Comparison of the Account of Salvation Offered by Irenaeus with a Gnostic System - Term Paper Example

Even as the variations between the so-called Gnostic groups present a lasting dilemma, there have been valuable and brief accounts. Gnosticism is a set of guidelines for redemption, which emerged among Christians and pagans in the phase of the late antiquity. Six general attributes of different forms of Gnosticism have been maintained (Osborn, 2001, 265): 1. a cosmic dualism, according to which the world is evil and ruled by evil powers. Matter and spirit are sharply opposed, but all things fall under the dominion of one or the other; 2. a clear distinction between the most-high, unknown God, and the God who created this world, usually identified with the creator God of the old testament; 3. some humans are naturally like God, bearing a spark of heavenly light, although their body belongs to an evil world; 4. the human condition and desire for freedom are explained by a myth of a pre-cosmic fall; 5. humans are liberated by knowledge of their true nature and heavenly origin; 6. only an elect few have the spiritual seed which determines by its presence or absence the destiny and the moral choices of each person. Nowadays, even such a synopsis has been debated; earlier simplifications are questioned and replaced by other defenceless claims, which may be established concisely. It may be claimed that exegesis by Gnostics was not ruled by a sequence of objection or reversal; that their concepts were not freeloading; that as a group, they were disinclined neither to the physical existence nor to the world, neither abstinent nor libertine, neither determinist nor discriminatory. It is even argued that Gnostics surface as “sanguine sociable creatures...judging by the ways in which they often seemed intent precisely on pursuing a lessening of socio-cultural tension between their religious movement and the larger social world” (ibid, 266). This mainstream perspective resorts to the marketplace. Gnosticism is not anymore a brand name with a protected market; and at any rate if the documentation of product performance does not specify that the time is ripe for intellectuals as responsible avant-garde producers of knowledge to request a comprehensive recollection and to concentrate shared attention on formulating not only a repackaging scheme but a latest framework in general. The Gnostic is beyond description in search for the irreconcilable (Osborn, 2001, 268). Beyond promotion, nevertheless, matters of historical research linger. I. Irenaeus of Lyons and the Gnostic System Modern scepticism regarding the Gnostic phenomenon unnecessarily has to encourage people to adhere Tertullian in the ‘duty of derision’ against Gnosticism. Over the last five decades extremely valuable work has been accomplished on recently unearthed documents. Since the objective of this paper is to elaborate on the premises of Irenaeus, the deficiency in the synthesis of Gnostic thoughts is less significant than Irenaeus’ explanation of the motivation to his thought. Therefore, the question is: What compelled Irenaeus to struggle towards a cohesive doctrine of Christian thought? There is no anonymity. Irenaeus establishes what has roused him to react in Book 1 and disproves it in Book 2. The remnants of his work reveal that his rejoinder transcends the motivation (Johnson, 2004, 28). Irenaeus initiates with a thorough description of a Valentinian myth which is the labour of a generation succeeding Valentinus and Ptolemy. The credit to Ptolemy is an interpretation; yet the writers were most probably Valentinians who, even as referring to themselves students of Valentinus, were actually students of Ptolemy. The work demonstrates four movements, namely, “extension, dispersion, concentration in saviour, and return to unity by saviour, and alludes into six periods, namely, “the first principle and first emanations; the passion of Sophia and the new emanations; the formation of Achamoth; three substances; creation of the cosmos; Christ and consummation” (Cullman, 1959, 102). The first principle and first emanations All things germinate from the rightness of the pro-father, pro-first principle, chasm, who is unfathomable, further than apprehension, unseen, perpetual, serene in deep restfulness. With him subsists indivisibly reflection (ennoia) who is also silence (sige) and elegance (charis). From this creation originate three pairs of emanations to the splendour of the Father and to create the Ogdoad: “Nous (or Monogenes) and Aletheia, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia” (ibid, 103). Additional emanations carry on to the splendour of the Father. Beginning from Logos and Zoe followed five pairs of aeons and beginning from Anthropos and Ecclesia six additional pairs. These thirty create the Pleroma, or breadth of the Godhead (Cullman, 1959). The passion of Sophia and the New Emanations i) “Passion of Sophia, emanation of limit: The only-begotten Nous alone beholds and rejoices in the Father” (Berthold, 1962, 63). The other aeons yearn sincerely to meet him. However, the remaining of the thirty aeons, Sophia, surrenders to an unmanageable motive to detain his limitless greatness which changes her through ardour. Her obsession is both an illness and a misery, physical and moral alike. She extremely hurts towards the sweetness of the Father that she would have been liquefied into the All had not if not Horos, delegated as unifier of the Pleroma, persuaded her that the Father is unfathomable and authenticated her. Hence, Sophia is transformed and convinced that the Father is unfathomable, isolated from her motive and obsession through marvel, cured and cleansed. She is at last reconciled to her partner. What she has illuminated is a spiritual essence, formless, weak and womanly, understandable from the narrative of the woman with a concern of blood who was cured through touching the garment of the son. The son is equal of truth and his garment symbolises truth. The power which progresses from him is Horos (limit). Limit is also referred to as the cross, liberator, saviour, definer and light. Cross unifies, verifies, sets up on the one hand and segregates, characterises, cleanses on the other hand. Everything that is material is divided like “straw from wheat and consumed in fire” (ibid, 64). ii) “Emission of Christ and holy spirit, formation of the saviour: So that none of the aeons will ever be smitten by a passion like that of Sophia, the only begotten (Mind) now emits a new pair of aeons: Christ and Holy Spirit” (Williams, 1996, 76). Similar to the worldly Christ, the divine Christ will teach. He will disclose knowledge, preaching the character of the suzugia, endowing knowledge that the Father is unfathomable and that the only means to him is through his only son. The perpetual eternalness of the aeons is because of the unfathomable transcendence of the Father; on the contrary, their conception and formation is brought about by what is intelligible in the father, which is the son. The Holy Spirit has a dissimilar preaching assignment to the aeons: he creates them all alike, teaches them how to pay tribute and guides them to the right rest. Fairness of form and thinking is attained through reconciling the masculine aeons with “nous, logos, anthropos, Christ” (ibid, 76) and merging the feminine aeons with reality, existence, soul, church. The rejection of co-education is amazingly triumphant: the singing group of aeons, created strong and ideal rest and happiness, pleasantly sing to the Father. Still more they carry their unique best to generate an aeon of ideal loveliness, “Jesus, Saviour, Christ, Logos, All” (Williams, 1996, 77), who will act out the ultimate role outside the Pleroma. A thread of documents and figures explain the preaching regarding the saviour’s conception. The Formation of Achamoth “Formation according to substance by Christ: The extrapleromatic Sophia, now called Achamoth, is in a pitiable state, bubbling from passion in darkened emptiness without shape or form” (Giles, 1952, 81). From the limit or the cross the merciful Christ creates Achamoth by his power, then rises, abandoning her with an aroma of pureness, created and aware but denied of his existence. She is motivated to pursue the light she has mislaid by Horos blocks her path and she is troubled by loneliness, dread, anxiety and unawareness. As her mother has been transformed, the defeated Sophia gives up to the clash of opposites and from this nature arrives the orientation and the content of matter from which the entire universe is created. She bears the name of her mother ‘patronymically’ and as well the name of the Holy Spirit who is the womanly counterpart of Christ. She will eventually become the mother of spiritual Gnostics and will be reconciled to the mannish Saviour. She can be named as the ‘second Ogdoad’ or plainly ‘Ogdoad’, upholding the quantity of the basic and ancient Ogdoad of the Pleroma. Other labels are “earth, Jerusalem, mother, and lord” (ibid, 82). “Creation according to gnosis by the saviour: Outside the Pleroma, the saviour plays the decisive role” (Giles, 1952, 82). Granted with absolute power, he is given with his guardians to Achamoth who obtains power or high merit from his countenance. Her obsessions are remedied through isolation into those which are wicked and those which are transformed. In happiness, Achamoth makes spiritual fruits (ibid). Three Substances Three substances are not present: spiritual, which originates direct from Achamoth; psychic, which originates from transformation or the creator deity, is of psychic essence; material, which originates from passion. Thus, arrive three races on men, three locations with the unique numbers of six, seven and eight. Achamoth commands the two subordinate substances which are not identical to the substance along with her. The creator deity and the psychics are conciliator between the pneumatics and the material matter. The spirit of the world and the creator deity originate from transformation. The lowest substance emerges from passions such as loneliness, fear and doubt. From fear originate the souls of humans and lower animals, from loneliness emerges malevolent spirits and from doubt comes the material components of the world. More plainly the four elements can be mapped out: “earth from stupor, water from the movement of fear, air from sorrow, and fire from the ignorance which is hidden in the three other passions” (Carrington, 1957, 113). Fear generates both material and psychic substance, sorrow generates evil spirits of the air, and doubt generates material elements or in some other place, demons. The subject matter is difficult to unearth. Creation of the Cosmos The creator deity creates, under the covert manipulation of them other, those beings which succeed him. Enthumesis creates images of the aeons, while lingering anonymous by the creator deity who is the representation of Monogenes. The creator deity is Father and divinity of all things created outside the Pleroma, self-imagined architect of being psychic and physical which in fact are the creations of Achamoth. Not being spiritual, the creator deity cannot make out what is spiritual and proclaims himself to be the absolute and only God (Daniel-Rops, 1960). When the creator deity has created the world, he crafts earthly man, from a hidden moist matter, and breathes into him the psychic entity so as that he is in the likeness and image of this creator. The material man is in his likeness, close to him but not of the identical substance with him. Man is insulated in his wool of flesh. The creator deity is unaware of the spiritual germ which has been embedded in him and scatters it in the souls which he generates in order that the pneumatic man breaks away from the creator deity to build the church which is the likeness of aeon called Ecclesia. He obtains his soul from the creator deity, his physical existence from the mud, his covering of flesh from matter, and his spiritual life form from Achamoth his mother (ibid, 128). The three elements are unique. The material man can by no means be given the breath of pureness. The psychic man can resort either way to spirit or matter. The spiritual man is the salt and light of the earth. The psychic is granted with willpower and competent of education in the world which was created for this objective. He demands superior works and faith. The pneumatic basically because he is spiritual will be completely and absolutely saved, resistant from the consumable worldly element in which he is wrapped (Osborn, 2001). The Christ and the Consummation The Christ of the Gospel is a particular circumstance, for he has obtained spirit from his mother, a psychic entity from the creator deity, and a psychic body which surfaces but is not of flesh since flesh cannot be saved. For quite a few, the saviour from the Pleroma moved down on the Christ of the Gospels at christening to provide a fourth element to his creation. The Christ in torment, psychic, and planned by the wealth of incarnation, endures secretively, showing the form of the Christ who is broadened on the limit and who creates Achamoth on the basis of substance. Certainly all that occurs on earth is a replication of things above (ibid, 270). Souls with spiritual germ are provided particular treatment by the creator deity who creates them preachers, priests and kings. Divinations may speak of the mother Achamoth, of the spiritual germ and of the creator deity. The words uttered by Jesus come from the saviour, the mother or the creator deity who even so recognises of nothing exceeding him (Osborn, 2001, 270). When the saviour arrives the creator deity welcomes him with happiness and gains knowledge of all that he is not aware of before. He accomplishes all that the wealth of humanity’s world demands and before the ultimate consummation he passes into the place Achamoth the mother (ibid, 271). The ultimate consummation breaks up the several germs. Achamoth abandons her transitional place to cross the threshold of the Pleroma and marry the saviour, to create another suzugia. The spirituals thrust aside their psychic spirits and enter the Pleroma to receive saintly brides. The creator deity passes into the transitional place cared of by his mother Achamoth. Here as well the souls of the virtuous find their rest, for nothing psychic can ascend higher (Williams, 1996). All things physical, through the fire buried in them will explode into flames and self-destruct. The psychics who have preferred the righteous will stumble upon their rest in the transitional place; yet those who have preferred what is evil will be delivered to evil similar to that which they have preferred (ibid). III. Interpretation of Irenaeus’s Gnostics One of the most well-known passages used as substantiation for Gnostic libertinism, to a certain extent drastically, in the centre of Irenaeus’s discourse of Valentinianism. Irenaeus charges his adversaries of saying that individuals belonging to the psychic class should practice self-restraint and righteous behaviour, other than that those who are spiritual and faultless have no need of this. He accuses that they applied his premises as groundwork for all types of immoral behaviour. They mindlessly consume meat offered to deities, some attend festivities and gladiatorial competitions, and other covets women from their husbands and performs with them the secrecy of the ‘union’. Irenaeus declares to have all this from open statement of women who were fooled into joining these individuals but eventually asked forgiveness and confessed everything (Grant, 1988, 20). Nevertheless, Irenaeus’s personal account contains evidences indicating that this infamous testimony is another case in which truth is somehow the contrary of facade. To start with, people are informed along the way that some of these individuals act as if living with one another merely as siblings. However, such sincere efforts at spiritual union were very widespread in ancient times, though they often provoked suspicion for apparent reasons. Irenaeus would have people believe that in this instance the sibling relationship was an intentional insincerity, and he is apparently delighted to reveal that the deception was occasionally made known when a sister comes out pregnant. However, that is just the controversial spin that people might suppose an inconsiderate outsider to allege on what was most likely a failure in self-discipline (Gavrilyuk, 2004). Such circumstances of truthful ascetics giving in to their hormones, or even hearsays of such circumstances, would have been salutation grenades for critics such as Irenaeus. An additional element in this passage could promote the perspective that these adversaries were in fact supporting sexual denial. When Irenaeus appeals to the secrecy of union exercised by them, he maintains to cite one of their own interpretations of this secrecy. Now the textual custom for Irenaeus’s Adversus Haereses puts down some extremely interesting ambiguity about the construction of this quotation. The Latin scripts contain the following: “Therefore (they claim that) it is necessary for them constantly and in every fashion to practice the mystery of the Union. And they persuade foolish persons of this, using these very words: “Whoever is in the world and does not love a woman so that he is joined to her is not of the truth and will not proceed to truth; but he who is of the world and is united with a woman will not proceed to truth, because he has been united with a woman by desire” (Williams, 1996, 176). Since scholars have no complete scripts of Adversus Haereses in Greek, the language in which Irenaeus wrote, scholars only access to the Greek language in this specific passage turns out to be through the later author Epiphanius, who adopted from Irenaeus. In Epiphanius’s similar manuscript is a version of the passage with language that entirely changes the meaning: “Therefore (they claim that) it is necessary for them constantly and in every fashion to practice the mystery of the Union. And they persuade foolish persons of this, using these very words: “Whoever is in the world and does not love a woman so that she is controlled is not of the truth and will not proceed to truth; but he who is of the world and has {not} been controlled by a woman will not proceed to truth, because he has been controlled by desire of a woman” (ibid, 177). Contemporary scholars have noted that the main variation between the Greek and the Latin scripts perhaps comes from a perplexity of the Greek concept for ‘controlled’ with the Greek for “mixed, united.” But which Greek was inscribed by Irenaeus relies on whether the error was by a copyist from Greece or by a translator of Latin (Williams, 1996, 177). In the previous instance, ‘mixed’ or ‘united’ would be the initial interpretation, and the quote as translated beyond the Latin scripts would demonstrate the best version of the passage cited by Irenaeus. In this translation, being mixed with a woman is terrible for the average, spiritual Christian males since it involves lust, while being united to a woman is righteous for the spiritual Christian males (ibid). Now this interpretation of the passage is the one more vulnerable to understanding in the libertine sense that Irenaeus takes as a fact. He asserts that these psychic individuals believe of themselves as having deliverance automatically, due to their character, somehow than through the attempt of righteous works. Nevertheless, he says that they assert that such sexual righteousness and other virtuous works are essential of more common Christians, the psychicals (Gavrilyuk, 2004). Nonetheless, some scholars call attention to the reality that even through Latin script is the more precise, the significance of the passage itself is in fact not very decidedly libertine: “Whoever is in the world and does not love a woman so that he is joined to her is not of the truth and will not proceed to truth; but he who is of the world and is united with a woman will not proceed to truth, because he has been united with a woman by desire” (Williams, 1996, 177). If one were to believe this to be the initial passage, it is rather likely that the primary point would focus on the aspect of desire as a departure of distinction between spiritual union and the usual marriage of earthly people. Specifically, the point could be comparable to the opposition between ruined marriages and unblemished marriages in the Gospel of Philip: the former is earthly and belongs to lust; the latter is unadulterated and belongs to willpower. Similar to Gospel of Philip, Irenaeus’s adversaries would be underlining the significance of spiritual yoking, while denouncing the desire of earthly intercourse. Such a motive in the passage is not at all improbable provided Irenaeus’s personal revelation aforementioned, that individuals in these circles actually did proclaim to be cohabiting as siblings (Gavrilyuk, 2004). Moreover, the distinction which Irenaeus claims that they built between the disciplines demanded of the spirituals and the supposed absolute freedom of the spiritual individuals’ conflicts with remarks somewhere else in his account of their preaching to the effect that the spiritual element as well should undertake training in this earthly existence (ibid, 163). IV. Conclusion Undoubtedly, there is one man to whom should go the greatest credit for having effectively defined an important perspective within which Gnostics have been interpreted until the modern day, Irenaeus. But even though Irenaeus’s document was not the earliest of its kind, its influence on later heresiology became exceptional and unchallenged. In these manuscripts, Irenaeus triumphed in unifying a discourse that institutionalised, and forever after would preserve an enduring split of Christian fronts. Indeed, Irenaeus would still barely be a witness to a self-proclaimed usage of gnostikos that gives reason for the contemporary category ‘gnosticism.’ If Irenaeus does significantly limit the title ‘gnostics’ to a particular sect, as some thinkers contend, then his statement at least provides no support for the contemporary addition of other sects such as the Valentinians under the rubric ‘gnosticism’ on the grounds of self-description. References Berthold, F. et al. (1962). Basic Sources of the Judaeo-Christian Tradition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Carrington, P. (1957). The Early Christian Church. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Cullman, O. et al. (1959). 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