homoiosis theo or likeness to god as a progressive development

Numen 60 (2013) 71–102 brill.com/nu

A Way of Salvation:
Becoming Like God in Nag Hammadi
Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta

p. 71
Contrary to general belief, ethical progress as a means to attain the divine and thereby achieve
salvation occupies a central place in the Nag Hammadi writings. Plato’s conception of the
homoiosis theo or “likeness to god” fijits very well this dynamic view of man, since it
optimistically claims the possibility of human development and progress. Plato’s dialogues are
far from offfering a univocal exposition of how this progress was fulfijilled, but later Platonists
show a rather systematizing tendency. The present paper provides an overview of the homoiosis
theo in the Platonic dialogues and evaluates its appropriation by both Middle Platonism and the
world of Gnosis. It also offfers an exposition and analysis of those Nag Hammadi writings that
may allow a proper understanding of the meaning and goal of the homoiosis theo in this
collection of texts.

p. 73:
Rather than being pre-established and static, the Gnostic view of man appears very dynamic, as
ethical progress was essential in order to follow the laborious path at the end of which the
Gnostic individual could attain the desired fusion with the divinity and, thereby, salvation.

“Becoming god,” “becoming like god,” or “assimilating to god” are the

standard translations of Plato’s ὁμοῖωσις θεῷ. In spite of some opinions to
the contrary, this idea, of Pre-Socratic provenance,8 plays a central place
in Plato’s works. According to the Pythagorean view of life reflected in
a famous passage of the Theaetetus, “a man should make all haste to

74:
escape from earth to heaven; and to escape is to become like god, so far
as this is possible.”9

This straightforward and concise defijinition of the

goal of human life relies on a number of assumptions, the most obvious
of which is the Pythagorean soul-body dualism and its implicit hierarchy:
while the former is the true, divine self, the latter is an odious
accretion that hinders the fulfijillment of the real “I.”

[Of course this is a distorting view of things – the body is the means and instrument of
development through necessary stages of ‘divinization’ ]

This is the reason why, when dealing with the process by means of which man becomes god or
like god, the texts speak of a “transformation” of the soul. Of course, the soul is originally divine
and strictly speaking nothing can alter its nature, but confijined to the body it is denaturalized
and needs to regain its pristine condition. Plato’s famous motto, the ὁμοῖωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ
δυνατόν, the “likeness (or assimilation) to god as far as this is possible,”

homoiosis theo kata to dynaton

[ from another source: Phyge de homoiosis theo kata to dynaton – 'flight [from the world] is
assimilation to God so far as is possible' (Thaeet. 176a). ]

75:
Plato is far from offfering a monolithic exposition
of the homoiosis theo.12 In spite of the central place it already occupies
in his earlier dialogues, the likeness to god is dealt with diffferently in
various works.13

Alcinous, before proceeding to offfer an overview of the

diffferent Platonic places dealing with the issue in his Handbook of Platonism,
already states that Plato presented the idea in “various forms”
(ποικίλως).14 ( Alcinous, Didaskalikos 181.20–21, on which see Dillon 1993:171–176.)

Plato, Timaeus 90C–D. Translation by Lamb 1925.

And the way of tendance of every part by every man is one — namely, to supply
each with its own congenial food and motion; and for the divine part within us
the congenial motions are the intellections and revolutions of the Universe. These
each one of us should follow, rectifying the revolutions within our head, which
were distorted at our birth, by learning the harmonies and revolutions of the Universe,
and thereby making the part that thinks like unto the object of its thought, in
accordance with its original nature, and having achieved this likeness attain
fijinally to that goal of life which is set before men by the gods as the most good both
for the present and for the time to come.28

And the method of proper care of the vehicle (body and worldly sense and feeling), in every part
and function by every one of us, is to provide everything with its own proper nourishment and
encouragement, and to keep frugality and balance in taking and giving. To do this, we must learn
the true meanings of nourishment, function, and encouragement.

For that part in us which is divine, for the spirit which is the life-spark and the fundamental ‘me’
of the soul, for the part of us that is capable of consciously participating in God, these
nourishments include learning the patterns and cycles of the visible Universe, and understanding
how they are reflected in our own construction. These rhythms and movements embody the order
of the path we should follow, if we understand them properly. If we follow them, we can repair
the patterns and cycles and orbits in our own minds, original patterns which have been pressed to
distortion and delusion since before our birth. By relearning, by remembering the harmonies and
cycles of the cosmos, we can have harmony among our own parts.
Make the parts that receive sensation more like what is being sensed, in their order and rhythms.
Make the part that thinks more like the objects of our thoughts and the patterns of our best work.
More and more, do all things in accordance with the fundmental and original nature shared by
all, the One Nature which has evolved into all the forms and movements we experience, and
which been gifted to become capable of transcendent self-awareness in us.

We say ‘let your mind follow God’s Mind’. This capacity we have, once we have awakened in
the heart, to pattern ourselves after the divine mind is not accidental. Our own nature and best
growth — toward wisdom, toward fairness, toward reciprocity and mutually beneficial actions,
toward self-control and joy — reflects its source, and tells us about the origin and meaningful
structure of existence as a whole.

David Sedley rightly comments that “the human soul’s capacity to pattern
itself after a divine mind is far from accidental, but directly reflects the
soul’s own nature and origin and the teleological structure of the world
as a whole.”29 In point of fact, according to the Timaeus, the rational
human soul was created of the same elements as the world soul,

Lanzilotta, p. 78:
Human beings achieve happiness only when they recover the
godlike state of their rational soul. The homoiosis theo is the process by
which man frees his soul from everything mortal in order to attain the
unrestrained exercise of his reason and achieve in this way the supreme
fulfijillment of his life. By doing, so the human soul regains its original
divine form and consequently returns to its origin.

This is right so far as it goes, but it is not ‘reason’ which is the highest faculty of the spiritually
illuminated soul, but imagination fired by Love and steered by experience and honesty.

Reason is not our sufficient guide. If we are to know the unknowable, reach the unreachable,
become the unique and ungraspable, we will certainly have to pass through paradoxes or ‘X-
changes’, chiasmata, transformations and resurrections that will crush our attention and skill if
we’re guided only by ‘reason’.

Indeed (p. 80):

Philip Merlan has already stressed that for Aristotle the

process of knowledge seems to culminate in an intuitive, non-discursive
act of intelligence. ( Merlan 1963:30–35 Merlan, P. 1963. Monopsychism, Mysticism,
Metaconsciousness: Problems of the Soul in
the Neoaristotelian and Neoplatonic Tradition. The Hague: Nijhofff.

Aristotle on the mysteries: not by intellect but by direct experience

the highest is perceived and understood

Paul, 1 Cor, ‘foolishness’

The tao that can be known is not the true Tao.
The final dharma is no dharma.

If you say it is a stick, I’ll hit you with it. If you say it is not a stick, I will also hit you. Now say
your truth. (‘Thunder rumbles behind the distant mountain, and we gather the work indoors.’ The
lightning-flash of illumination is coming, or has already come and passed on. Nothing
fundamental divides the two conditions. ‘Prayers emerge from the inner temple.’ Never
forgetting to be amazed, ‘one need not travel to see miracles’.)