07 Chapter 4 - Simon Magus.doc

PART II

Gnostic Systems of Thought

After the survey of the semantic elements, which emphasized the common ground rather than the doctrinal differentiations of gnostic thought, we turn now to the larger units of theory in which the gnostic view of things was elaborated, that is, to the consciously constructed systems of gnostic speculation. From the great number of these we can offer here only a selection representative of the major types, and even there considerations of space oblige us to sacrifice some of their wealth of mythological detail.

Gnostic speculation had its task set for it by the basic tenets of the gnostic view of things. This as we have seen comprised a certain conception of the world, of man's alienness within it, and of the transmundane nature of the godhead. These tenets as it were con­stituted the vision of reality as given here and now. But that which is, especially if it is of such a disturbing kind, must have had a history by which it has come to be as it is and which explains its "unnatural" condition. The task of speculation, then, is to account in a historical narrative for the present state of things, to derive it from first beginnings and thereby to explain its riddle—in other words, to lift the vision of reality into the light of gnosis. The man­ner in which this task is performed is invariably mythological, but the resulting myth, apart from its general plan, is in many cases a work of free invention by individual authors, and with all its bor-

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rowing from popular tradition not a product of folklore.1 Its sym­bolism is highly deliberate, and in the hands of the prominent system-builders becomes an instrument, wielded with great virtu­osity, for the communication of sophisticated ideas. The mythologi­cal character of these speculations must nevertheless not be under­rated. The dramatic nature and the psychological significance of the truths to be conveyed called for this medium, in which personi­fication is the legitimate form of expression. In the following study we shall begin with relatively simple specimens of gnostic theory and progress to more elaborate ones.

xTo the student of religion it is, by reason of this borrowing, a depository of ancient and in part long-petrified material; but the new context imbues this ma­terial with meanings often widely divergent from the original ones.

Chapter 4. Simon Magus

The Fathers of the Church regarded Simon Magus as the father of all heresy. He was a contemporary of the apostles and a Samari­tan, and Samaria was notoriously unruly in matters of religion and regarded with suspicion by the orthodox. When the apostle Philip came there to preach the gospel, he found the movement of Simon in full swing, with Simon saying of himself, and the people con­curring with him, that he was "the Power of God that is called the great" (Acts 8:10). This means that he preached not as an apostle but as himself a messiah. The story of his subsequent conversion, though not necessarily that of his baptism, must be wrong (if in­deed the Simon of the Acts and the heresiarch of the Fathers are one and the same person, which has been seriously doubted) as in none of the heresiological accounts of the Simonian teaching from the second and third centuries is there an indication that the posi­tion of Jesus was granted by the sect, except for his having been a precursory incarnation of Simon himself. By all accounts—even if we discount the story of the Acts as relating to a different person, and date the gnostic prophet of the same name one or two genera­tions later—Simonianism was from the start and remained strictly a rival message of obviously independent origin; that is to say, Simon was not a dissident Christian, and if the Church Fathers cast him in the role of the arch-heretic, they implicitly admitted that Gnosticism was not an inner-Christian phenomenon. On the other hand, the terms in which Simon is said to have spoken of himself are testified by the pagan writer Celsus to have been current with the pseudo-messiahs still swarming in Phoenicia and Palestine at his time about the middle of the second century. He has heard a num­ber of them himself, and records thus a typical sermon of theirs:1

xHe introduces what he calls "the most perfect type among the men in that region" with these words: "There are many who prophesy at the slightest excuse for some trivial cause both inside and outside temples; and there are some who wander about begging and roaming around cities and military camps; and they pretend to be moved as if giving some oracular utterance. It is an ordinary and common custom for each one to say ... ," and there follows the speech we quote.

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SIMON MAGUS

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I am God (or a son of God, or a divine Spirit). And I have come. Already the world is being destroyed. And you, O men, are to perish because of your iniquities. But I wish to save you. And you see me returning again with heavenly power. Blessed is he who has wor­shipped me now! But I will cast everlasting fire upon all the rest, both on cities and on country places. And men who fail to realize the penalties in store for them will in vain repent and groan. But I will preserve for ever those who have been convinced by me.2

A singular feature of Simon's terrestrial journey was that he took about with him a woman called Helena whom he said he had found in a brothel in Tyre and who according to him was the latest and lowliest incarnation of the fallen "Thought" of God, redeemed by him and a means of redemption for all who believed in them both. The following exposition will explain the doctrinal meaning of this piece of showmanship; the picturesqueness and effrontery of the exhibition should be savored by itself.3

The developed Simonian doctrine, whether it was his own work or that of his school, has been preserved by a number of later writers beginning with Justin Martyr (who himself grew up in the district of Samaria) and including Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Epiphanius. A source of great value is the writings entitled Recog­nitions and Homilies, purporting to be by Clement of Rome and therefore called the "Clementines" or "Pseudo-Clementines." We shall give here a synthesis of all these accounts, only occasionally indicating the particular source.

"There is one Power, divided into upper and lower, begetting itself, increasing itself, seeking itself, finding itself, being its own mother, its own father . . . , its own daughter, its own son . . . , One, root of the All." This One, unfolded, "is he who stands, stood and shall stand: he stands above in the unbegotten Power; he stood

a Celsus continues: "Having brandished these threats they then go on to add incomprehensible, incoherent and utterly obscure utterances, the meaning of which no intelligent person could discover; for they are meaningless and nonsensical, and give a chance for any fool or sorcerer to take the words in whatever sense he likes." (Origen, Contra Celsum VII. 9, tr. Chadwick, pp. 402-3).

3 Simon is unjustly, and unnecessarily, robbed of an original and provocative trait if one tries with a recent author to explain the whore away as a slander or misunderstanding of the earliest Christian writers (G. Quispel, Gnosis als Welt-religion, p. 69).

below in the stream of the waters [i.e., the world of matter], begot­ten in the image; he shall stand above with the blessed infinite Power when his image shall be perfected" (Hippol. Refut. VI. 17. 1-3). How does this self-division into upper and lower come about? In other words, how does the original Being cause for itself the necessity of its later self-restoration? It is characteristic of the following speculation that no original world of darkness or of mat­ter is assumed to oppose the primal being, but that the dualism of existing reality is derived from an inner process within the one divinity itself. This is a distinctive feature of the Syrian and Alex­andrian gnosis and its major difference from the Iranian type of gnostic speculation, which starts from a dualism of pre-existent principles. The subtlest account ascribed to Simon of the self-division of the divine unity is found comparatively late, in Hippoly­tus, who copied it from a purportedly Simonian treatise entitled "The Great Exposition"; somewhat simplified, it runs like this:

The one root is unfathomable Silence, pre-existent limitless power, existing in singleness. It bestirs itself and assumes a determi­nate aspect by turning into Thinking (Nous, i.e., Mind), from which comes forth the Thought (Epinoia) conceived in the single­ness. Mind and Thought are no longer one but two: in his Thought the First "appeared to himself from himself and thereby became a Second." Thus through the act of reflection the indeterminate and only negatively describable power of the Root turns into a positive principle committed to the object of its thinking, even though that object is itself. It is still One in that it contains the Thought in itself, yet already divided and no longer in its original integrity. Now, the whole sequel, here and in other speculations of this type, depends on the fact that the Greek words epinoia and ennoia, like the more frequent sophia (wisdom) of other systems, are feminine, and the same is true of their Hebrew and Aramaic equivalents. The Thought begotten by the original One is in relation to it a female principle; and responding to her capacity to conceive the Mind (Nous) assumes the male role. His name becomes "Father" when his Thought calls him thus, that is, addresses him and appeals to him in his generative function. Thus the original split comes about by the Nous' "educing himself from himself and making manifest to

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himself his own thought."4 The manifested Epinoia beholds the Father and hides him as the creative power within herself, and to that extent the original Power is drawn into the Thought, making an androgynous combination: the Power (or Mind) is the upper and the Epinoia the lower element. Though conjoined in a unity, they are at the same time ranged opposite each other, and in their duality make apparent the distance between. The upper principle, the great Power, is in this combination the Mind of the All, govern­ing everything and male: the lower principle, the great Thought, is the one bringing forth everything and female.5

From here on—turning now to the more authentic sources—the hypostatized and personified female figure of the Epinoia (or, alternatively, Ennoia), who has absorbed into herself the generative power of the Father, is the subject of the further divine history, which has been set in motion by the first act of reflection. This history is one of creation or a series of creations, and the specifically gnostic feature of the process is that it is one of progressive deterio­ration (alienation) in which the Epinoia, the bearer of the creative powers separated from their source, loses control over her own cre­ations and more and more falls victim to their self-assertive forces. It is with the fall, suffering, degradation, and eventual redemption

4              Nearest to this description of the first step of divine self-multiplication come
certain Mandaean ones and, in the Greek area, that in the Apocryphon of John
(preserved in Coptic translation).   "He 'thought' His own likeness when He saw
it in the pure Light-water that surrounded Him.   And His Thought  [ennoia] be­
came efficacious and made herself manifest.   Out of the splendor of the Light she
stood herself before Him: this is the Power-before-the-All which became manifest;
this is the perfect Forethought of the All, the Light that is the image of the Light,
the likeness of the Invisible. . . .  She is the first Ennoia, His likeness" (Apocr. of
John, 27.  Iff., Till).

5              Summarized from Hippol. VI. 18. In the original the account is much longer
and much more involved, and it goes on to an elaborate physical theory of the
universe.   The Great Exposition is certainly not by Simon himself, and perhaps
Hippolytus was even mistaken in ascribing it to the Simonian sect at all.   Actually
the only connecting link with the Simonian doctrine as related everywhere else is
the female "Thought" of God, who is here, however, not subjected to the degrada­
tions of the Helena story.  If I have nevertheless included this opening speculation
of the Great Exposition in the account of "Simon," it was because th...