"26th Degree - Prince of Mercy or Scottish Trinitarian" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Albert)

The is thus interpreted, by the usual method of reckoning Greek letters numerically a,1 .. b,1 ….j,100 …. a,1 …. x,60.. a,1 . . x 200 = 365 which is the whole Emanation-World, as the development of the Supreme Being.

In the system of Basilides, Light, Life, Soul, and Good were opposed to Darkness, Death, Matter, and Evil, throughout the whole course of the Universe.

According to the Gnostic view, God was represented as the immanent, incomprehensible and original source of all perfection; the unfathomable ABYSS (buthos), according to Valentinus, exalted above all possibility of designation; of whom, properly speaking, nothing can be predicated; the of Basilides, the of Philo. From this incomprehensible Essence of God, an immediate transition to finite things is inconceivable. Self-limitation is the first beginning of a communication of life on the part of God - the first passing of the hidden Deity into manifestation; and from this proceeds all further self-developing manifestation of the Divine Essence. From this primal link in the chain of life there are evolved, in the first place, the manifold powers or attributes inherent in the divine Essence, which, until that first self-comprehension, were all hidden in the Abyss of His Essence. Each of these attributes presents the whole divine Essence under one particular aspect; and to each, therefore, in this respect, the title of God may appropriately be applied. These Divine Powers evolving themselves to self-subsistence, become thereupon the germs and principles of all further developments of life.

The life contained in them unfolds and individualizes itself more and more, but in such a way that the successive grades of this evolution of life continually sink lower and lower; the spirits become feebler, the further they are removed from the first link in the series.

The first manifestation they termed heautou] or was hypostatically represented in a or [protл katalлpsis [proton katalлpton tou Theou]; which [Nous or Logos].

In the Alexandrian Gnosis, the Platonic notion of the [Hulл] predominates. This is the dead, the unsubstantial the boundary that limits from without the evolution of life in its gradually advancing progression, whereby the Perfect is ever evolving itself into the less Perfect. This again, is represented under various images; at one time as the darkness that exists alongside of the light; at another, as the void [Kenoma, Kenon], in opposition to the Fullness, [Plлroma] of
the Divine Life; or as the shadow that accompanies the light; or as the chaos, or the sluggish, stagnant, dark water. This matter, dead in itself, possesses by its own nature no inherent tendency; as life of every sort is foreign to it, itself makes no encroachment on the Divine. As, however, the evolutions of the Divine Life (the essences developing themselves out of the progressive emanation) become feebler, the further they are removed from the first link in the series; and as their connection with the first becomes looser at each successive step, there arises at the last step of the evolution, an imperfect, defective product, which, unable to retain
its connection with the chain of Divine Life, sinks from the World of Eons into the material chaos: or, according to the same notion, somewhat differently expressed [according to the Ophites and to Bardesanes], a drop from the fullness of the Divine life bubbles over into the bordering void. Hereupon the dead matter, by commixture with the living principle, which it wanted, first of all receives animation. But, at the same time, also, the divine, the living, becomes corrupted by mingling with the chaotic mass. Existence now multiplies itself. There arises a subordinate, defective life; there is ground for a new world; a creation starts into being, beyond the confines of the world of emanation. But, on the other hand, since the chaotic principle of matter has acquired vitality, there now arises a more distinct and more active opposition to the God-like a barely negative, blind, ungodly nature-power, which obstinately resists all influence of the Divine; hence, as products of the spirit of the (of the Pneuma Hulikon), are Satan, malignant spirits, wicked men, in none of whom is there any reasonable or moral principle, or any principle of a rational will; but blind passions alone have the ascendency.
In them there is the same conflict, as the scheme of Platonism supposes, between the soul under the guidance of Divine reason [the Nous], and the soul blindly resisting reason between the [pronoia] and the [anagл], the Divine Principle and the natural.

The Syrian Gnosis assumed the existence of an active, turbulent kingdom of evil, or of darkness, which, by its encroachments on the kingdom of light, brought about a commixture of the light with the darkness, of the God-like with the ungodlike.

Even among the Platonists, some thought that along with an organized, inert matter, the substratum of the corporeal world, there existed from the beginning a blind, lawless motive power, an ungodlike soul, as its original motive and active principle. As the inorganic matter
was organized into a corporeal world, by the plastic power of the Deity, so by the same power, law and reason were communicated to that turbulent, irrational soul. Thus the chaos of the was transformed into an organized world, and that blind soul into a rational principle, a mundane soul, animating the Universe. As from the latter proceeds all rational, spiritual life in humanity, so from the former proceeds all that is irrational, all that is under the blind sway of passion and appetite; and all malignant spirits are its progeny.

In one respect all the Gnostics agreed they all held, that there was a world purely emanating out of the vital development of God, a creation evolved directly out of the Divine Essence, far exalted above any outward creation produced by God's plastic power, and conditioned by pre-existing matter. They agreed in holding that the framer of this lower world was not
the Father of that higher world of emanation; but the Demiurge, a being of a kindred nature with the Universe framed and governed by him, and far inferior to that higher system and the Father of it.

But some, setting out from ideas which had long prevailed among certain Jews of Alexandria, supposed that the Supreme God created and governed the world by His ministering spirits, by the angels. At the head of these angels stood one who had the direction and control of all;
therefore called the Artificer and Governor of the World. This Demiurge they compared with the plastic, animating, mundane spirit of Plato and Deuteros Theos; the Platonists [the Theos
Genetos], who, moreover, according to the Timжus of Plato, strives to represent the IDEA of the Divine Reason, in that which is becoming (as contradistinguished from that which is) and temporal. This angel is a representative of the Supreme God, on the lower stage of existence: he does not act independently, but merely according to the ideas inspired in him by the Supreme God; just as the plastic, mundane soul of the Platonists creates all things after the pattern of the ideas communicated Nous the by the Supreme Reason [ho esti zцon the paradeigma, of the Divine Reason hypostatized].

But these ideas transcend his limited essence; he cannot understand them; he is merely their unconscious organ; and therefore is unable himself to comprehend the whole scope and meaning of the work which lie performs. As an organ under the guidance of a higher inspiration, he
reveals higher truths than he himself can comprehend. The mass of the Jews, they held, recognized not the angel, by whom, in all the Theophanies of the Old Testament, God revealed Himself; they knew not the Demiurge in his true relation to the hidden Supreme God, who never
reveals Himself in the sensible world. They confounded the type and the archetype, the symbol and the idea. They rose no higher than the Demiurge; they took him to be the Supreme God Himself. But the spiritual men among them, on the contrary, clearly perceived, or at least divined, the ideas veiled under Judaism; they rose beyond the Demiurge, to a knowledge of the Supreme God; and are therefore properly His Therapeutai worshippers [Other Gnostics, who had not been followers of the Mosaic religion, but who had, at an earlier period, framed to themselves an oriental Gnosis, regarded the Demiurge as a being absolutely hostile to the Supreme God].

He and his angels, notwithstanding their finite nature, wish to establish their independence: they will tolerate no foreign rule within their realm. Whatever of a higher nature descends into their kingdom, they seek to hold imprisoned there, lest it should raise itself above their narrow
precincts. Probably, in this system, the kingdom of the Demiurgic Angels corresponded, for the most part, with that of the deceitful Star-Spirits, who seek to rob man of his freedom, to beguile him by various arts of deception, and who exercise a tyrannical sway over the things of this world. Accordingly, in the system of these Sabжans, the seven Planet Spirits, and the twelve Star-Spirits of the zodiac, who sprang from an irregular connection between the cheated Fetahil and the Spirit of Darkness, play an important part in everything that is bad. The Demiurge is a limited and limiting being, proud, jealous, and revengeful; and this his character betrays itself in the Old Testament, which, the Gnostics held, came from him. They transferred to the Demiurge himself, whatever in the idea of God, as presented by the Old Testament, appeared to them
defective. Against his will and rule the was continually rebelling, revolting without control against the dominion which he, the fashioner, would exercise over it, casting off the yoke imposed on it, and destroying the work he had begun.

The same jealous being, limited in his power, ruling with despotic sway, they imagined they saw in nature. He strives to check the germination of the divine seeds of life which the Supreme God of Holiness and Love, who has no connection whatever with the sensible world, has scattered
among men. That perfect God was at most known and worshipped in Mysteries by a few spiritual men.

The Gospel of St. John is in great measure a polemic against the Gnostics, whose different sects, to solve the great problems, the creation of a material world by an immaterial Being, the fall of man, the incarnation, the redemption and restoration of the spirits called men, admitted a long series of intelligences, intervening in a series of spiritual operations; and which they designated by the names, The Beginning, the Word, the Only-Begotten, Life, Light, and Spirit [Ghost]: in Greek, Mo and [Archл, Logos, Monogenлs, Zцe, Phцs, and Pneuma]. St. John, at the beginning of his Gospel, avers that it was Jesus Christ who existed in the Beginning; that He was the WORD of God by which everything was made; that He was the Only-Begotten, the Life and the Light, and that He diffuses among men the Holy Spirit [or Ghost], the Divine Life and Light.

So the Plлroma, Plenitude or Fullness, was a favorite term with the Gnostics, and Truth and Grace were the Gnostic Eons; and the Simonians, Dokлtлs, and other Gnostics held that the Eon Christ Jesus was never really, but only apparently clothed with a human body but St. John replies that the Word did really become Flesh, and dwelt among us; and that in Him were the Plлroma and Truth and Grace.

In the doctrine of Valentinus, reared a Christian at Alexandria, God was a perfect Being, an Abyss [Buthos], which no intelligence could sound, because no eye could reach the invisible and ineffable heights on which He dwelt, and no mind could comprehend the duration of His
existence; He has always been; He is the Primitive Father and Beginning and [the Propatцr and Proarchл] He will BE always, and does not grow old. The development of His Perfections produced the intellectual world. After having passed infinite ages in repose and silence, He manifested Himself by His Thought, source of all His manifestations, and which received from Him the germ of His Ennoia] is also creations. Being of His Being, His Thought termed [Charis], Grace or Joy, and , or [Sigл or Arrлton], Silence or the Ineffable. Its first manifestation was [Nous], the Intelligence, first of the Eons, commencement of all things, first revelation of the Divinity, the [Monogenлs], or Only-Begotten next, Truth [Alлtheia], his companion. Their manifestations were the Word Zoл and theirs, Man and the Church and Logos and Life [and Anthrцpos and Ekklлsia] and from these, other twelve, six of whom were Hope, Faith, Charity, Intelligence, Happiness, and Wisdom; or, in the Hebrew, Kesten, Kina, Amphe, Ouananim, Thaedes, and Oubina. The harmony of the Eons, struggling to know and be united to the Primitive God, was disturbed, and to redeem and restore them, the Intelligence produced Christ and the Holy Spirit His companion; who restored them to their first estate of happiness and harmony; and thereupon they formed the Eon Jesus, born of a Virgin, to whom the Christos united himself in baptism and who, with his Companion Sophia-Achamoth, saved and redeemed the world.

The Marcosians taught that the Supreme Deity produced by His words the [Logos] or Plenitude of Eons: His first utterance was a syllable of four letters, each of which became a being; His second of four, His third of ten, and His fourth of twelve; thirty in all, which constituted the f [Plлroma].

The Valentinians, and others of the Gnostics, distinguished three orders of existences: 1st. The divine germs of life, exalted by their nature above matter, and akin to the (Sophia], to the mundane soul and to the Plлroma; the spiritual natures, [Phuseis Pneumatikai]: 2d. The natures originating in the life, divided from the former by the mixture, the psychical natures, of the [Phuseis Psuchikai]; with which begins a perfectly new order of existence, an image of that higher mind and system, in a subordinate grade; and finally, 3d. The Ungodlike or Hylic Nature, which resists all amelioration, and whose tendency is only to destroy - the nature of blind lust and passion.