin of Adam and Eve, man
was condemned from the outset.

However the Gnostics did not accept the view that man was responsible for
original sin and thus deserved his fate and suffering. Rather the Gnostics
raised a very important question referring directly to the account in Genesis20:
How could a just and good God rationally agree to subject the human soul to
such punishment? Or putting it in Platonic terms, if human beings are like the
people trapped in the cave, and unable to perceive the real life because of the
shadows, why had the Good God created a situation like this? why are we fact
trapped like the people in the cave in a world of appearances in which we
suffer all kinds of torments?

19
See Edward Moore op cit p 3.
20
For a discussion of the Gnostic account of Genesis, see Elaine Pagels Introduction to The Gnostic
Gospels.

38
The Gnostics drew two important conclusions regarding this situation of
humanity:
(a) The reason for the suffering was that human beings are trapped in their
physical bodies and are destined to live out life in the world of matter. The
Gnostics believed that, because of its corruptible nature, the material world –
including the body of man- was the ultimate source of all evil in the Universe.
It is for this reason that they emphasized the suffering of man as a physical
being. Man’s inability to control what the material world of nature may do (as
well as how other people in their material form may behave) leads to even
further angst, violence and physical and psychological pain. (This is similar to
the modern Existentialist philosophers like Sartre21).

(b) The cause of the suffering was not God the Father himself. Rather a
series of unfortunate events had occurred in the original created universe
which led to the real fall of humanity. Before considering these events in some
detail, I shall explain how the cosmological system of Valentinus differed from
the system of the early Sethian Gnostics which I have provided above – even
though both were based on Platonic ideas.

The Gnostic Cosmological system of Valentinus

Valentinus’ cosmological system was provided to us by a disciple Ptylomus

but was also reproduced by Irenaeus. The key features of the system again
begin with the idea of the One Divine Being; this is described as the Pre-
Existing Being, dwelling in the invisible and unnamable elevations, called the
Pre-Beginning or Forefather or Depth. From Depth emanated the first pair of
Aeons Thought and Silence, of which the latter was eternal and
uncontainable. Thought and Silence gave birth to another pair - Mind (Nous)
and Truth (Alithea). This Mind according to Valentinus was the only one who
knew the Pre-Beginning [the One God] and always would hold the knowledge
of the Father. Notice here the similarity with Plato’s account of the One and
the associated Mind (nous) who holds the Platonic Forms or ideas. The
starting points at this level are thus very similar.

From Mind and Truth came forth, the next pair Logos and Life. In this pairs of
fundamental entities, we have again the representation of the basic Gnostic
concepts of the Logos and the Sophia (as we have seen, in earlier
Gnosticism, the Sophia was identified as the principle of Life and Creativity, as
well as Wisdom). This duality provides the basic division of the metaphysical
principles of the feminine and the masculine, on which Valentinus draws for
the characterization of all the following set of Aeons.

21
See Jean Paul Sartre, Is Existentialism a Humanism

39
Thus Valentinus goes on to develop an elaborate system of Aeons, emanating
from the original eight entities – especially the Logos and Life. Thus we have
ten more Aeons; then twelve more Aeons that emanate from Son and Church
themselves. The 30th and most important of these is the Lower Sophia, who
goes on to play an important role in the creation of the universe and humanity.
Hence, in all, thirty Aeons were emitted from the original Divine being. These
thirty Aeons collectively made up the spiritual and invisible Pleroma. By this
Valentinus means there existed of a complex spiritual universe, even before
the creation of the physical world. This is what is identified in Christian
literature as the Kingdom of heaven.
The system of Valentinus can be represented by the following Schema 4:

NOUS
[MIND}
and
ALITHEA
[Truth]

THE AEON OF
THE AEON of
LIFE - the Higher
LOGOS= THE
Sophia
CHRIST-
Begotten son
of God
Lesser god-
Demiurge
Yaldabaoth
THE OTHER AEONS – the
and his
PAIRS [syziges] of Spiritual
Archons
Beings – includes the Lower
SOPHIA

Material World and

Human Body – the
f the Fundamental Basis of
AEONS all Evil

© Andrew Theophanous

40
The remainder of the story of creation is similar in both the Earlier Gnostics
and in Valentinus. It is also represented in a similar way in many of the
Gnostic Gospels.

The Factors leading to the Creation of Humanity and Human Suffering.

Whether one believes in the Garden of Eden metaphor or not, reason tells us,
say the Gnostics, that it could no have been the Supreme Being, God the
Father, who had subjected man to this situation. Rather it must have been
another Lesser god, who had placed humanity in this position. This can be
seen, they argued, from the fact that the human soul’s ability to express its
Free Will in the world was not a sin, but a gift. It actually allowed man to
express the divine spark within himself, thereby bringing him closer to God.

The Gnostics thus postulated three significant stages in the creation of the
situation of human suffering, indeed of humanity itself.

a. The Fall of the Divine Sophia

This is best described in the Valentinian Gnostic version thus: In this system,
the last and 30th of the Aeons is the Lower Sophia. It is significant that this is
not the same Divine Sophia who is identified with Life and is paired with the
Logos. However, this lower Sophia plays a very important role in creation in
Valentinus’ system. The lower Sophia experienced passion and longing
because she willed to know the essence of the Supreme Being, something
which was impossible according to the Gnostics (even for the Aeon s). As a
result, she falls out of the Pleroma and into a realm of darkness and chaos.

In order to escape from this chaos, the Lower Sophia creates the Demiurge or
Craftsman – a lesser spiritual Being, who conceives of himself as god. Exactly
as envisaged in Plato’s Timeous, it is this Demiurge who then acts to create
the material world, that is, the physical universe. However, the experiment
goes wrong; the Demiurge makes a series of mistakes and because of these
errors, the material world is not perfect. Thus this universe, in which we live,
being based on the limited knowledge of the Demiurge, is in itself an imperfect
universe with many problems. Here Valentinus agrees with the other Gnostics
in portraying the universe in which we live, as flawed and as the source for
much human suffering.

(b) The Creation of the Inferior personal god – the Demiurge

As we have seen above, through her error, the fallen Sophia inadvertently
created Yaldaboath, the Lesser god, also called the Demiurge, a term
borrowed directly from Plato. In order to understand this situation, the Gnostic
thinkers postulated that there existed in the universe, between the Supreme

41
Divine God the Father and humanity, an Intermediate realm which was
governed by the Demiurge. The Gnostics generally believed that the
Demiurge had been created by error – although they gave different accounts
of the source of this error.

As in the Platonic account, this Demiurge created the material world and also
many other beings with intellect to serve him – these latter are known as the
Archons. This Demiurge, according to many of the Gnostics, came from the
interaction between God the Father and the Divine Sophia as described
above.

However the Gnostics disagreed amongst themselves about the nature of this
Lesser God. A minority- who were the most radical of the Gnostics, such as
Marcion - adopted the theory of the so called Jewish Gnostics. These latter
had turned the Genesis story on its head. On this view, it was this Demiurge
who had indeed imposed this punishment on man for seeking Free will and
the knowledge of good and evil. However the Gnostics took the view that this
work of the Personal Lesser God was not correctly set out in the Book of
Genesis; it was in fact an evil act to punish humanity so. The scholar, Elaine
Pagels, explains this so:
Scholars investigating the Nag Hammadi find discovered that some of the
texts tell the origin of the human race in terms very different from the usual
reading of Genesis: the Testimony of Truth, for example, tells the story of the
Garden of Eden from the viewpoint of the serpent! Here the serpent, long
known to appear in Gnostic literature as the principle of divine wisdom,
convinces Adam and Eve to partake of knowledge while "the Lord" threatens
them with death, trying jealously to prevent them from attaining knowledge,
and expelling them from Paradise when they achieve it22.
Nevertheless, the Gnostics believed that this secondary Demiurge god had
created the physical world in a similar way as the Demiurge had done in Plato.
Being the creator of matter, which the Gnostics believed to be the
fundamental source of evil in the world, he was still unsatisfied. So he created
a host of lieutenants to help him organize the various material realms of the
stars and planets. These beings were called the Archons; they had a similar
soul to human beings, but they did not have the spark of the Divine spirit of
God the Father which human beings do.

The GNOSTICS raised genuine philosophical questions on the relationship of

22
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, Vintage Books. 1979

42
the material world and God. This has consequences concerning the problem
of suffering: Why does a merciful God allow all this suffering? If the material
world is not a creation of the Divine Being, so the suffering in this world is not
genuinely real – and God cannot be attacked [except for allowing the illusion
of suffering]. On the other hand, if the material world is conceived as real, then
the suffering is real and if a god created this situation for humanity, then he is
an evil being and not the True God.

Thus most of the Gnostics described the Lesser god as an Evil Being, who
had placed man in this miserable situation. It should be noted that this idea of
the Lesser god, or all powerful angel, who manifests himself as evil, was
adopted and amended in Christianity after the Council of Nicaea. It became
the idea of the Devil or Satan who, although he had some minor role in the
Old Testament, is given a dramatically upgraded role after 325 AD. Some
have argued that the concept of the Devil arose from Persian theology;
whether this is true or not, it appears that the Devil figure came to be identified
with a Being very similar to that which had been proposed by many Gnostics
as the secondary creator.

However there was one fundamental difference in the accounts here. The
Post Nicaea Christians did not wish to accept the doctrine that the bodily
creation of man had been done by an evil god. Rather they argued that, once
bodily man had been created by God the Father, he was afterwards
constantly tempted by the Devil. The story was further developed: This Devil
figure with God- like powers, participates in the world events - sometimes
quite dramatically causing unnecessary suffering and destruction. (see
Schema 6). This was the Nicene answer to the fundamental problem which
had been raised, namely, how can a good God allow for so much
unnecessary suffering and evil in the world? Much of it was the creation of the
Devil. 23, as illustrated for example in the Book of Job.

It should be noted that Plato, in postulating the idea of Demiurge as an

intermediate creator/craftsman between the One Divine God and humanity,
had certainly not portrayed the Demiurge as a purely evil Being such as the
Devil. This idea of the Devil is much more in tune with Persian Philosophy
than Greek Philosophy. For Plato, the Demiurge was prone to error because
he was not perfect. Furthermore he had to create the world in the receptacle
of matter, which by its very nature was chaotic and imperfect. The material
world could never achieve the perfection of the realm of the Forms.

In contrast, for many of the Gnostics, the Demiurge [Yaldaboath] was by

23
This account is foreseen in the Book of Job in the Old Testament; the sufferings of Job are all
ascribed to the Devil and not to Jehovah God.

43
nature more inclined towards evil and selfishness. To many, he was a jealous
god as in the Old Testament- although his jealousy was based on his ignorant
belief that he was the Supreme being of the universe and he refused to admit
the existence of God the Father, the One. Thus he could invoke terrible
punishments on sections of humanity – as is shown in the Old Testament on
many occasions. For example, in Amos 8.9f it states:
On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon, and
darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all
your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloff on all loins, and baldness on
every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of a
bitter day24.

(c)The Creation of Humanity

The usual Gnostic account of the creation of humans is as follows: The

Demiurge used his servants the Archons to create the physical body of man. It
was Yaldaboath and the Archons who then set about creating the human
being in its bodily form, and adding to it the human soul. However, this original
soul, while it contained some qualities of life and mind, did not contain the
Divine Spirit and hence did not have the characteristics of free will. This
original humanoid being was thus unable to evolve further, and was merely
the slave of Yaldaboath. At this stage, the fallen Sophia, horrified at the
actions of Yaldaboath, tricked him into allowing her to spread some of her
Divine Spirit into the original human being. She thus provided the human
animal with the spark of the Spirit/will of God and thus gave to humans the gift
of free will and of the knowledge of good and evil. Nevertheless the new
human being remained trapped within the physical body – and the suffering of
humanity continued. Now, however, humans had self consciousness and
were more acutely aware of their suffering.

Adam and Eve were thus infused with free will. Yaldaboath, recognizing that
humans would now be able to free themselves and challenge his authority,
acted swiftly and imposed punishments on Adam and Eve. The spirit, which
was now linked to the soul, would itself now also be trapped in the body. The
full human being would suffer illness, hard labor, ageing and death. Thus
arose the existential suffering of humanity. Humans now had the mind to
recognize their situation and the free will to act within the world – but they
were trapped by the limitations of the body and the fact of physical death.

Similar to the early Gnostics, the Fall in Valentinus is primarily caused by the
Lower SOPHIA, not by humanity. Humanity becomes entangled in the drama

24
Quoted in GOD op cit p 184

44
and consequently suffers. The story of the creation thus continues from the
point where Sophia’s actions have led to the creation of the material world by
the Craftsman and the consequent creation of human beings trapped in their
bodies.

Drastic action was needed to free humanity from this situation. There needed
to be a way whereby the human soul and spirit could achieve reunion with the
Father, the Supreme Being from which it had come. There were two ways in
which the Fall can be overcome according to the Early Gnostics: Firstly, the
metaphysical Christ can and will intervene in the universe to overcome the
work of the Demiurge and get rid of our enslavement in the material world.
Secondly the each human being must achieve their own salvation through
gnosis of the universe and their own self.

The Divine Role of Christ in salvation

To recap to this point, we refer back to our Schema 3 and briefly summarize:
We have the Divine Being, God the Father, the source of all existence. He
creates the Divine Sophia and the Logos/Christ within Absolute Time. He also
creates the intermediate beings, the Aeons and the angels referred to in the
Old Testament. The Sophia falls into the world of darkness and in a desperate
act to overcome her situation, she inadvertently creates the Demiurge who
sees himself as the real god. He (Yaldaboath) creates the material world and,
together with his servants the Archons, the human body is created with
elementary soul consciousness. The fallen Sophia intervenes and brings
spirit/will and genuine wisdom to humanity. Human beings thus have a
fourfold nature – the Spirit or will, the Mind, [as given by God the Father], the
Soul [which is an intermediate entity] and the human body [which entraps the
soul and the spirit in the miserable material existence].

In relation to the First way. the role of the Logos [Christ] is to reverse the
creation of imperfections by the Demiurge [Lesser God].Christ [the Logos]
was sent by God the Father,(the One) to undo the damage of the Lesser god.
This process is best described in Valentinus’ account. Here, the events which
bring the Christ into the picture are as follows: The Sophia, seeing what has
happened, prays to the Divine Being for assistance for herself and humanity.
At this point, the Divine Being sends his only begotten son, the Logos/Christ,
to save the Sophia, and to save human beings who are suffering dramatically.
Christ [Logos] then divides the soul of Sophia into two. He brings the pure part
of Sophia back to the heavenly realm of the Pleroma. The other half of
Sophia, known as the Fallen Sophia, then herself falls further into the material
world and her soul is entrapped.in a miserable material existence. The Christ
now has the far more difficult task of saving humanity and the fallen Sophia
herself from the dungeon which is the material world.

45
At a metaphysical level, this is done by the Christ freeing the Lower Sophia
from her bondage and raising her to the Pleroma. There he unites with her in
the heavenly bridal chamber:

However, before doing so, both Christ and the Sophia assist humanity in the
battle against the Archons and the Demiurge. Through the actions of Christ
and Sophia, human consciousness is raised to a level where it can fight back.
The Archons are exposed as limited beings compared to humans – they do
not have the Divine Spirit or the creativity given by Sophia. Thus they panic
and make errors – all of which leads to the time when they will be annihilated
and humans will triumph over them. This is referred to in many Gnostic texts.
For example, the Trimorphic Protennoia (44:14) says: “For already the
slackening of our bondage has approached, and the times are cut short, and
the days have shortened, and our time has been fulfilled, and the weeping of
our destruction has approached us, so that we may be taken to the place we
recognize.”

In several Gnostic accounts, this does involve a form of apocalyptic

destruction. Thus in the Gnostic text Apocalypse of Adam we have: “For rain-
showers of God the almighty will be poured forth, so that he might destroy all
flesh (...) along with those from the seed of the men to whom passed the life
of the knowledge (...) Afterwards, great angels will come on high clouds, who
will bring those men into the place where the spirit of life dwells”

In relation to the second way, the Christ now has a further duty, which is to
point the way of salvation for the human souls that have been created in this
drama. In order to achieve this task, the Christ incarnated into a human body
as the man, Jesus (or sent the man Jesus as his messenger). It is only when
human beings have achieved this gnosis that the Divine Being will consent to
the abolition of the physical universe and the restoring of humanity to its
proper place in the universe.

Thus Jesus taught that gnosis and salvation can only be achieved by
penetrating through the veil of the material world, (and even those aspects of
the soul that are tied to the material world) into the greater freedom offered by
the world of the Spirit. In this way, the human can gain glimpse of the
heavenly realm – even while living on earth. Thus Jesus taught that it is
possible to overcome the privations and suffering of human life, and to believe
in the possibility of achieving a life similar to the Aeons – wherein the
limitations and sufferings of physical existence would no longer be present.
This is the eternal life within the Kingdom of heaven, as promised by Jesus.
And it is the closest the soul can achieve to reunion with the One Divine
Being. In various guises, this idea of reunion of the soul with God had been
the foundation of virtually all of mysticism from the dawn of civilization.

46
Thus to the Gnostics, the Logos/Christ had directly or indirectly (depending on
the role of Jesus) descended to the earth on the instructions of God the
Father,(the One) to undo the damage of the Demiurge and to convey the
message that it was possible to overcome the privations and suffering of
human life, and to gain a position in the heavenly realm in which the spirit,
mind and soul would be free. The role of Jesus was therefore fundamentally
that of a Teacher and a Guide, reinforcing the message.
This is a view that is itself affirmed in the New Testament by St Paul. Thus in
Romans 87.11 it states: If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead
dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to our mortal
bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

The Relationship between the Christ and Jesus in Gnosticism

But now the question arises: what is the role of Jesus in relation to the
metaphysical Christ? It is important here to distinguish Christ as a Spiritual
Being from the Figure of the historical Jesus. Some Gnostics accepted that
the divine Christ had manifested himself in the Figure of the historical Jesus;
but others did not. The fundamental point here, however, is the theory of the
Christ. The Gnostics had put forward the view that the Christ, whether or not
He had manifested himself in a physical being, was in fact a totally Divine
Being. He had either come into the world or he had sent Jesus as his
messenger to spread the message of the Christ and Sophia. In either case,
the purpose was to overcome the entrapment into which man had been
placed in as a result of the actions of the Demiurge.

It is thus very important to recognize that most Gnostics believed in the

doctrine of the Christ as a supremely Divine Being capable combating the
work of the personal Lesser ‘god’, especially Yaldaboath’s actions in placing
the human soul into the material body with all the consequences that followed
from that. This whole conception raised the idea of the Christ, not merely to
the status of another Divine person, but to a divine person of the utmost
importance in the Universe. He was seen as a direct manifestation of the One
transcendent God, God the Father. In this sense, Christ is not only the Logos
– He can be said to be the Begotten Son of God.

This doctrine went beyond what St Paul had stated and what is in most of the
four original Gospels. What is of utmost importance, however, is that this
doctrine concerning the metaphysical Christ was also adopted by the
traditional Patristic fathers. However, their successors at the Council of
Nicaea in 325 AD came to see Jesus Christ, not merely as the only son of
God who had become man, but as the part of the Supreme God himself, as
part of the One. This was a distortion on the original view of the Gnostics: it
went far beyond what they intended to say.

47
In my view, the important contribution which the Gnostics made was to early
Christian thinking - in glorifying the Logos /Christ as a Divine being who was
one of the two initial creations of the One God. The teaching is summed up by
one of the early Christian fathers themselves so:
Let no one laugh at the idea of God having a Son! This is not a case of the
myths of the poets who make the gods out to be no better than men. We have
no such ideas about God the Father and the Son. The Son of God is the
Logos of God in thought and power25.
Athenagoras 10.1

Reason, Mysticism and Gnosis

We are now able to gain a deeper understanding of gnosis; this was the key
teaching of Jesus - the idea that the basic aim of life was to Know Oneself in a
deep philosophical way. As Pagels says of the Gnostics:
And to know oneself, they claimed, is to know human nature and human
destiny. According to the gnostic teacher Theodotus, writing in Asia Minor (c.
140-160), the gnostic is one has come to understand who we were, and what
we have become; where we were... whither we are hastening; from what we
are being released; what birth is, and what is rebirth. Yet to know oneself, at
the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God; this is the secret of
gnosis26.
In the Gospel of Thomas there is a section in which, as soon as Thomas
recognizes him, Jesus clearly sees himself as a Teacher and not as a
superior being:
Jesus said, "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have
become drunk from the bubbling stream which I have measured out.... He
who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: I myself shall become he,
and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.27"
The drinking referred to here relates to the involvement in mystical
philosophical knowledge. On the question of the mystical path, it should be
noted here that the mystical practices of the Gnostics took a particular form.
Thus the Gnostic Society says:
The most mysterious and sacred of all Gnostic rituals may have played upon
this perception of God as "duality seeking unity." The Gospel of Philip (which
in its entirety might be read as a commentary on Gnostic ritual) relates that
the Lord established five great sacraments or mysteries: "a baptism and a
chrism, and a eucharist, and a redemption, and a bridal chamber."20 Whether
25
Quoted in GOD op cit Page 247.

26
Pagels op cit p 243

27
Quoted in Introduction to Gnosticism, The Gnostic Society Library, web version
.

48
this ultimate sacrament of the bridal chamber was a ritual enacted by a man
and women, an allegorical term for a mystical experience, or a union of both,
we do not know. Only hints are given in Gnostic texts about what this
sacrament might be:
Christ came to rectify the separation...and join the two components; and to
give life unto those who had died by separation and join them together. Now a
woman joins with her husband in the bridal [chamber], and those who have
joined in the bridal [chamber] will not reseparate.28
Not surprisingly, these rituals are also found in later Christianity in amended
forms. Again here we have the adoption of key elements of the Gnostics by
the Church Fathers, while also rejecting other aspects of their thinking. Thus it
has been observed:
In the Christian congregations of the first two centuries, the variety of rites and
creeds was almost as great as in the mystery communities; few of the early
Christian congregations could have been called orthodox according to later
standards.29.

Notwithstanding such similarities, the Early Patristic fathers did have certain
strong disagreements with the Gnostics For example, they rejected the
doctrine of a Lesser god or Demiurge who created an evil material universe.
The natural world was not inherently evil. It is also clear that they did not see
the function of Christ as essentially to undo the creation of the Demiurge, nor
did they see Jesus as a gnostic teacher. I turn now to consider the Patristic
Fathers and the relationship of their version OF Christianity to Greek
Philosophy.

PART VI THE CHRISTIAN PATRISTIC FATHERS [THE APOLOGISTS]

Like the Gnostics, the early Christian Patristic Fathers adopted a number of
differing philosophical positions. Again here, however, there were some things
that they had in common. Besides the Gospels, these early fathers turned to
Greek Philosophy for answers – including where they agreed and disagreed
with the Gnostics. The Patristic Fathers flourished primarily in the 2nd century
AD. As one scholar explains:
They sought to drive a wedge between the pagan religion that they abhorred
and the Greek philosophy that, with occasional reservations, they welcomed.
Second-century Platonism found it easy to think of Mind (nous) or Reason
(Logos) as divine power immanent within the world. Philo of Alexandria had
spoken of the Logos as mediating between the transcendent God and this
created order.
28
Quoted in Introduction to Gnosticism, web version ibid
29
See Mystery Religions and Christianity, Encyclopaedia Britannica e version

49
All the early Patristic fathers accepted and saw great value in the idea that
Christ was the Logos Himself. But, as we have already indicated, these ideas
were borrowed from Heraclitus and Plato:
The identification of Jesus with the logos, which is implied in various places in
the new Testament but stated specifically in the Fourth Gospel, was further
developed in the early church but more on the basis of Greek philosophical
ideas than on Old Testament motifs… Thus, in their apologies and polemical
works, the early Christian Fathers stated that Christ as the pre-existent logos
(1) reveals the Father to mankind and is the subject of the Old Testament
manifestations of God; (2) is the divine reason in which the whole human race
shares, so that the 6th-century-BC philosopher and others who lived with
reason were Christians before Christ; and (3) is the divine will and word by
which the worlds were framed30.
Let us consider the development of the system of the Patristic Fathers briefly
by employing our Schema 5.
SCHEMA 5: THE SYSTEM OF THE PATRISTIC FATHERS

30
Quoted from Logos, Article in Encyclopaedia Britannica e version

50
 THE MATERIAL
UNIVERSE, THE
EARTH AND THE
LOGOS – HUMAN BODY
The
Begotten Son
– the Christ THE FALL and
the FREE WILL
OF HUMAN
BEINGS in the
World
Jesus of Nazareth – the
Son of Man

SUFFERING.
DEATH and
WORLDLY SIN

CHRIST REVERSES
ORIGINAL SIN AND
BECOMES THE
FORGIVER OF
WORLDLY SINS

© Andrew Theophanous

(a) The Concept of Christ as the Logos in the New Testament

In the beginning of the Gospel of John, we have the idea of ‘the Christ’ as the
Divine Logos/Word which has come into the world, in order to redeem
humanity and to overcome the Fall of mankind - due to the Original sin of
Adam and Eve. It has often puzzled biblical commentators and theologians as
to why John wrote a work where a very significant part consists of
metaphysical statements and introduces key concepts from Ancient Greek

51
Philosophy, such as the Logos. What this shows, however, is the reliance on
Greek philosophy even in the Gospel teaching themselves.

A similar metaphysical theme pervades the teachings of St Paul; although

these were earlier than John, they had significant similarities with him. Here
we have the idea of Christ as a fully heavenly being – but not identified with
God himself.
This approach emphasized the differences from traditional Judaism and led to
an alternative philosophy in relation to the concept of God. The Sermon on the
Mount and the adoption of a forgiving approach to morality, rather than the
harsh punishment view in the Law of Moses, leads to the view that Paul
believed that Jesus did not accept key parts of traditional Judaism and that
Jesus was unhappy with the Old Testament portrayal of God as Jehovah, the
God of the Hebrews, who was a jealous, sometimes cruel and unforgiving
God. This led to the view that Paul was arguing that “the Christ” had come into
the world to reveal the true nature of the Divine Being, God the Father who
was the embodiment of absolute love and goodness.

The key point here, however. Is that the Gospel of John and the letters of Paul
contained a significant number of philosophical and metaphysical statements,
which related back to Greek philosophy. These statements provided the basis
of a very large amount of philosophical speculation in the next 500 years as to
the true teachings of Jesus and the real meaning of Christianity.

(b) Justin Martyr and the Acceptance of the Logos of Christ

One of the earliest Patristic Fathers was Justin Martyr. Of him it has been
said: “His sympathies are above all with Platonism. He likes to compare it with
Christianity” And this is clear in any overall assessment of his ideas. From the
work of Justin Martyr, we can discern the outline of the basic ideas of the
Patristic Fathers, as I have set them out in Schema 5.

Thus, we have here the same idea as the Gnostics: Christ as the Logos that
has existed for all eternity. Furthermore, unlike what happened after the
Council of Nicaea, in this early Christianity Plato and his followers had actually
themselves been represented as blessed with the Logos of the Christ. They
had presented much Divine Wisdom hundreds of years before the birth of
Jesus.
Again, we can see that Philosophy has a major role to play. Man can share
part of the Logos, which is manifested in the world by Jesus. Thus we again
begin with God the Father, that is the Supreme One, who gave rise to and
created the Logos/Christ. It was as a consequence of this action that Christ
must be conceived as originally having his existence in heaven; at a given
point in history, Christ the Logos manifests himself as man in the person

52
Jesus. Thus from the Gospel of John, Justin Martyr developed these ideas:
That Christ is the firstborn of God, being the logos of which every race of
people have been partakers, we have been taught and have declared. (I Apol.
46.2, c.f. John 1:1,9)
I have already shown that he was the only-begotten of the Father of the
universe, having been begotten by him in a peculiar manner as his Logos and
Power, and having afterward become man through the virgin, as we have
learned from the Memoirs. (Dial. 105.1)31

At this time in the development of Christianity, this view was not controversial;
however, as we shall see, as we came closer to the Council of Nicaea, those
Patristic fathers who had the view that Christ had emanated from the Father
as a separate divine Being were all attacked. Later this was labelled a heresy
known as Subordination; that is to say, the idea that the Christ had emanated
from God and was in some sense separate from Him was condemned.
Although he is still a saint, Justin Martyr is criticized to this day for holding that
position.

(c) Clement of Alexandria(c.150-215)

In the works of this great Patristic Father, we have the link between
philosophy and the Logos [Christ] made even closer. He borrowed from the
Gnostics the idea of gnosis as a special knowledge of God and of the Logos.
Thus it has been said of this time when this great early Christian father lived:
As the 2nd century advanced, a more confident, aggressive spirit came over
Christian Apologists, and their intellectual and literary stature increased
greatly. Clement of Alexandria, for example, while insisting on the supremacy
of faith, freely drew on Platonism and Stoicism to clarify Christian teaching. In
his Protreptikos (“Exhortation”) and Paidagōgos (“Instructor”) he urged pagans
to abandon their futile beliefs, accept the Logos as guide, and allow their
souls to be trained by him32.

As we have seen in our Schema 5, Philosophical Understanding remained

very important for the Patristic Fathers. However for Clement, knowledge or
gnosis now intersects with a form of faith based on reason:
knowledge allows the believer to penetrate deeply into the understanding of
what he believes; and this is the making perfect, the completion, of faith. In
order to attain this kind of faith, the "faith of knowledge," which is so much
higher than the mere "faith of conjecture," or simple reception of a truth on
authority, philosophy is permanently necessary33.

31
Quoted in Glenn Davis, The Development of the Canon of the New Testament, St Justin Martyr at
gdavis@ntcanon.org <gdavis@ntcanon.org>
32
See The Apologists, Encyclopaedia Britannica e version
33
Quoted in Clement of Alexandria, Wikipedia Free Encyclopaedia, at
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_of_Alexandria"

53
Thus Clement takes from Greek philosophy his concept of the Logos, who of
course is identified with Christ. He takes from Parmenides and Platonism his
concept of God:
God he considers transcendentally as unqualified Being, who can not be
defined in too abstract a way. Though his goodness operated in the creation
of the world, yet immutability, self sufficiency, incapability of suffering are the
characteristic notes of the divine essence34.
Clement clearly adopts a version of the doctrine of emanation. Thus there is a
clear theory that the concerning the begotten son as the Logos:
Though the Logos is most closely one with the Father, whose powers he
resumes in himself, yet to Clement both the Son and the Spirit are "first-born
powers and first created"; they form the highest stages in the scale of
intelligent being, and Clement distinguishes the Son-Logos from the Logos
who is immutably immanent in God….Separate from the world as the principle
of creation, he is yet in it as its guiding principle. Thus a natural life is a life
according to the will of the Logos35.
This clear separation of the Father from the Son as substantial entities was
accepted by the vast majority of the Patristic fathers. However, his insistence
on this separation led to a situation where Clement’s views became
increasingly unpopular in the lead up to the Council of Nicaea.
There are other features in Clement’s Christian philosophy which echo
Platonism. Thus Clement lays great stress on the importance of a moral life
for early Christians, as a way to become closer to God. Here again he drew
directly from the Greek philosophers.

34
ibid
35
ibid

54
In his ethical expressions he is influenced strongly by Plato and the Stoics,
from whom he borrows much of his terminology. He praises Plato for setting
forth the greatest possible likeness to God as the aim of life; and his portrait of
the perfect Gnostic closely resembles that of the wise man as drawn by the
Stoics36.

Like the other Patristic fathers, Clement interprets these ethical directions in
terms of the teachings of Christ, which flow from the Sermon on the Mount.
We again have an emphasis on love of neighbor and love of God. This s a
further illustration of the way Platonic and Middle Platonic Ideas became
paramount in early Christianity.

The Catholic Encyclopaedia itself says:

Clement is chiefly concerned with showing the connection between

philosophy and faith. He believes that Greek philosophy prepares the mind so
that it may better understand revealed truths. Man, through the medium of
philosophy, transforms his faith into wisdom, that is, into the Christian gnosis.
Through this latter, then, he attains a superior understanding of revelation
which the simple faithful do not have37.

Hence, in methodology, Clement was very close to the Gnostic Christians. He

believed that the philosophical approach- the examination of the universe and
one’s self – was an essential feature in achieving the true revelation of Christ.
This doctrine was attacked as philosophy became increasingly under threat
after the Council of Nicaea.

(d) The Rejection of the Gnostic Demiurge

Looking at the rest of Schema 5, we can see that Justin Martyr, Clement of
Alexandria and the other Patristic Fathers rejected the Gnostics when they
claimed that a secondary Lesser god had created the material world. Instead
they insisted that the Supreme God had created this material world and the
human body - in an account similar to that given in Genesis. However the
Patristic fathers added to the Genesis account the view as stated in the
Gospel of John that the Divine Being (father) had created the universe in
cooperation with the Logos/Christ.

Hence the Patristic fathers insisted that God and the Logos/Christ had
created the human body and the material world in general. These creations
were therefore not evil in themselves, as the Gnostics had claimed; rather
they were a representation of activity of divinity.

36
ibid
37
See Clement of Alexandria, Catholic Encyclopaedia, web version

55
They agreed with the Gnostics that the human soul and the human spirit were
created by directly by God the Father. However he had also, at a moment in
time after the creation of the physical world, placed the soul into the human
body with the breath of life. In general outlines, therefore, The early Patristic
fathers accepted the account concerning the Fall of Man and the Original Sin.
Humanity had gained free will - the knowledge of good and evil - through an
act of defiance of God. In so doing, man had achieved a situation where he
was thrown into a hostile world, in which he had to experience many
deprivations, suffering and physical death. To redeem himself, man had to
overcome this original sin.

Here the early Patristic fathers drew on Greek philosophy and even on
Gnostic ideas. To deal with this existential situation in which he finds himself,
man needed wisdom; he needed philosophical understanding; in particular, he
needed to overcome ignorance; he needed to transcend his forgetfulness and
focus again on the fact that God has created him as a being with a divine
aspect of the soul.

The early fathers did not deny that the Fall had created difficulties for man.
But the problem was not physical existence as such. It was rather that man
becomes alienated from his own spirit and soul; he succumbs to the desires,
passions and excesses which arise from his everyday participation in the
material world. Thus he sees himself as separate from other persons and
develops competition rather than love between himself and them. This creates
hatred and other negative emotions. It is this separation of the human being
from his spirit and soul which the early Christian fathers saw as the foundation
of evil. As Jesus had said: “What profiteth a man to gain the whole world and
lose his own soul”.
The biggest sin therefore occurs when a man has ignorance of the real
purposes of his life and has forgotten his divine nature. This part of the story
was similar to the account of the Gnostics.

It should be noted here that the salvation of man, according to the early
Patristic fathers, was different from that which was given by Plato as regards
the nature of the direct relationship to God. One scholar has represented the
difference so:
That which Justin despairs of attaining through philosophy he is now sure of
possessing through Jewish and Christian revelation. He admits that the soul
can naturally comprehend that God is, just as it understands that virtue is
beautiful (Dial., iv) but he denies that the soul without the assistance of the
Holy Ghost can see God or contemplate Him directly through ecstasy, as the
Platonic philosophers contended. And yet this knowledge of God is necessary
for us: "We cannot know God as we know music, arithmetic or astronomy" (iii);

56
it is necessary for us to know God not with an abstract knowledge but as we
know any person with whom we have relations38.
The idea here is that we must turn our mind and soul towards love of other
persons and humanity as a whole. Love becomes the transforming principle
and is the foundation of Christian mysticism. Thus it is possible to overcome
the situation of man created by the original Sin - through a much greater
expression of love for all people and for the Father and the Son.

Notice that for the Patristic fathers, this is not a blind love. It requires
philosophical understanding. We have an obligation to seek gnosis or
knowledge of the universe and ourselves. But we also must act in the world
through the principle of love; the pursuit of limited knowledge should be
accompanied by action to live our life, according to the utmost expression of
love, as set out by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.

Perhaps the most extraordinary difference between early Patristic Christianity

and that which developed after the Council of Nicaea is the emphasis that the
former placed on Jesus’ teaching concerning the importance of love for all
humanity - even our enemies. This doctrine was very important, not as a
dogma, but as a source of moral teaching and mysticism for the early Patristic
Christians. Thus for them, mysticism was not a general relationship to God as
such; it was an emotional expression of the relationship of love towards fellow
man and simultaneously a greater closeness to the Logos, the Wisdom of
Christ.

(e) Irenaeus of Lyon and the Massive Attacks on Gnosticism

In contrast to the positive doctrines of Clement, his older contemporary,
Irenaeus of Lyon, concentrated almost exclusively on the critique of
Gnosticism. In his 5 volume work Against Heresies, he went far beyond
countering the Valentinian dualism that asserted that spirit was good and
matter evil. As it turned out, this massive attack on the Gnostics had a positive
consequence in the history of ideas. His work provided “ the chief storehouse
from whence writers, both ancient and modern, have drawn their accounts of
the Gnostic sects until the discovery of the Gnostic Gospels. His attacks were
primarily directed against the then most popular form of Gnosticism – that of
Valentinus”.
Against Heresies (Adversus haereses), had another title, the "Detection and
Overthrow of the False Knowledge". The Catholic Encyclopaedia says:
It is the chief work of Irenaeus and truly of the highest importance; it contains
a profound exposition not only of Gnosticism under its different forms, but also
of the principal heresies which had sprung up in the various Christian
communities, and thus constitutes an invaluable source of information on the

38
Quoted in St Justin Martyr, The Catholic Encyclopaedia e version p3

57
most ancient ecclesiastical literature from its beginnings to the end of the
second century39.
It has been claimed that “ Irenaeus was also a constructive theologian,
expounding ideas about God as Creator, about the Son and the Spirit as his
“two hands,” about Christ as the new Adam who reconciles fallen humanity
with God, and about the worldwide church with its apostolic faith and ministry,
a concept that theology was later to take up eagerly.” However, his positive
philosophy is nearly always obscured by the fact that he constantly refers
back to attacks on the Gnostics, as a way of proving a point. This leads to a
position when some of the arguments against the Gnostics appear to be pure
sophistry. For example, from Irenaeus Book II we have:
2. Let them cease, therefore, to affirm that the world was made by any other;
for as soon as God formed a conception in His mind, that was also done
which He had thus mentally conceived. For it was not possible that one Being
should mentally form the conception, and another actually produce the things
which had been conceived by Him in His mind.[Why not] But God, according
to these heretics, mentally conceived either an eternal world or a temporal
one, both of which suppositions cannot be true..[Why not] Yet if He had
mentally conceived of it as eternal, spiritual,13 and visible, it would also have
been formed such. But if it was formed such as it really is, then He made it
such who had mentally conceived of it as such; or He willed it to exist in the
ideality14 of the Father, according to the conception of His mind, such as it
now is, compound, mutable, and transient. Since, then, it is just such as the
Father had [ideally] formed in counsel with Himself, it must be worthy of the
Father. But to affirm that what was mentally conceived and pre-created by the
Father of all, just as it has been actually formed, is the fruit of defect, and the
production of ignorance, is to be guilty of great blasphemy40.
But the Gnostic can easily reply to this: The problem of why a Perfect God
should create a world in which evil plays a dominant role remains with us –
whether or not we accept the Gnostic view that all the material world was evil.
The arguments above do not disprove the idea of a secondary creator of the
material world. In my view, the philosophical value of Irenaeus’ work is most
dubious. Abuse, after all, is not rigorous argument and is unworthy of the spirit
of Greek philosophy. In my view, Irenaeus comes closest to philosophical
understanding when he identifies with Plato on questions such as the nature
of God. Nevertheless his criticisms of the Gnostics were hugely influential at
this time.
(f) A brief Note on Origen.
One of the greatest and most original Patristic fathers was Origen. His system
drew extensively from the Greek philosophers and he developed these
themes in the most sophisticated of its Christian forms. I do not have the

39
See St Irenaeus Catholic Encyclopaedia, web version
40
See Irenaeus Book II in Early Christian Writings available at www.earlychristianwritings.com

58
opportunity in this paper to outline his system. His philosophical rigour was so
impressive that his work had a massive impact at that time on the Christian
church.

The version of Christianity developed by the Patristic fathers, from Justin to

Clement to Origen (the outline of which I have set out here in Schema 5),
came under attack from those who wanted to develop the doctrine of the
Trinity as one substance, as later adopted at Nicaea. The historical
developments of this time have been summed up thus:
But the Apologists upset some of their fellow Christians by talking of the divine
Logos as virtually a second God beside the Father and thus compromising the
monotheism that the orthodox were defending against Gnostic dualism. The
critics of the Logos theology, labelled Monarchians, affirmed that Father, Son,
and Spirit were one God; the three names were epithets, not substantives 41.
Clement was accused by another scholar, Photius that he "degraded the Son
to the rank of a creature." However the Patristic fathers fought back at this
time:
In the 3rd century a Roman presbyter, Sabellius, was excommunicated for
this opinion, and the defenders of the Logos theology ousted the opponents of
speculative apologetics. Clement of Alexandria and Origen provided the
Greek churches with a Platonizing theology that was strongly opposed to the
Monarchian position42.
As it turned out, this supremacy of the Patristic fathers was short-lived. Their
version of Christianity, with its reliance on Greek philosophy, was crushed with
arrival of the Council of Nicaea.
PART VII: CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY AFTER THE COUNCIL OF
NICAEA
As we mentioned in the Introduction, the Council of Nicaea decided to adopt a
very different approach to many of the issues we have discussed, as
compared to the Patristic Fathers and the Gnostic Christians. They decided
that in order to combat the Gnostics, it was necessary are to move away from
the Platonic interpretation that the Founding fathers had adopted. However,
there were problems in dealing with some of the most fundamental issues
here. They had to try to deal with the idea that the New Testament and the
Patristic Fathers had referred to three Divine Persons – Father, Son (Christ)
and Holy Spirit, and yet to reconcile this with the idea that there existed only
one God – in accordance with the monotheism of Judaism. Rather than
adopting the sophisticated approach adopted by the Gnostics and the Patristic
Fathers, they accepted a concept which relied on the idea that the three divine
persons were really One Substance. This was the concept of the Trinity – the
three in one Godhead. To the many Christians who had difficulty with the

41
See The Christian Apologists, Encyclopaedia Britannica e version
42
ibid.

59
philosophic understanding of this concept and who wanted to raise questions
as to whether this new concept of the Trinity was really coherent and
understandable, the reply from the Official Church was: this is simply the great
mystery beyond the comprehension of the human mind. After all, they argued,
human reason can never understand the true nature of God.

This doctrine of the Trinity as One Being was the most fundamental move
away from the beliefs of the early Christian Patristic fathers and of the
Gnostics. There was an incapacity to understand the concept that there could
be beings which were divine in nature, but were not God himself – rather they
were creations of God. This is despite the fact that the matter was explained
by John in his Gospel and Paul in his Epistles. The Trinity concept also
ignored the fact that Jesus throughout the traditional Gospels always refers to
God as ‘my father’ and never identifies himself as identical to God the father,
the Supreme Being. Notwithstanding this and numerous other difficulties, the
Nicene Creed of 325 AD declared that the new Trinity position was the only
true Christianity. The earlier philosophical views of the Patristic Fathers and
the Gnostics were effectively banned; those who persisted with such views
were declared as heretics.

In order to enforce this, there was an attack on the methodology of these

earlier groups. The works of Plato and philosophic understanding in general,
were dramatically reduced in importance and replaced with the idea of
reaching out to God primarily through dogmatic faith. Philosophical
understanding was thus given a much smaller role; unlike the early Patristic
fathers and Gnostics, philosophy was no longer deemed necessary for a
person to find God. Those who indulged in it would be permitted to do so in a
very limited way and only in so far as their speculations supported the dogma
of the church. Thus for hundreds of years afterwards, the role of philosophy
and metaphysical speculation was dramatically reduced and restricted. One
Christian Roman Emperor even banned the works of Plato.
He basic ideas of the Post Nicene Christian doctrines can be represented by
SCHEMA 6 thus:

60
 Philosophical
God the One – the Father Understanding - not
(unknown?) necessary (only valid to
support Dogma)
God the Son – the Logos/
Christ
SATAN = THE DEVIL
God the Holy Spirit = = the Fallen powerful
(nature? debated) ANGEL

HELL – Devils and

the lost Human
Heavenly Realm Souls
Angels, Saints and
Saved Souls MATERIAL WORLD
AND HUMAN BODY

THE HUMAN
Limited Free Will – constant
SOUL AND
action by the Devil on
SPIRIT
humans

Evil and Worldly Sin -

Succumbing to the Devil

Resurrection of the Body – at

the end of history

However, as we can see from a study of Schema 6 (which sets out the system
of Post Nicene Christianity), the adoption of this attack on methodology did
not overcome the need to provide some answers to certain fundamental
questions which the early Patristic and Gnostic Christians had raised. The
most serious issue was the question of the nature of evil and the reasons for
its existence. In the hundreds of years after the Council of Nicaea, a doctrine

61
was developed to deal with this issue – which was radically different from the
Patristic Fathers, although it had some similarities with the most controversial
doctrine of the Gnostics, namely. The idea of the evil Demiurge.

This doctrine was that the cause of evil in the world was Satan. the Devil – the
Fallen powerful Angel. Ironically, this idea of the Evil god like entity (while not
exactly the same form) had been developed by the most extreme of the
Gnostics – such as Marcion and his followers. As we have argued, it is a
prominent concept in the Ancient Persian religion. It was not a concept in
Platonic or Greek philosophy generally. Yet it was an idea that was
dramatically enhanced in the continuing attempt to silence the critics after 325
A.D; it was to provide an explanation of the cause of evil in the world.

The adoption of the concept of Satan as a personal powerful being also

required the postulation of a realm in which he existed; this realm was to be
considered as separate from the realm of God. This was, of course, called
Hell -, a realm in which there existed ‘devils’ of all kinds. However the most
significant thing about Hell was that it provided an explanation of the
consequences for human beings if they pursued actions which were
considered evil by the church. Thus evil was no longer seen as a question of
ignorance and forget fullness – as in Plato. Evil was seen as belonging to the
person carrying out the action; thus metaphysical punishment had to be
meted out – the soul was to be condemned to Hell.

There were other consequences of this adoption of the doctrine of the Devil
and Hell. Human free will was now no longer considered to be, as the early
Christian Patristic fathers had assumed, the major foundation of a person's
actions. The new doctrine now proposed that, to the extent that actions were
evil, they could now be explained (at least to a partial degree) on the activity
of the Devil in the world and on his capacity to impact on the soul of human
beings. Evil could now be seen and understood as the human beings
succumbing to the Devil.

Of course when a person participated in such evil, it did have a dramatic

impact on his soul - as the earlier philosophers had argued. However, there
was only one way of salvation and to avoid Hell in these circumstances. The
human being had to undergo constant periods of repentance; only through
such repentance could salvation be made. What is more, repentance required
the acceptance of all the dogmas of the faith (including the doctrine of the
Trinity) and the role of the church in the process. If a person was not prepared
to undergo this repentance, punishment in Hell was inevitable. It was not
clear, however, whether repentance alone could still save someone from Hell.
This was an issue about which there were many theological disputes. Of

62
course, the saved person would ascend to the heavenly realm upon death;
then he would be in the company of Angels and the other saved souls.

However there was a further complications to the picture. It was necessary to

assert against the Gnostics that the material world in which man lives, and
even his body, is in some sense ultimately good or even divine. Thus it
appears that the realm of Heaven is only a temporary state. For at the end of
history, the Christ will return in human body and will also resurrect all the
souls who have been saved into physical bodies. In this way, there will be the
restoration of Heaven in the physical, material world of man on the earth.

These Traditional doctrines, which dominated for more than a thousand years,
had one particular outcome. The focus of Christianity during this time was the
central concept of punishment for evil human action. While there were
disagreements about the degree to which the individual person was
responsible for evil, (as distinct from the actions of the Devil), it nevertheless
was the case that what constituted good behavior in the minds of the church
leaders, was to be imposed on human beings - with the threat of punishment
in an eternal Hell.

While there had been references to ideas such as the Devil and hell in the Old
Testament, these ideas now reigned supreme. There is no doubt that this
form of Christianity, when carried to extremes, was the foundation of the
Inquisition. The burning of hundreds of thousands of women as witches and
other tragic events associated with the mane of Christianity. No wonder the
world is now fascinated with many books about the lost earlier philosophy,
especially the ideas of Christ which have survived in secret orders and passed
on through secret organizations and mysteries schools – as undoubtedly was
the case about the Gnostic Gospels.

CONCLUSION

Since the Enlightenment and the Reformation of Christianity, it has been

possible to raise and discuss a significant number of the issues which
confronted the early Christian Patristic fathers and the Gnostic Christians.
What I have tried to show in this seminar is that these questions remain with
us even today,. We can learn from the philosophical discussions and the
examination of metaphysical questions which these early Christians
confronted -whether they were Gnostics or Patristic.
In particular, it is important to restore the role of the human mind and reason
in dealing with these issues. The message of ancient Greek philosophy thus
remains paramount and profound. The methodology set down by Pythagoras,
Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato and the others reminds valid. In this regard,

63
Ancient philosophy was much more profound than current philosophical
methods.
Surely in a world in which scientific thinking has become the norm, it is time to
restore the role of reasoning and metaphysical philosophy to its proper place.
In doing so, I believe that we can find that those who wish to see in the Christ
the manifestation of the Divine Logos, can find a Christian teaching which is
profound and which they can apply in their own life.

Furthermore, whether or not we adopt a Christian approach, we can learn

from the deliberations of the early Patristic fathers and the Gnostics. Even the
issues which divided them remain fundamental for us today,. As the
Existentialist philosophers of the 20th century have shown, there are big
questions here: Is human suffering and the contingencies of human life to be
considered as an inevitable part of the process of being human ? And if so,
how are we through contemplation and philosophy to come to grips with these
questions and to go on to live a good life? Thank you very much for listening.
APPENDIX I: Main Gnostic Works and Gospels
 Gnostic: The Gospel of Thomas
 Gnostic: The Secret Book of James
 Gnostic: Basilides
 Gnostic: naassene Fragment
 Gnostic: Gospel of Mary Magdalene
 Gnostic: Dialogue of the Savior
 Gnostic: Gospel of the Savior
 Gnostic: Marcion
 Gnostic: Epiphanes
 Gnostic: Ophite Diagrams
 Gnostic: Ptolemy
 Gnostic: Gospel of Truth
 Gnostic: Excerpts of Theodotus
 Gnostic: Heracleon
 Gnostic: Acts of Peter
 Gnostic: Acts of Thomas

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