Love Does Not Condemn

LOVE DOES NOT CONDEMN

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil

According to Platonism, Christianity,
Gnosticism, and A Course in Miracles

Second Edition

KENNETH WAPNICK

Foundation for A COURSE IN MIRACLES®

 Foundation for A COURSE IN MIRACLES®
41397 Buecking Drive
Temecula, CA 92590
www.facim.org

Copyright 1989 by the Foundation for A COURSE IN MIRACLES®

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part
of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, contact the
Director of Publications at the Foundation for A COURSE IN MIRACLES® • 41397 Buecking
Drive • Temecula, CA 92590.

Printed in the United States of America

Second Printing 1990, Second Edition 2009

Excerpts from The Jerusalem Bible, © 1966, 1967, and 1968 by Darton, Longman and
Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Bantam, Doubleday, Dell Publishing Group,
Inc. Reprinted and used by permission of the publishers.
Excerpts from The Nag Hammadi Library edited by James Robinson. © 1978 by E. J.
Brill. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., and E. J. Brill.
Reprinted from New Testament Apocrypha: Volume I: Gospels and Related Writings, by
Edgar Hennecke; edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher; English translation edited by
R. McL. Wilson. © 1959 J.C.B Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tubingen; English translation
© 1963 Lutterworth Press. Reprinted and used by permission of the Westminster/
John Knox Press and Lutterworth Press.
Reprinted from New Testament Apocrypha, Volume II, edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher
and Edgar Hennecke, English translation edited by R. McL. Wilson. Published in the
U.S.A. by The Westminster Press, 1966. © 1964 J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Tubin-
gen. English translation © 1965 Lutterworth Press. Reprinted and used by permission
of Publisher.
Excerpts from Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts, Volumes I and II, edited by Werner
Foerster, 1972, 1974. Used by permission of Artemis Publishers.
Portions of A Course in Miracles © 1975, 1992, Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and
Practice © 1976, 2004, The Song of Prayer © 1978, The Gifts of God © 1982 by the
Foundation for A Course in Miracles.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wapnick, Kenneth
Love does not condemn : the world, the flesh, and the Devil
according to Platonism, Christianity, Gnosticism, and a Course
in miracles / Kenneth Wapnick.
p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 10: 0-933291-07-8
1. Course in miracles. 2. Platonists. 3. Gnosticism. 4. Christianity. I Title.
BP605.N48F68 suppl. 10
299’.93--dc20 89-16887
CIP
 To all “Gnostics”—past, present and to come—who seek to
know God through understanding this world’s purpose, striv-
ing to realize, in the words of the oft-quoted Valentinian for-
mula, that “what liberates is the knowledge of who we were,
what we became; where we were, whereinto we have been
thrown; whereto we speed, wherefrom we are redeemed; what
birth is, and what rebirth.”
(Excerpta ex Theodoto)
The body was not made by love. Yet love does not condemn it
and can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of God has
made and using it to save him from illusions.
A Course in Miracles
 CONTENTS

Notations...................................................................................................... xv
Abbreviations.............................................................................................xvii

Prefaces.......................................................................................................... 1
A Note on Theology .................................................................................... 11
Personal Note............................................................................................... 15
Acknowledgments ....................................................................................... 17

PART I – INTRODUCTION

Introduction to Part I ................................................................................ 21

Chapter 1: GNOSTICISM......................................................................... 23
Primary and Secondary Sources .................................................................. 23
Origins and Characteristics.......................................................................... 25
The Great Gnostic Schools .......................................................................... 28
1. Basilides ............................................................................................... 29
2. Marcion ................................................................................................ 31
3. Valentinus ............................................................................................ 35
4. Mani ..................................................................................................... 38
The Fifth Century and Beyond .................................................................... 41

Chapter 2: PLATO AND THE PLATONIC TRADITION ...................... 45

Pre-Socratics ................................................................................................ 46
Plato ............................................................................................................. 47
Aristotle ....................................................................................................... 51
Middle Platonism – Philo ............................................................................ 53
Origen .......................................................................................................... 55
Plotinus ........................................................................................................ 59
St. Augustine................................................................................................ 62

Chapter 3: GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH ...................... 67

First Century: New Testament..................................................................... 67
1. Proto-Gnostic Elements in the New Testament (Non-Johannine) ....... 69
2. Anti-Gnostic Elements in the New Testament (Non-Johannine)......... 74
3. Gnostic Elements in the Johannine Writings ....................................... 80
4. Anti-Gnostic Elements in the Johannine Writings............................... 87
CONTENTS

Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism.............................................. 91

1. The Beginning Stages: Fluidity of Doctrine ........................................ 91
2. The Emerging Polarity: “We – They”.................................................. 93
3. One Church: The Bible and the Apostolic Tradition ........................... 95
4. “We – They”: The Church ................................................................. 101
5. “We – They”: The Gnostics ............................................................... 108
6. Martyrdom ......................................................................................... 110
7. Conclusion ......................................................................................... 113

PART II-A THE BASIC MYTH:

PLATONISM, CHRISTIANITY, GNOSTICISM

Introduction to Part II-A ........................................................................ 119

Chapter 4: THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN:

The Pre-Separation State ....................................................... 121
Duality vs. Non-Duality............................................................................. 121
Duality ....................................................................................................... 122
Non-Duality: God ...................................................................................... 127
Non-Duality: The Pleroma ........................................................................ 134

Chapter 5: THE SEPARATION FROM GOD ....................................... 141

Duality ....................................................................................................... 142
Non-Duality ............................................................................................... 155
1. Valentinus .......................................................................................... 155
2. Platonism – Plotinus........................................................................... 157
3. Pre-Valentinianism............................................................................. 163
4. Valentinianism: The Fall of Sophia ................................................... 165

Chapter 6: THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD ............... 175

Platonism ................................................................................................... 175
1. Plato ................................................................................................... 176
2. Philo ................................................................................................... 180
3. Origen................................................................................................. 183
4. Plotinus............................................................................................... 186
5. Traditional Christianity – St. Augustine ............................................ 199
Duality ....................................................................................................... 202
Non-Duality ............................................................................................... 208
1. Non-Valentinian................................................................................. 208
2. Valentinian ......................................................................................... 215
 Contents

The Metaphysics of Time .......................................................................... 230

1. Platonism............................................................................................ 231
2. Christianity......................................................................................... 234
3. Gnosticism ......................................................................................... 237

Chapter 7: THE NATURE OF HUMANITY:

SPIRIT, MIND (SOUL), BODY........................................... 241
Creation of Humanity: Gnosticism............................................................ 242
Spirit, Mind (Soul), Body: Platonism ........................................................ 253
1. Plato ................................................................................................... 253
2. Philo ................................................................................................... 255
3. Origen................................................................................................. 258
4. Plotinus............................................................................................... 259
5. St. Augustine ...................................................................................... 261
Spirit, Mind (Soul), Body: Gnosticism...................................................... 263
Alienation, Sleep, and Drunkenness.......................................................... 270

Chapter 8: THE MEANING OF SALVATION ..................................... 279

Introduction................................................................................................ 279
Gnosticism ................................................................................................. 282
The Ascent of the Soul .............................................................................. 293
Eschatology: Gnosticism ........................................................................... 306
Eschatology: Traditional Christianity and Origen..................................... 313
Spiritual Specialness: Gnosticism.............................................................. 316
Platonism ................................................................................................... 326
1. Plato ................................................................................................... 327
2. Origen................................................................................................. 332
3. Plotinus............................................................................................... 334

Chapter 9: THE REDEEMER – JESUS ................................................. 337

Non-Christian Redeemers.......................................................................... 338
The Redeemed Redeemer .......................................................................... 344
Jesus........................................................................................................... 350
1. History vs. Mythology ....................................................................... 350
2. Resurrection ....................................................................................... 356
3. Non-Docetism and Docetism ............................................................. 360
Origen – Platonism .................................................................................... 371
CONTENTS

Chapter 10: PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS......................................... 375

Gnosticism: Religious Practice.................................................................. 375
1. Baptism .............................................................................................. 376
2. Anointing ........................................................................................... 379
3. Eucharist............................................................................................. 383
4. Redemption ........................................................................................ 385
5. The Bridal Chamber........................................................................... 386
6. Rituals ................................................................................................ 390
Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality ................................................................... 395
1. Libertinism ......................................................................................... 395
2. Asceticism .......................................................................................... 405
3. Moderateness ..................................................................................... 422
Platonism ................................................................................................... 426
1. Plato ................................................................................................... 427
2. Philo ................................................................................................... 428
3. Origen................................................................................................. 431
4. St. Augustine ...................................................................................... 433
5. Plotinus............................................................................................... 434

PART II-B THE BASIC MYTH: A COURSE IN MIRACLES

Introduction to Part II-B......................................................................... 443

Chapter 11: THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN:

The Pre-Separation State .................................................... 447

Chapter 12: THE SEPARATION FROM GOD..................................... 453

Chapter 13: THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD ............ 465

Chapter 14: THE NATURE OF HUMANITY:

SPIRIT, MIND (SOUL), BODY ........................................ 479

Chapter 15: THE MEANING OF SALVATION................................... 499

Chapter 16: THE REDEEMER – JESUS............................................... 511

 Contents

Chapter 17: PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS......................................... 525

Religious Practice ...................................................................................... 526
1. Eucharist............................................................................................. 526
2. Martyrdom ......................................................................................... 530
3. Holy Structures .................................................................................. 532
4. Penance .............................................................................................. 534
5. Prayer ................................................................................................. 537
6. Rituals ................................................................................................ 550
Ethics – Morality ....................................................................................... 553

PART III – SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Introduction to Part III ........................................................................... 569

Chapter 18: A COURSE IN MIRACLES RE-EXAMINED.................... 571

Stages of the Myth ..................................................................................... 572
1. Stages One, Two, and Three .............................................................. 572
2. Stage Four .......................................................................................... 576
3. Stages Five and Six ............................................................................ 579
4. Stage Seven ........................................................................................ 582

Chapter 19: ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS ............................... 587

Spiritual Specialness.................................................................................. 590
Making the Error Real ............................................................................... 594
Minimizing the Ego ................................................................................... 601

EPILOGUE .............................................................................................. 613

APPENDIX

“The Gospel of Truth” ............................................................................... 619

Table of Dates............................................................................................ 631
Glossary ..................................................................................................... 633
Works Cited ............................................................................................... 641
Selected Bibliography................................................................................ 645
CONTENTS

Indices
Writings of Church Fathers.................................................................... 647
Plotinus................................................................................................... 650
The Nag Hammadi Library .................................................................... 651
Mandean Sources ................................................................................... 652
A Course in Miracles ............................................................................. 653
Index of Names ...................................................................................... 659
Subject Index.......................................................................................... 664
 NOTATIONS

References

The complete reference for works cited appears in the Appendix:

Works Cited.

Textual Signs

For ease of reading, parentheses enclosing material supplied by the ed-

itor or translator are the only textual signs that have been retained in
the Gnostic tractates and other ancient and classical writings cited in
this book. Other textual signs such as above-the-line strokes, brackets,
and braces have been omitted.

Translations and Editions

ARISTOTLE: The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon;

Problems I, trans. W.S. Hett, The Loeb Classical Library.
AURELIUS, Marcus: Meditations, ed. Moses Hadas.
THE BIBLE: The Jerusalem Bible
MANDEAN TEXTS: References to Mandean texts are from Werner Foerster’s
Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts. Consult Abbreviations for fur-
ther explanations of Mandean references.
NAG HAMMADI TRACTATES: The Nag Hammadi Library, first edition,
1977 (= NHL). References are identified by the Nag Hammadi codex
number, followed by the page and line number from the Coptic manu-
scripts, then the page number in NHL.
Tractates from the Berlin Gnostic Codex 8502 (= BG) are listed by the
tractate title used in NHL followed by the page and line number from
the Coptic manuscript, then the page number in NHL.
ORIGEN: On First Principles, trans. by G. W. Butterworth. All other
works: Origen, trans. Rowan A. Greer.

xv
NOTATIONS

PHILO: Unless otherwise noted, all works cited are from The Loeb
Classical Library edition of the works of Philo.
PLATO: Republic and Timaeus, trans. Desmond Lee. The following
works are from Plato: Collected Dialogues, edited by Edith Hamilton
and Huntington Cairns: Phaedo, trans. Hugh Tredennick; Phaedrus,
trans. R. Hackforth; Theaetetus, Parmenides, trans. F. M. Cornford;
Statesman, trans. J. B. Skemp; Epinomis, trans. A. E. Taylor.
PLOTINUS: The Enneads, seven volumes, trans. A. H. Armstrong, The
Loeb Classical Library.
ST. AUGUSTINE: Confessions (except for 10.27), trans. John K. Ryan;
10.27 trans. Fathers of the Church in The Essential Augustine. Citations
from the following works are from The Essential Augustine, edited by
Vernon J. Bourke: City of God, trans. Marcus Dods; Enchiridion, trans.
Marcus Dods; Literal Commentary on Genesis, trans. Vernon J.
Bourke; On Admonition and Grace, Nicene trans.; On Music, trans.
Tafford P. Maher, S.J.; Sermon, trans. Vernon J. Bourke; The True
Religion, trans. C. A. Hangartner, S.J.; The Nature of the Good, trans.
Marcus Dods.

**********

Examples of the notation used in references to A Course in Miracles

are as follows:

T-26.IV.4:7 W-pI.169.5:2 M-13.3:2

Sentence Sentence
Paragraph Paragraph Sentence
Section Lesson Paragraph
Chapter Part I Question
Text Workbook Manual

C-6.4:6 P-2.VI.5:1 S-2.II.7:7

Sentence Sentence
Sentence Paragraph Paragraph
Paragraph Section Section
Term Chapter Chapter
Clarification of Terms Psychotherapy Song of Prayer

xvi
 ABBREVIATIONS

Scriptural References
(In Biblical Order)

OLD TESTAMENT

Gn............................... Genesis 2K .............................. 2 Kings

Ex ................................Exodus Ps................................. Psalms
Lv .............................Leviticus Pr.............................. Proverbs
Nu............................. Numbers Ws ............................. Wisdom
Dt.......................Deuteronomy Is ................................... Isaiah

NEW TESTAMENT

Mt............................. Matthew 2Th................ 2 Thessalonians

Lk ................................... Luke 1Tm........................ 1 Timothy
Jn ..................................... John 2Tm........................ 2 Timothy
Ac .................................... Acts Tt.....................................Titus
Rm............................. Romans Heb............................Hebrews
1Co .................... 1 Corinthians 1P .................................1 Peter
2Co .................... 2 Corinthians 2P .................................2 Peter
Ga ............................ Galations 1Jn................................ 1 John
Ep ........................... Ephesians 2Jn................................ 2 John
Ph ..........................Philippians Jude ..................................Jude
Col......................... Colossians Rv......................... Revelations
1Th ................. 1Thessalonians

The Nag Hammadi Library (=NHL)

Allog. ................................................................................ “Allogenes”

ApocAdam ..................................................... “Apocryphon of Adam”
1 ApocJs ...........................................“The First Apocalypse of James”
2 ApocJs ...................................... “The Second Apocalypse of James”
ApocPaul.....................................................“The Apocalypse of Paul”

xvii
ABBREVIATIONS

The Nag Hammadi Library (continued)

ApocPt........................................................“The Apocalypse of Peter”

ApocryJohn ............................................... “The Apocryphon of John”
ApocryJs ................................................. “The Apocryphon of James”
APt 12 ........................... “The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles”
Ascl. .................................................................................. “Asclepius”
Auth. Teach. ................................................. “Authoritative Teaching”
Conc. Great Power ....................... “The Concept of Our Great Power”
Dial. Savior ............................................“The Dialogue of the Savior”
Disc. Eighth Ninth .................... “Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth”
Exeg. Soul .................................................“The Exegesis on the Soul”
GEgypt ................................................ “The Gospel of the Egyptians”
GM ....................................................................“The Gospel of Mary”
GPh ..................................................................“The Gospel of Philip”
Gr. Seth ................................ “The Second Treatise of the Great Seth”
GT .....................................................................“The Gospel of Truth”
GTh ...............................................................“The Gospel of Thomas”
Hypos. Arch. ....................................“The Hypostasis of the Archons”
Interp. Kn. .................................... “The Interpretation of Knowledge”
Mel. .............................................................................. “Melchizedek”
Orig. Wld ............................................... “On the Origin of the World”
Para. Shem ................................................. “The Paraphrase of Shem”
Pt Ph ..................................................... “The Letter of Peter to Philip”
Sophia .................................................... “The Sophia of Jesus Christ”
Silv. .........................................................“The Teachings of Silvanus”
3 St. Seth ....................................................“The Three Steles of Seth”
Test. Tr......................................................... “The Testimony of Truth”
Thanks..........................................................“Prayer of Thanksgiving”
Th Cont. ...................................“The Book of Thomas the Contender”
Treat. Res. ...........................................“The Treatise on Resurrection”
Tri. Prot. ........................................................“Trimorphic Protennoia”
Tri. Tract........................................................ “The Tripartite Tractate”
Val. Expo................................................... “A Valentinian Exposition”
Zostr. ................................................................................ “Zostrianos”

xviii
 Abbreviations

Related Literature

Aa ...........................................................Acta apostolorum apocrypha

AA.....................................................................“The Acts of Andrew”
Adv. haer.................................................Adversus haereses (Irenaeus)
Adv. Marc. ....................................... Adversus Marcionem (Tertullian)
AJ ...........................................................................“The Acts of John”
AP........................................................................... “The Acts of Paul”
APt ........................................................................ “The Acts of Peter”
ATh................................................................... “The Acts of Thomas”
BG .............................................................Berlin Gnostic Codex 8502
Corp. herm. .......................................................... Corpus Hermeticum
CV .......................................................................Codex Vaticanus 808
Eccles. Hist. ............... Ecclesiastical History (Eusebius of Caesarea)
Eden .......................................................The Forgotten Books of Eden
Excerpta .............................................................Excerpta ex Theodoto
F I, II ..... Foerster, Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts, Volumes I, II
GB ........................................................“The Gospel of Bartholomew”
GEve ................................................................... “The Gospel of Eve”
GH......................................................... “The Gospel of the Hebrews”
GL, GR......Left Ginza, Right Ginza: two parts of the Mandean Ginza
GPt .................................................................... “The Gospel of Peter”
Haer.................................................................. Haereses (Epiphanius)
HG............................................................. Haran Gawaita (Mandean)
Jb. .............................Johannesbuch - “The Book of John” (Mandean)
Ker. Pet..........................................................“The Kerygmata Petrou”
Konai....................................... “Commentary” of Theodore bar Konai
Liv. Gosp............................................................. “The Living Gospel”
Lost Books .................................................The Lost Books of the Bible
ML.....................................Mandäische Liturgian; Qolasta = ML Qol;
Oxford Collection = ML Oxf.
Narr. ................................................ Narratio (“The Acts of Andrew”)
NTA I, II............... New Testament Apocrypha, Volumes One and Two
Panar. ............................................................... Panarion (Epiphanius)
Praes. adv. Haer. .......... Praescriptio adversus Haereticos (Tertullian)
Ref. .................................... Refutatio omnium haeresium (Hippolytus)
Strom. ............................................. Stromata (Clement of Alexandria)
Sum. Theol.......................... Summa Theologiae (St. Thomas Aquinas)

xix
ABBREVIATIONS

Platonists

ORIGEN
First Princ. ........................................................On First Principles
Homily.............................................. Homily XXVII on “Numbers”
Martyrdom........................................ An Exhortation to Martyrdom
Prologue ..................................... The Prologue to the Commentary
on“The Song of Songs”

PHILO
Alleg. Interp. ...........................................Allegorical Interpretation

PLATO
Epin. ..................................................................................Epinomis
Parm..............................................................................Parmenides
Rep. ....................................................................................Republic
States. ....................................................................... The Statesman
Theaet..............................................................................Theaetetus
Tim.......................................................................................Timaeus

PLOTINUS
Enn. .................................................................................... Enneads

ST. AUGUSTINE
Conf...............................................................................Confessions
Contra epist. fund.............................. Contra epistulam fundamenti
de haer. ......................................... de haeresibus ad Quodvultdeum
Enchir. ...........................................................................Enchiridion
Lit. Com. Gen. ...............................Literal Commentary on Genesis

xx
 Preface to Second Edition

For this new edition we have retypeset the book and revised the ref-
erences to A Course in Miracles to correlate with the numbering sys-
tem used in the second edition of the Course and the two scribed
supplements, Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice and The
Song of Prayer. An example from each book and the supplements ap-
pears at the end of the Notations on p. xvi above. Another proofing of
the entire book, including the indices, was also carried out. Inaccura-
cies have been corrected and a few sentences reworded for better clar-
ity. However, no changes have been made to the content of the book;
the information provided, the commentary, analysis, and conclusions
remain as they were in the original edition.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the many people who assisted in the process of

proofreading this book, including its indices and other appended ma-
terial. Several foundation staff members devoted themselves to this
project: Jennye Cooke and Virginia Tucker, in particular, diligently
reviewed all the difficult Gnostic material and other ancient and clas-
sical texts. Jacalyn Futterman worked painstakingly and faithfully at
retypesetting the entire book and preparing it for this second edition.
In addition, a large group of students generously helped out in various
phases of proofing and reworking the indices, a process assiduously
supervised by Loral Reeves. Rosemarie LoSasso, our Director of
Publications, oversaw the entire process of preparing this second edi-
tion in her usual conscientious and exemplary fashion.

Preface to First Edition

A litany from the seventeenth-century Book of Common Prayer of

the Church of England contains this petition: “From fornication, and all
other deadly sin; and from all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the
devil, Good Lord, deliver us” (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3d ed.,
p. 385, #16). “The world, the flesh, and the devil” have been preoccu-
pations of world religions ever since people began reflecting on their

1
PREFACE

existential situation of feeling alone and vulnerable in a world that

could be perceived as harmful, evil, and uncaring. Religions, thus, can
be seen as attempts to render sensible this otherwise inexplicable and
meaningless phenomenal world. They have sought answers to the ques-
tion of how a separated and physical world, apparently under the
benevolent guidance of a loving and non-physical God, can arise in the
first place, and then continually manifest pain and suffering. They ad-
dress the problem of how one is to live in a world of the body, while
trying to recall and identify with one’s spiritual Self.
In the Western philosophical world, this problem has been ad-
dressed since the time of the pre-Socratics in ancient Greece, with Plato
being the first to develop an elaborate cosmogony (study of the origin
of the world) and cosmology (study of the nature of the world), and
then an ethical system and theory of society that was derived from this.
His work became the foundation for over two thousand years of theo-
retical speculation about the nature of spiritual reality and its relation
to the world of the body, not to mention having presented a problem
that has perplexed Platonists for centuries and centuries. American
classicist and Greek scholar John Dillon has stated it this way:
Perhaps the chief problem that faces any religious or philosophical
system which postulates, as does the Platonic, a primary state or
entity of pure and unitary perfection, is that of explaining how
from such a first principle anything further could have arisen. Any
further development, after all, from a perfect principle must neces-
sarily be a declination of some sort, and it is not easy to see why
the supreme principle, if omnipotent, should want this to occur. …
[There] is a further problem. Accepting that a world or universe of
some sort is thus brought into being, how can we further explain
the imperfect and disorderly nature of our world as it now exists?
Something, surely, has gone wrong somewhere. There must at
some stage, over and above the basic creation, have been a declina-
tion, a Fall (in Layton, p. 357).
This book presents two primary approaches to this problem—
Gnosticism and A Course in Miracles—and discusses them within the
context of the Platonic and Christian traditions. Before proceeding any
further, however, a few introductory remarks may be helpful for those
relatively unfamiliar with the Course.
A Course in Miracles was the result of a decision made in 1965 by
two New York psychologists, Helen Schucman and William Thetford,

2
 Preface

to join with each other to find “another way” (more loving) of relating
to people. That moment of joining (what the Course would later term
a “holy instant”) served as a signal that triggered off a series of vision-
ary, dream, and psychic experiences in Helen that culminated in her
hearing an internal voice, identified as Jesus, who began to “dictate”
the three books—text, workbook for students, manual for teachers—
that comprise the Course. The dictation was begun in the fall of 1965,
completed seven years later, and published in 1976.
Briefly stated, the Course teaches that the forgiveness of our pro-
jected guilt is the means whereby we remember our oneness with each
other, our true Self, and with the God Who created us. This teaching
comes within a non-dualistic metaphysical framework wherein God
did not create the phenomenal, material world, a term that includes the
entire physical universe. Rather, the world and the body are seen to
have arisen from the projection of the fundamentally illusory thought
and belief that we could separate ourselves from God, and make a
world wherein the opposite of Heaven seems to have been accom-
plished. This belief in the reality of the separation is called the ego by
the Course.1 The world then serves the purpose of protecting the ego
thought system of separation and usurpation within its shadows of
guilt that ostensibly keep God the “Enemy” away. Thus, our entire ex-
perience in this world, within our bodily and psychological selves, is
part of an illusory thought system we believe to be reality, yet which
remains nothing more than a dream. Salvation is attained through hear-
ing the Voice of the Holy Spirit, awakening us from the dream of sep-
aration by teaching us to join with others through forgiveness. This is
the process of Atonement, the principle that states that the separation
never truly occurred.
Though A Course in Miracles teaches that the world is illusory, it
does not advocate avoidance of this world, nor its rejection as evil or
sinful. Rather, it emphasizes that the mistakes of separation be cor-
rected at the level of our experience here. It urges us to look within our
most intimate and meaningful relationships, asking the Holy Spirit—
our internal Teacher—to heal them for us. What is encouraged, there-
fore, is gratitude for our involvement in the world because of its poten-
tial to teach us that there is no world. Under the Holy Spirit’s guidance

1. The word “ego” is used, here and elsewhere in the book, synonymously with the
“false self,” a usage that is consistent with the spiritualities of the East.

3
PREFACE

we become grateful for the classroom that is our bodily experience,

and for His teaching us the lessons that are found here. Thus, the meta-
physics of non-duality is reconciled with our experience of duality.
One final note on the Course: Its contextual framework is Christian,
with its language and terminology coming from the Judaeo-Christian
world of the Bible. Thus, although the nature of God is obviously be-
yond gender, we shall in this book remain within the Judaeo-Christian
tradition by utilizing masculine terminology to denote God, Christ, and
the Holy Spirit. In addition, the term “Son of God” is consistently used
to denote both Christ (our spiritual Self that God created) as well as the
separated self (the ego) asleep within the dream.2 However, the
Course’s message clearly transcends sectarian concerns and, in fact, can
be seen as an attempt to correct some of the misconceptions that have
held such prominence in Western religious thought for centuries. These
misconceptions will be discussed later in this book. They include:
1) the belief in the sacredness of physical life because God created it,
as well as in the sacredness of certain places, structures, objects, acts,
and persons that sets them apart from other material and behavioral
forms; this error of “spiritual specialness” also includes viewing the
Bible as the literal Word of God, and the only authentic revelation that
has been given to the world.
2) the atonement role of suffering and sacrifice.
3) the exclusive divinity of Jesus.
4) the special place Jews or Christians have in God’s plan for salvation.
Thus, in presenting its universal vision within a specific form—i.e., the
Judaeo-Christian tradition—we find another reflection of the Course’s
emphasis on the practical application of its universal principles.
It is my contention that concurrent with the rise and spread of
Christianity ran a strong thread of truth, closer to the message of the
living Jesus and counter to the orthodox Christian position. The roots
of this thread in the Western world are traceable back to Plato and be-
fore, and extend through the great Gnostic and Neoplatonic thinkers
to the present day, where A Course in Miracles is among its clearest
and purest exponents. This thread reflects a unified spirit, despite its

2. The Course retains the capitalization of “Son” throughout to accentuate the all-
inclusive nature of the Sonship, not exclusively identifying it with Jesus.

4
 Preface

disparate voices. It is the spirit of a wisdom that recognizes the alien-

ation of living in a world that does not correspond to the pure oneness
of God, the voice of one experiencing the paradox of the unbridgeable
gulf between the perfection of God and His creation, set against the
obvious imperfections of this world that are so foreign to one’s true
Self. And yet it is a voice that sees salvation from this world as pos-
sible if not inevitable.
In many ways, therefore, A Course in Miracles can be seen as inte-
grating the Platonic, Christian, and Gnostic traditions, while at the same
time correcting and extending them through a far more inclusive vision
that utilizes the insights of contemporary psychology to support its uni-
versal message of salvation. My earlier book, Forgiveness and Jesus:
The Meeting Place of A COURSE IN MIRACLES and Christianity, dealt with
many of the similarities and differences between Christianity and the
Course. The current book explores this comparison in greater depth,
more specifically focusing on the behavioral implications of the respec-
tive positions of these and the Gnostic and Platonic thought systems
regarding the origin and nature of the body and the phenomenal world;
in other words, how to meet the challenge stated in John’s gospel of
being in the world yet not of it (Jn 15:19; 17:14,16,18).
Increased light is shed on the differences between Christianity and
the Course when the Gnostic stance is considered. The first major
attempt to present an alternative to the orthodox view, Christian
Gnosticism developed, in part, as a movement within the emerging
Church to correct what the Gnostics considered the orthodox
Church’s misunderstandings of the nature of the world and God’s re-
lation to it. This most prominent of all Christian “heresies” arose in
the first century A.D., flowered in the second century, and was then
for all intents and purposes eradicated by the more powerful Church in
the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries when St. Augustine and others
sounded the death knell for Manicheism, Christian Gnosticism’s virtual
last hurrah. A Course in Miracles can be seen as a further correction
within a larger context of the Holy Spirit’s correction—the Atonement
—of our belief in the reality of the separation from God. Indeed, the
history of Christianity can be understood in terms of the attempts of all
generations, from the first followers of Jesus to the present, to make
sense of his life, death, and resurrection, which were the manifest
demonstrations of the principle of the Atonement.

5
PREFACE

Our point of departure is the conviction that A Course in Miracles

represents the highest level of contemporary spiritual thought and,
even more specifically, of Christian thought. The Course alone, of all
the explanations that present the meaning and message of Jesus’ life,
presents a theology—both abstractly and practically—that is without
contradiction. This book’s principal argument, to be developed in the
succeeding chapters, is that a theology or philosophy that begins with
the premise that this phenomenal world is in any way the manifesta-
tion of the Will of God, must inevitably fall into the paradoxical trap
of placing within the omni-benevolent God an inherent flaw that con-
tains the tendency towards evil, suffering, and death or, at least, a Will
that allows it to happen, the traditional Christian theological position.
This paradox has been the basic tension underlying the whole Platonic
tradition, to which we shall return again and again. We see it not only
in Plato, but in the great Neoplatonists—Philo, Origen, Plotinus, and
St. Augustine—all of whose work is so decisive in understanding the
philosophical and religious thought of the early Christians, orthodox
and Gnostic alike.
Therefore, while there is no adequate rational or empirical means for
explaining how this world arose—nor does the Course attempt one—
any thought system that concludes that this world is ontologically real,
faces the insoluble dilemma noted above. It then must resort either to
theological “mysteries” as explanations, or somehow to positing a
duality of good and evil within God. On the other hand, American
Judaic and Hellenistic scholar David Winston makes an important
statement in his introduction to an anthology of Philo’s writings, chal-
lenging all theorists within the Platonic tradition, from antiquity to the
present:
As a matter of fact, no philosophy that declares the intelligible
[spiritual] alone to be real and all else relatively unreal … has ever
successfully bridged the gap between these two realms (Philo of
Alexandria, p. 11).
This gap can never be bridged by the human mind, limited by its
rootedness in the spatial-temporal world. In a panel discussion held at
Yale University, Hans Jonas, one of the most distinguished scholars in
the field of Gnosticism, responded to a question:
You say that I have given no answer to the fundamental question of
why God was bestirred from his eternal existence into activity. The

6
 Preface

answer must be that, in the nature of things, there can be no answer

to such a primordial query. As Immanuel Kant said, the thought that
the Godhead should have rested for aeons and then bestirred itself
to the creation of a world staggers the human mind and makes it
helpless. … we cannot ask why in the first place some part of eter-
nity is no longer eternity or why time began (in Layton, p. 348).
In his excellent study of Plotinus, the French scholar Emile Bréhier
poses the same question:
The intelligible world, in its turn, granting its existence, is explained
by the One. But why should the lower stages of reality exist? Why
did the One not remain in its solitude, and why did it give birth to an
intelligible world, and the intelligible world to a soul? Why, in short,
do the many proceed from the One? (Bréhier, p. 48)
One of the basic premises of this book is that A Course in Miracles,
although not bridging this unbridgeable gap, has nonetheless success-
fully resolved the paradox of the One and the many, eternity and time,
without the inherent inconsistencies in attitude, if not theory, that have
plagued all Platonists, and have marred the history of Judaism and
Christianity from their inception. The Course accomplishes this by
presenting its thought system on two basic levels.3 The first of these is
metaphysical, contrasting the spiritual reality of Heaven with the illu-
sory, phenomenal world of the ego. The second, remaining only within
this world, contrasts two ways of interpreting what is perceived: the
ego’s condemnatory judgment of sin vs. the Holy Spirit’s vision of a
forgiving classroom in which we learn to see all thoughts and actions
as either expressing love or calling for it. Thus, the material world is
seen as illusory but not evil, serving the Holy Spirit’s purpose of cor-
recting our purpose in having made it. As is stated in the following
passage from the text, which provided this book with its title:
The body was not made by love. Yet love does not condemn it and
can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of God has made and
using it to save him from illusions (T-18.VI.4:7-8).
By declaring the phenomenal universe to be the work of the illusory
ego, though not inherently evil or sinful, the Course gently resolves the
great Platonic paradox of living in an imperfect, visible, and material

3. For further discussion of these two levels, see my Forgiveness and Jesus, 7th ed.,
pp. 15-19 and Glossary-Index for A COURSE IN MIRACLES, pp. 7-9.

7
PREFACE

world, yet knowing of a spiritual world whose Source is perfect and

good.
The Gnostic schools of the second century, most especially the
Valentinian, recognized the incongruity existing between believing in
a God of love who yet was responsible for this imperfect and unloving
world. As one Gnostic text comments: “What kind of a God is this?”
Joachim of Fiore, a twelfth-century Italian mystic, also observed this
seemingly ambivalent nature of God in The Article of Belief.
David the Psalmist says, “Taste and see how sweet the Lord is”
(Ps 34:8), but for Paul “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of
the living God” (Heb 10:31). Since almost every page of scripture
proclaims both how lovable and how terrifying God is, it is per-
fectly right for people to ask how such great opposites can be put
together, so that a person can rejoice for love’s sake in his fear and
tremble with dread in the midst of love. But according to scripture,
the just and loving God is like fire, for it says: “Hear O Israel, your
God is a consuming fire” (Dt 4:24). Why is the fire which so fre-
quently burns homes and whole cities sought out with such eager-
ness by those trapped in darkness? Why is it so cherished by anyone
who has endured real cold? If one and the same material reality can
be so loved and feared, why is it that Almighty God in whom we
live and move and have our being (Ac 17:28) is not both cherished
for his indescribable loveliness and still feared for his transcendent
greatness? (In McGinn, p. 112)
Yet the Gnostics, too, fell prey to inconsistencies, as they sought to
draw certain practical and moral implications from their metaphysical
position: While on the one hand denying the reality of the phenomenal
world, they then proceeded psychologically to establish its reality in
their minds by making the world the locus of sin. A Course in Miracles,
then, coming in our sophisticated age of psychology, strips away the in-
consistencies, yet retains the metaphysical understanding of the mutu-
ally exclusive nature of Heaven and earth.
One of the important stimulants for this book has been the wide-
spread confusion surrounding these teachings of the Course, even
though its published history spans only thirteen years (as of this
writing). These errors basically reflect the confusion of the two levels
of the Course’s system—the metaphysical and the practical—and will
be taken up in detail in Part III. Suffice it for now, however, to restate
that the entire thought system of A Course in Miracles rests on the

8
 Preface

metaphysical teaching that God did not create the phenomenal uni-
verse, which was rather part of the ego’s defensive war against God.
Therefore, all problems and concerns about our world and our bodies
are but smokescreens thrown up by the ego to confuse us as to where
the true problem is, i.e., in our minds. This non-dualistic view is the
foundation for the Course’s understanding of forgiveness, and is the
primary focus of this book. When seen from this metaphysical per-
spective, the Course’s teachings on the everyday applications of for-
giveness and the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives are suddenly
transformed in our understanding. We come to recognize that the tra-
ditional language of A Course in Miracles is a veil that but barely con-
ceals the truly radical teachings that are contained behind the words,
and whose truths can be discerned in many of the great thinkers of
ages gone by. Thus the Course is like an onion, and its layers of lan-
guage can be gradually peeled away to reveal the core of its central
teaching.
Traditional Christian theologians—Catholic and Protestant alike—
may assert that A Course in Miracles is not truly Christian, for indeed
it does overturn most of the basic Christian tenets. In fact, in a written
communication to me, Father Bede Griffiths—a Benedictine priest
from England who has lived in an Indian ashram for over thirty years,
devoting himself to bridging the gap between East and West—
observed, and correctly so from my point of view, that the Course and
biblical Christianity cannot be reconciled. Another prominent Christian
thinker, Father Norris Clarke, S.J., a neo-Thomist philosopher, has
declared in a filmed interview4 that even the claim that the Course is
a correction for Christianity is unfounded, as correction implies
maintaining the basic framework of what is to be corrected. A Course
in Miracles, as he rightly points out, refutes the very foundation of
the traditional Christian framework. Nonetheless, this book holds
that because of its logical consistency—from a metaphysical ontol-
ogy to a practical psychology—the Course, having Jesus as its source,
is the closest we have ever come to knowing the message he brought
to the world, the two-thousand-year-old teaching of the Churches
notwithstanding.

4. Published in 1995 in book form: A COURSE IN MIRACLES and Christianity: A Dialogue,

co-authored by Kenneth Wapnick and W. Norris Clarke, S.J.

9
PREFACE

We shall thus compare the Gnostic position with A Course in

Miracles, with special reference to the theology of the early Church in
its relation to Gnosticism, as well as to its Platonic antecedents and con-
comitants. To the student of the Course unfamiliar with these philo-
sophical antecedents, such comparison will help clarify the importance
of the Course’s metaphysical and practical teachings in light of the his-
tory of philosophy and theology. It is therefore my hope that the reader
of this book will come away with at least three benefits: 1) a fuller
understanding of the principles of the Course, especially recognizing
the important interface of its metaphysics of an illusory world with the
direct implications of this metaphysics for our living in this world under
the principle of forgiveness; 2) an awareness of the importance of the
Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions—with special emphasis on Plato
and Plotinus—which serve as the backdrop for the Course’s meta-
physical and practical stance; and 3) a newer appreciation of the contri-
bution of the Gnostics towards the development of a Christian theology
that does full justice to the teachings of Jesus who loved us as no one
else has ever done, and who left to our alien though illusory world the
message of forgiveness as the means for accepting his love here on
earth, to remember at last the totally transcending love that is our true
home.
This book has three parts: Part I is a general introduction for readers
coming to this material for the first time. In effect, it presents the essen-
tial “cast of characters”: the Gnostics, Platonists, and early Christians.
Part II presents a seven-stage myth, which forms the basis for com-
paring and contrasting the position of Gnosticism and A Course in
Miracles, with special reference to Platonism and Christianity. This
Part, the largest in the book, presents the teachings of these traditions,
and comprises as it were the basic data for this study. This Part is
divided in half: in Part A each of the seven stages is discussed from the
Neoplatonic, Christian, and Gnostic position; in Part B the Course’s
teachings relating to these stages are presented without pause.
Part III discusses the information presented in Part II, highlighting
its bearing on the God-world paradox. This is followed by a discussion
of the errors and distortions that have already begun to surface regard-
ing A Course in Miracles. These are specifically treated as similar to
the Gnostic errors of the early Christian centuries, and also as they are
found in the Platonic and Christian traditions.

10
 A Note on Theology

The Appendix includes the complete text of “The Gospel of Truth,”

one of the most important of the Gnostic writings, a glossary of tech-
nical terms cited in the book, a table of dates, a list of works cited, a
selected bibliography, and several indices.

A Note on Theology

A Course in Miracles states that “The world was made as an attack

on God” (W-pII.3.2:1), a statement that succinctly expresses a whole
theological point of view, contains within it the seeds of salvation, and
reflects one of the crucial consonances of the Course with Gnosticism,
albeit in psychologically more sophisticated terms. At the same time,
as we have already seen, this statement represents a principal point of
divergence from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, not to mention from
Platonism and Neoplatonism.
While the Course teaches that “a universal theology is impossible”
(C-in.2:5), it is nonetheless true that its thought system most definitely
does express a theology, and one that is distinguished from many
others. Such distinctions are inevitable in any system of thought, be it
economics, psychology, philosophy, or religion. Often people confuse
the Course’s emphasis on non-judgment with overlooking differences
on the level where differences do exist, seeking to blur its distinctions
from other thought systems. This enhances none of the systems, and re-
flects a confusion of the two levels—the metaphysical and the practical
—that comprise the Course’s theoretical position. The recognition and
avoidance of this confusion is central to the basic thesis of this book,
and we shall return to it over and over in subsequent chapters.
To state that there are theological (or philosophical) differences be-
tween A Course in Miracles and other spiritual paths is not to make a
judgment based on value or worth, nor to condemn or reject other
teachings. Rather, these differences are simply identified. The Course
addresses its reader in this regard:
Time has been saved for you because you and your brother are to-
gether. This is the special means this course is using to save you
time. You are not making use of the course if you insist on using
means which have served others well, neglecting what was made
for you (T-18.VII.6:3-5).

11
PREFACE

Helen Schucman, the “scribe” of the Course, in the midst of an angry

mental outburst against someone she judged to be assuming a spurious
spirituality, heard this message from Jesus: “Do not take another’s path
as your own; but neither should you judge it.” The lesson here for all
of us is clear. We are asked not to adopt an attitude of “spiritual
specialness”—which we shall discuss in more depth in Chapters 8
and 19—which includes the belief that our spiritual path is better than
another’s. Rather, we are urged to remain non-judgmentally involved
with the path we feel is our own. In this regard, a comment need be
made about the opening lines of the text of A Course in Miracles:
“This is a course in miracles. It is a required course.” Sometimes in-
correctly interpreted to mean that the Course is required for all spiri-
tual seekers, these lines originally were meant for Helen Schucman
and William Thetford, reminding them that this Course was the better
way they had asked for, and thus for them A Course in Miracles was
required. For the general audience this statement can be understood
to mean that if the Course is a person’s path it should be followed;
however, if it is not a suitable path, another would be found to serve
the same purpose.
As the Course says of itself in the manual for teachers:
This is a manual for a special curriculum, intended for teachers
of a special form of the universal course. There are many thou-
sands of other forms, all with the same outcome (M-1.4:1-2).
In this book, therefore, we are concerned with understanding exactly
what this “special curriculum” teaches, and its relationship to earlier
forms that share many of the same ideas and goals, yet also present
very different means of attaining these goals.
At a workshop I gave on the Course several years ago, I was asked
about Mother Teresa, the Albanian nun who was awarded the Nobel
Peace prize for her work among the poor in India and the world. The
questioner wondered how I reconciled Mother Teresa’s guidance
from Jesus with his dictation of A Course in Miracles. The question
specifically centered on the difference between Mother Teresa’s path
of suffering and sacrifice within the context of the Roman Catholic
Church, and the Course, which makes sacrifice central to the ego’s
thought system and not God’s, not to mention the Course’s giving no
exclusive salvific role to any one religious institution.

12
 A Note on Theology

Having met Mother Teresa several times, and being very impressed
by her sincerity, integrity, and the unmistakable spiritual and peaceful
presence that emanated from her, I responded that I did believe Jesus
was inspiring her, even though her path, on the level of form, was cer-
tainly not in accord with A Course in Miracles. Moreover, I had no dif-
ficulty in accepting that Jesus would guide certain people one way, and
others another. There can be no denying the tremendous effect Mother
Teresa has had on the world. For millions of people she has become a
symbol of God’s love and peace, even among non-Christians or those
claiming to be atheists. Similarly, there can be no denying the effect
the Course has already had—even though it is still in its infancy—on
those who have been exposed to it. It would seem clear that Heaven is
indifferent to how people return to it. Thus, its messengers will use
whatever means is most effective for those who seek the peace of God.
As the Course’s companion pamphlet Psychotherapy5 states:
If healing is an invitation to God [i.e., the Christ in the person] to
enter into His Kingdom, what difference does it make how the in-
vitation is written? Does the paper matter, or the ink, or the pen. Or
is it he who writes that gives the invitation? God comes to those
who would restore His world, for they have found the way to call
to Him (P-2.II.6:1-4).
A passage in the writings of Mani, the influential Gnostic prophet of
the third century whose life and work we shall consider later, expres-
sively states the same idea, using the simile of royal couriers:
The countries and the tongues to which they are sent are differ-
ent from one another; the one is not like the other. So it is like-
wise with the glorious Power which sends out of itself all the
Apostles: the revelations and the wisdom which it gives them, it
gives them in different forms, that is, one is not like the other, for
the tongues to which they are sent do not resemble each other
(Kephalaia Ch. 154, in Jonas, p. 207n).
All theologies are illusory, since they must use concepts and words
which, as the Course states, are “ … but symbols of symbols. They are
thus twice removed from reality” (M-21.1:9-10). Therefore, accord-
ing to the Course, they must be unreal since they are “removed from

5. Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice (Mill Valley, CA: Foundation for
Inner Peace, 1976, 1992).

13
PREFACE

reality.” In the end, theologies will disappear when they have served
their purpose of leading us to God—in experience, not thought. The
Course teaches that its central teaching of forgiveness, too, is illusory,
since its purpose is to undo illusions; in Heaven, the only state of truth,
forgiveness is unknown for it is not needed. Similarly St. Thomas
Aquinas, in the midst of completing the third part of his Summa near
the end of his life—after writing some forty volumes of theology—
had what most Church historians consider to have been a mystical ex-
perience. Unable to continue in his work, he said to a good friend who
sought an explanation for this sudden shift: “All that I have written
seems to me like straw compared to what has now been revealed to
me” (in Weisheipl, p. 322).
If only one form of truth were needed in the world, there would be
but one form. The presence of “many thousands” of spiritual paths—
many of which conflict theologically with the others—reflects our
need for multiple pathways in a world of multiplicity. The Course
states further:
God knows what His Son needs before he asks. He is not at all
concerned with form, but having given the content [love] it is His
Will that it be understood. And that suffices. The form adapts it-
self to need; the content is unchanging, as eternal as its Creator
(C-3.3:2-5).
The ancient Hindu saying that truth is one but sages know it by many
names reflects this same principle.
Therefore, for our purposes, this discussion of the Course, com-
pared and contrasted with Platonism, Christianity, and Gnosticism, is
meant to present the Course’s position on the world and the body as a
distinct approach and solution to the God-world problem discussed
earlier. The theological tenets of A Course in Miracles form the basis
for its whole theory of salvation and, specifically, the meaning and
purpose of forgiveness. When salvation’s plan—the Atonement—is
complete, systems of thought fall away. Together, as the united Child
of our Creator, we leave the world of illusion entirely to enter Heaven
“and disappear into the Heart of God” (W-pII.14.5:5). To help us reach
this goal, however, different paths or theologies are necessary.

14
 Personal Note

Personal Note

In Forgiveness and Jesus I began with some autobiographical re-

flections, ending with my discovery of A Course in Miracles in 1973.
By way of introducing the topics to be discussed in the present book,
I shall continue that narrative with my developing interest, subsequent
to that date, in Christian theology and Gnosticism.
Much of my work—therapy and lecturing—in the years immedi-
ately following my introduction to the Course focused on Roman
Catholics in and around New York City. These included priests, mem-
bers of religious orders, the laity, and religious communities. I was al-
ready developing an interest in Christian thought and scripture, but my
work within the New York Archdiocese made it imperative that I be-
come more familiar with the history and theology of Christianity, not
to mention the New Testament, and the interface between them and
A Course in Miracles. I recognized that such study would help me
bridge the gap between orthodox Christian thinking and the Course for
those who were coming to the Course from this tradition. As the
Course states:
It would indeed be strange if you were asked to go beyond all
symbols of the world, forgetting them forever; yet were asked to
take a teaching function. You have need to use the symbols of the
world a while. But be you not deceived by them as well. … They
become but means by which you can communicate in ways the
world can understand, but which you recognize is not the unity
where true communication can be found (W-pI.184.9:1-3,5).
And from the manual for teachers:
If you would be heard by those who suffer, you must speak their
language (M-26.4:3).
It was during this period that I wrote Christian Psychology in
A COURSE IN MIRACLES. This pamphlet6 attempted to be such a bridge by
discussing the many similarities found in both teachings. It did not,
however, aim at an exhaustive comparison or contrast between the
two.

6. Published in 1992 in book form.

15
PREFACE

I continued to study, and enlisted the aid of some Catholic friends

who were scripture scholars and theologians. Their book recommen-
dations were of great assistance in directing my research. As this pro-
cess continued, I began to realize, even more than previously, how
specifically A Course in Miracles was addressing certain important
theological issues. Among others, these included the exclusive divin-
ity of Jesus, various sacraments, and the sacrificial theology of the cru-
cifixion. I saw that the Course’s choice of language was deliberate as
well. Words such as “sin,” “sacrifice,” “forgiveness,” “salvation,”
“Atonement,” “Christ,” etc., had been deliberately chosen by Jesus to
redefine and correct the more traditional thinking. Forgiveness and Je-
sus, one of the fruits of this period of study, lecturing, and practice of
psychotherapy, discussed this aspect of the Course’s teaching in more
depth.
As the Course and my work in New York Catholic circles became
more widespread, so did interest in the Course increase in these circles,
both positively and negatively. For some theologians, the Course pre-
sented serious problems. In general, these concerns tended to center on
the issue of Gnosticism, whose spectre has remained for centuries the
reddest of all flags that could be waved in front of someone committed
to orthodoxy. The extreme defensiveness I began to encounter when
this issue surfaced piqued my curiosity and interest still further, for I
recognized that something of importance must be present in the Gnostic
material if only because it had aroused such antagonism and resistance
in the past, and continued to do so in the present.
As my prior knowledge of Gnosticism was superficial, based pri-
marily on reading Jung for whom the Gnostics held a special attrac-
tion, I began to explore the subject for myself. I discovered to my
surprise and great interest that indeed the Course and many Gnostic
writers shared much in common, most especially the Valentinian
understanding that the phenomenal world was inherently illusory—
a product of our misthought—and therefore had not been created by
God. On the other hand, the differences between these two thought
systems were as important as the similarities, notably in the implica-
tions for our everyday living that were drawn from the shared meta-
physical principles of Gnosticism and A Course in Miracles.
I discussed this with interested friends, and one of them, the tran-
spersonal psychologist (and psychiatrist) Roger Walsh, suggested I
write an article on the relationship between the Course and Gnosticism.

16
 Acknowledgments

From time to time Roger renewed his suggestion, and I planned to write
such an article once I had completed the two books I was working on.
These were finally finished by the summer of 1983, and I began to re-
read some of the Gnostic literature in preparation for the article. My
reading expanded in scope, embracing Plato and the Neoplatonists,
and, not atypically, the article rapidly grew in theme and substance into
the current book.
This book, consequently, is considerably larger, both in size and
scope, than originally planned. Despite its linear arrangement, on an-
other level the book, similar to A Course in Miracles, is constructed
symphonically. Its major themes are continually presented and re-
presented, developed through many forms and variations. This is a de-
manding book on the reader, not only because of its difficult philosoph-
ical material but, even more to the point, because of its underscoring
concepts that radically alter how we understand and experience God,
our individual selves, and the world. As already indicated, A Course in
Miracles’ true teachings, not always immediately apparent, seem to
belie some of its own words. Thus, the material covered in this book
serves to substantiate this deeper understanding of the Course, helping
the reader recognize its truly profound contribution to the world.
These preliminaries out of the way, we can begin the journey through
a veritable treasure-house of philosophical and spiritual gems. In the
words of the Viennese conductor Erich Leinsdorf, speaking of first-time
listeners to Wagner’s great music-drama Die Walküre: “I envy all those
yet to make its acquaintance.”

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the many people who have contributed to the birth

of this book. Countless friends, too numerous to mention, have over
the years provided or recommended books and articles helpful to my
research, and I thank them all.
I especially wish to thank Rosemarie LoSasso, formerly Chair-
person of the Philosophy Department of Molloy College and now
Administrative Director of Publications for the Foundation for
A COURSE IN MIRACLES, not only for her aid in procuring books and articles
otherwise difficult to acquire, but for her invaluable assistance in the
various stages of the writing, and the very careful and loving attention

17
PREFACE

she paid to the compilation of the Index and the final preparation of the
manuscript.
Finally, I am grateful, as always, to my wife Gloria. The love and
dedication she has felt—probably being herself an old Gnostic lover of
Jesus—for the theme of this book was an important part of the process
—in spirit and form—of its being written, from its pre-beginnings
through the final editing.

18
 PART I

INTRODUCTION
 INTRODUCTION TO PART I

Part I has three chapters. The first is a general introduction to

Gnosticism, discussing its source material, origins, and characteristics;
its four leading figures: Basilides, Marcion, Valentinus, and Mani; and
its later history.
The second chapter presents an overview of Platonism, with spe-
cific reference to its treatment of the relationship between the spiritual
and physical worlds. This chapter begins with the pre-Socratics and
continues with Plato, Aristotle, Middle Platonism and Philo, Origen,
Plotinus, and St. Augustine.
The third chapter has two sections, the first dealing with the Gnostic
(or proto-Gnostic) and anti-Gnostic elements in the New Testament,
and the second with a history of the orthodox Church’s struggle against
what it perceived to be the Gnostic threat and heresy.
Part I thus provides the introductory material for the in-depth discus-
sion in Part II of the Gnostic version of the myth as compared and con-
trasted to Platonism, orthodox Christianity, and A Course in Miracles.

21
 Chapter 1

GNOSTICISM

Primary and Secondary Sources

As interested readers begin to investigate the area of Gnosticism,

they are immediately confronted by almost as many theories about
what it is, where it originated, and who belongs in its group, as there
are scholars debating these questions. These debates, incidentally,
have been renewed and greatly stimulated by the 1945 discovery at
Nag Hammadi, Egypt (though not published in English until 1977) of
a virtually intact monastic library of Gnostic writings. It is beyond the
scope of the present book, however, to discuss the issues of origin that
scholars have been debating for almost a century. Rather, our concern
is with the general philosophical ideas that cluster around a basic sys-
tem of thought that we can properly call “Gnostic.” In this regard, the
work of Hans Jonas, specifically his book The Gnostic Religion, is per-
haps the single best reference for the lay reader to consult. The combi-
nation of dispassionate scholarship with passionate interest in the
material makes his work both unusual and inspiring. Another recom-
mended general source is Gnosis by Kurt Rudolph, a fine updated
summary of the Gnostic literature. Elaine Pagels’ popular The Gnostic
Gospels is a somewhat polemic account of the history of the Church-
Gnostic conflict in the second century, and lacks an in-depth treatment
of what the Gnostics actually believed.
For primary sources there is the aforementioned Nag Hammadi
Library edited by James Robinson. This unique volume is the culmina-
tion of almost three decades of scholarship exercised in the midst of an
embarrassing plethora of political and academic intrigue. Robinson’s
introduction to the book provides some of the background to this
strange story, as does Pagels in her book. In what is considered one of
our most important contemporary archaeological finds, equaling that of
the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran a little over a year
later, the Nag Hammadi library offers us a window to the Gnostic world
that had heretofore seemed forever lost to the scholar’s gaze.
The library presumably belonged to the monastery founded by
St. Pachomius in the Egyptian desert, and was probably buried by

23
Chapter 1 GNOSTICISM

some of the monks in the middle of the fourth century A.D. in fear of
its discovery and destruction, perhaps by Roman authorities who by
this time had become Christian. Since the early Christian Church and
its leaders felt extremely threatened by Gnostic teachings, as we shall
see later, they were obliged to attack and destroy all Gnostic ideas. A
letter has survived from Bishop Athanasius, dating from this period,
that warns against the “apocryphal” books of these heretical “seduc-
ers,” as Church Fathers usually referred to the Gnostics:
Since, however, we have spoken of the heretics as dead but of
ourselves as possessors of the divine writings unto salvation, and
since I am afraid that … some guileless persons may be led astray
from their purity and holiness by the craftiness of certain men and
begin thereafter to pay attention to other books, the so-called apoc-
ryphal writings, being deceived by their possession of the same
names as the genuine books … (Athanasius, “Festal Letter” XXXIX,
in NTA I, p. 59).
Athanasius then lists the “authentic” scriptures of the Old and New
Testaments, including the extra-canonical books (the Apocrypha) ap-
proved by the Church Fathers. These are contrasted to the apocryphal
writings of the Gnostics, which are
a fabrication of the heretics, who write them down when it pleases
them and generously assign to them an early date of composition in
order that they may be able to draw upon them as supposedly an-
cient writings and have in them occasion to deceive the guileless
(ibid., pp. 59-60).
Some of the Nag Hammadi writings appear to date originally from as
early as the second century, and it is presumed that they were recopied
in the fourth century. The evident care with which this copying was done
attests to the value the monks placed on these manuscripts. The strongly
ascetic teachings of these texts suggest that the monks who compiled the
library were themselves ascetics, as would be expected from a monastic
community of that period. With few exceptions, this library constitutes
our only primary source of Christian Gnostic material.
Gnosis: Volume II, edited by Werner Foerster, contains excerpts
from the Nag Hammadi library, as well as an excellent collection of
Mandean Gnostic texts. Though currently out of print, it is available
in certain theological libraries. Primary Manichean Gnostic sources
are difficult to come by, but one can consult Robert Haardt’s Gnosis:

24
 Origins and Characteristics

Character and Testimony, which offers a small selection of actual

Manichean texts, in addition to other Gnostic material. Over 300
Manichean psalms can be found in Allberry’s edited and out-of-print
collection. Foerster’s Gnosis: Volume III is devoted solely to the
Manicheans, but as of this writing has not yet been translated into
English.
An excellent reference of secondary sources is Gnosis: A Selection
of Gnostic Texts: Vol. I: Patristic Evidence, also edited by Foerster.
This compendium presents the writings of the heresiologists (nowa-
days called “heresy hunters”) of the early Church, notably Irenaeus,
Hippolytus, and Epiphanius, which for centuries have remained the
only source for the extensive body of Gnostic literature. Interestingly,
given the overtly antagonistic stance of these writers toward the group
they considered to be heretical children of the devil, the recent discov-
eries have substantiated much of what these Fathers reported. Unfortu-
nately, both Foerster Volumes I and II are currently out of print.

Origins and Characteristics

Despite recent public interest, Gnosticism remains for most people

a relatively unknown area of thought. It has been concealed behind the
“Iron Curtain” of ecclesiastic heresy hunters who attacked the Gnostic
teachings and teachers, destroying its primary literature and thereby
wrapping it in the mysterious veils of the esoteric writings of antiquity,
seemingly lost forever. Thus almost all of the actual writings of
Basilides, Marcion, and Valentinus, the three great second-century
Gnostic teachers, have been destroyed. Gnosticism’s ultimate origins
are in part shrouded in these veils, and the clearest statement we can
make is that it has multiple roots, including Hellenistic, Babylonian,
Egyptian, Persian (Iranian), and Judaic elements. As Jonas has pointed
out, however, these syncretistic elements do not argue for a strictly
composite origin of Gnosticism. Its “autonomous essence” stands be-
yond the mere combining of these cultural and religious influences
(Jonas, p. 33).
Two camps of scholars have evolved, centering on the issue whether
Gnosticism is essentially a pre-Christian or post-Christian phenomenon.
Recent scholarship has still not settled the question of whether one can
indeed speak of an authentically pre-Christian Gnosticism. However,

25
Chapter 1 GNOSTICISM

even those scholars holding to the belief that there is a pre-Christian

Gnostic tradition admit that there is no conclusive empirical evidence
for this position. All the extant Gnostic literature comes after the begin-
ning of the Christian era. As we shall see, there are many writings, in-
cluding parts of the New Testament, that seem to contain Gnostic
elements, but in this case the part does not necessarily make the whole,
and we must wait for the second century to observe any fully developed
Gnostic system. Thus, many of those Gnostic traditions that are non-
Christian would seem to postdate Christianity. As some scholars have
asserted: non-Christian does not mean pre-Christian. What is important
for our purposes, however, is the general Gnostic characteristic—its
“autonomous essence”—regardless of its form of expression, whether
pre- or post-Christian in origin.
While Gnostic expressions differ widely, we may still attempt a
basic summary which, in general, introduces some of the key Gnostic
ideas. The chief Gnostic concern is with the soul, the part of our being
that has somehow fallen from the heavenly world of light—the Pleroma
(meaning fullness)—into an alien world of darkness and materiality in
which it is trapped in the body. The soul still retains a spark of the heav-
enly light, its true Self, which needs to be reawakened by the light of
the Pleroma before it can return home. This light is the gnosis, or
knowledge, brought by the Redeemer, sent by the light into the dark-
ness. (Bultmann, Primitive Christianity, pp. 163-71)
Some of the key differences among Gnostic thought systems center
on the mythological treatment of these themes. In addition, the source of
the fall divides Gnostic teachings into two principal groups, following
Jonas’ discussion to which we shall return in Part II. The non-dualistic
(“Syrian-Egyptian”) school, including Basilides and Valentinus, is basi-
cally the more sophisticated of the two groups, and posits the fall as
coming from within the Godhead itself. By this is meant the exclusion
of any external causative agent such as evil or darkness; rather the fall
comes from within the beings of the Pleroma or, in the words of
A Course in Miracles, from within the mind of the Sonship. In its
more mature form, as in the Valentinian, this school understood the
fall in psychological terms. The dualistic (“Iranian”) school, of which
Manicheism and Mandeanism are the principal exponents, speaks of
an inexplicable ontological dualism of coexisting good and evil, light
and darkness.

26
 Origins and Characteristics

The soul is referred to by the Valentinians as Sophia, from whom

eventually comes the material world, a product of her ignorance
and error. The world’s actual creator (or in the Course’s language,
miscreator) is the progeny of Sophia, and is variously called the
Demiurge, Ialdabaoth, or other corruptions for the name of the
Old Testament God, for whom they are taken to be synonymous. The
world is seen as being under the rule of the archons (“rulers”) who
seek to hold the tiny sparks of light prisoner. The Redeemer—in
Christian Gnosticism of course he is Jesus—comes to the world, an-
nounces his identity, presents his message to those able to hear it (the
Gnostics), who then in turn present it to the world. In time the
“saved” return to the Pleroma, while those unredeemed are destroyed
in the great conflagration with which the world will end.
Thus we may isolate the two distinguishing characteristics of
Gnosticism: 1) the belief in an absolutely transcendental and trans-
mundane God who remains separate and alien from a physical world
He did not create; this belief leads to an anti-cosmic attitude wherein
the physical world—including the planets and stars—is perceived as
evil and sinful, a place in which humanity feels alienated and home-
less, imprisoned by the hostile forces of the Demiurge and his archons;
2) a body of revealed truth (gnosis or knowledge) that was given only
to a select few (the perfect ones, the Gnostics) who would be saved at
the end of time, while the remainder of the world would be destroyed.
Three subsidiary characteristics, not common to all Gnostic sys-
tems, also directly led to confrontation with the early Church. These,
to be treated in Part II-A, are docetism, the resurrection as a non-
physical event, and the redeemer myth. Docetism comes from the
Greek word meaning “appear,” and refers to Jesus’ not truly living in
the flesh, yet appearing to do so. Following from the docetic view, the
resurrection was seen not as a physical event (since Jesus was not truly
in the body in the first place, a physical resurrection after his seeming
death would make no sense), but rather as a psychological event that
had already occurred for those who truly believed in the message of
light; namely, the Gnostics. Finally, the redeemer is sent by God into
the world of darkness to retrieve the lost souls. He “puts on the beast”
(i.e., the body) to confuse the demonic archons, announces himself
(“I am the good shepherd,” for example), awakens the sleeping souls
and reminds them of their true home. He then presents them with the

27
Chapter 1 GNOSTICISM

necessary information (passwords, etc.) to survive the perilous journey

past the archons, ascends to Heaven, thus preparing the way for others
to follow. These ideas will be presented and re-presented throughout
the book, where they shall be discussed in greater depth.
We shall see below that the Gnostic teachings on salvation differ
radically from their Greek and orthodox Christian counterparts. Salva-
tion is attained for the Gnostic, not through the pursuit of reason and
virtue, nor from the historical revelation present in the incarnational
and crucified Jesus, as orthodox Christianity taught, but only through a
revealed gnosis that awakens knowledge of the innermost Self. The
philosophical and orthodox Christian traditions are thus rendered vir-
tually superfluous and irrelevant. We turn now to the four great Gnostic
teachers: the second-century Basilides, Marcion, and Valentinus, and
the third-century Mani.

The Great Gnostic Schools

Whatever different scholars may maintain are the origins of Christian

Gnosticism—pre-Gnostic or proto-Gnostic—none could deny that the
emergence of Gnosticism as a fully developed system of thought came
in the second century A.D. Of the actual writings of this period, how-
ever, practically nothing remains. Until recently, therefore, students of
this period were forced to rely almost exclusively on the excerpts and
analyses found in the writings of the early Church Fathers, as men-
tioned above. The history of Gnosticism thus reaches its pinnacle in the
second century, where its achievements are dominated by the figures of
three of its foremost theologians: Basilides, Marcion, and Valentinus.
Of them it can be said that Basilides was the first of the great Gnostic
teachers, one who saw himself as a Christian theologian. He was con-
sidered by Hegel to be one of the most distinguished Gnostic represen-
tatives, while Jung thought of him as his spiritual ancestor. Marcion, a
contemporary of Basilides, without question presented the greatest
single danger to the Church of the second century. Placing himself
within the Pauline tradition, he attempted to establish his own church,
the only Gnostic to have proceeded in this manner until the third-
century Mani. Valentinus was the founder of the greatest Gnostic
school. Having stimulated a long list of distinguished Gnostic teach-
ers, he had by far the largest influence of any Gnostic theologian. The

28
 The Great Gnostic Schools

core of his teaching, as we shall see below, remains one of the brightest
stars in the classical firmament of metaphysical thought.
Our fourth theologian, Mani, comes a century later and is actually
in a class by himself. He is the one Gnostic who consciously saw
himself as a founder of a world religion, one that would supplant not
only Christianity, but Buddhism and Zoroastrianism as well. Some
commentators, in fact, classify Manicheism among the world’s major
religions because of its over-reaching influence, even if it ultimately
failed and is no longer extant.

1. Basilides
Of Basilides’ life we know practically nothing, not even the years
of his birth or death. Although his birthplace remains unknown, it is
commonly accepted that he lived in Alexandria under the reign of the
Roman emperors Hadrian and Antonius Pius (117-161). Save for a
few fragments, nothing remains of his actual writings, which are
thought to have included a gospel, an exegesis of some twenty-four
books, and a group of psalms. His school seemed to have had little in-
fluence outside Egypt, but lasted at least into the fourth century,
where it is mentioned by Epiphanius of Salamis, the notorious fourth-
century Church heresiologist. Thus, we are almost entirely at the
mercy of Basilides’ opponents for information regarding his theology.
Moreover, the issue is confounded for the historian by the fact that the
two richest patristic sources—Irenaeus and Hippolytus—provide dif-
fering accounts of his teachings. It is possible, however, as Rudolph
suggests, that both heresiologists are correct. We have already seen that
the Gnostics generally were not systematic theologians who rigidly in-
sisted on the truth of their own particular set of dogmas. Thus, their dis-
ciples were free to modify, expand, or even refute certain aspects of
their teacher’s system. Moreover, Basilides’ own thinking may have
evolved over the years. Thus, the sources used by the second-century
Irenaeus and the third-century Hippolytus may reflect differing inter-
pretations of what was never truly one cohesive system anyway.
Irenaeus presents an essentially dualistic ontology, which reflects
the influence of Middle Platonism that we shall explore in the next
chapter. The Basilidean system begins with the unbegotten Father,
from whom emanate six pairs of spiritual powers. From the final pair,
Sophia (wisdom) and Dynamis (power), there come 365 heavenly

29
Chapter 1 GNOSTICISM

powers (or aeons) to which correspond of course the worldly year. The
last of these powers created the world, and their leader, the Jewish
God, is called Abraxas. This name is derived from the numerical value
of the number 365. Since the Hebrew word for “four” is “Arba,” Ab-
raxas may also have etymological roots with the Tetragramaton, the
four consonants of God’s Name: YHWH. To free His children from the
tyranny of Abraxas, who “wished to subject the other nations to his
own men, that is, to the Jews,” the true Creator-God sent Christ (one
of the original six emanations) into the world, manifesting himself in
Jesus. In order to fool the world, Jesus, at the time of the crucifixion,
substitutes his image for Simon of Cyrene and vice versa. Those who
believed that the real Jesus suffered and died on Calvary were thus in
error, and worthy of Jesus’ derisive laughter as he stood watching from
a nearby tree. Only those who knew the truth were saved from the
rulers of the world. Irenaeus, writing about the Basilidean Gnostics,
states:
Salvation is for their soul alone; the body is by nature corrupt-
ible. He [Basilides] says that even the prophecies themselves
came from the rulers, who made the world, and that the law in
particular came from their chief, him who led the people out of
the land of Egypt. They despise things sacrificed to idols and
think nothing of them, but enjoy them without any anxiety at all.
They also enjoy the other pagan festivals … . They also engage in
magic, conjuring of the dead, spells, calling up of spirits, and all
the other occult practices. … Not many, either, can know these
doctrines, but one in a thousand and two in ten thousand.7 They
say they are no longer Jews, but not yet Christians; and their se-
crets must not be uttered at all, but they must keep them con-
cealed by silence ( Adv. haer. I.24.5-6, in F I, pp. 59-61).
The system of Basilides given in Hippolytus reads differently, and
is an essentially monistic theology that is more the exception rather
than the rule in Gnostic teaching, and also reflects its Platonic anteced-
ents. Here, the ineffable God deposits a “world-seed” from which em-
anates the material universe. This emanation has three components,

7. See the interesting numerical parallel in the Mandean version of the Last Judgment
found in “The Book of John II,” where the Scales judge: “Out of a thousand, one it
chooses, one it chooses out of a thousand, two out of ten thousand. It selects and
brings up the Souls which are ardent, and show themselves worthy of the Place of
Light” (in Haardt, p. 388).

30
 The Great Gnostic Schools

which specifically gives this system its Gnostic flavor and similarities
to the account we have in Irenaeus. We find here also the set of three
groups that is characteristic of many Gnostic systems, also reflecting
its Platonic antecedents. The first is the least dense (containing the
most light), and speedily returns to God; the second is only able to re-
turn through the help of the Holy Spirit; while the third, the most
coarse of the three, must remain below until it is purified.
From the world-seed there also arose the rulers of the stars and the
planets, and here we see similarities with the Greek veneration of the
cosmos. The other non-dualistic Gnostic systems do not share this
“cosmic piety,” however. In order to save the third group that is
trapped in the material world, the Gospel (Christ) is sent through the
layers of the world until it descends upon Jesus, enlightening him. This
system then follows the traditional gospel narratives, including the
sufferings that befell Jesus’ body until he leads the sonship back to its
home in the celestial spheres, and order is once again restored.

2. Marcion
To this day, Marcion remains a controversial figure when one at-
tempts to place him within a specific category, for in many ways his
teaching stands outside Gnosticism, embracing the more traditional
Christian-Pauline theology. Yet, his teaching also shares many of the
Gnostic ideas we find in other theologians. Thus, he has as it were a
foot in both camps.
The year of Marcion’s birth is unknown, though it probably falls to-
ward the end of the first century A.D. He was born in Asia Minor, and
supposedly grew up in a Christian environment (one report states that
his father was a local bishop). Later on he is said to have taught in the
Asia Minor cities of Smyrna and Ephesus, two well-known Gnostic
centers of learning. The intervening years are unclear, but it is certain
that he was in Rome around 140 where he was involved in a local
Christian church. Under the influence of the Syrian Gnostic philoso-
pher Cerdo he finalized his theology, which included the prominent
Gnostic idea that the Old Testament Creator God is the enemy of the
true God. He presented his views to the Roman synod in 144 but was
rejected, and this marks the beginning of Marcion’s church. Recorded
history fails us from this point, and we know only that Marcion labored
to expand his church and promulgate his theology, dying around 160.

31
Chapter 1 GNOSTICISM

Marcion firmly believed that it was his mission to expose the false
thinking of the orthodox Church and present the truth of his message.
As Nigg has written:
… he felt he understood true Christianity, while the acknowledged
Church with its corrupted version of Christianity was an assembly
of plotters who employed cunning means to undermine truth. … he
felt called upon to expose the criminal conspiracy. Unmasking the
plotters became the great aim of his life, a task at which he labored
with bitter passion (Nigg, pp. 64-65).
To solidify the basis for his theology and to strengthen his community
of believers, Marcion established a New Testament canon, the first to
do so. As did the later Church Fathers, he selected those elements and
books that supported his theology, rejecting those which did not. For ex-
ample, he only admitted a “purified” version of Luke’s gospel, exclud-
ing all the other gospels. The Old Testament, the book of the Jewish
Creator God, was of course rejected outright. As Irenaeus wrote:
… Marcion circumcises the gospel according to Luke and takes out
everything written about the generation of the Lord [the opening two
chapters which establish Jesus’ divine and Davidic ancestry], as well
as many items about the teaching of the Lord’s words in which the
Lord is most plainly described as acknowledging the Creator of this
universe as his Father. He persuaded his disciples that he himself was
more trustworthy than the apostles who transmitted the gospel; but
he delivered to them not the gospel but a particle of the gospel. Simi-
larly he abridged the epistles of the apostle Paul, taking out whatever
was clearly said by the apostle concerning that God who made the
world as well as whatever the apostle taught when he mentioned pas-
sages from the prophetic writings which foretell the Lord’s coming
(Adv. haer. I.27.2, in Grant, Gnosticism: A Source Book … , p. 45).
Paradoxically, then, Marcion taught the literal interpretation of the
Old Testament, as opposed to the allegorical interpretations made by
some of the Church Fathers such as Clement and Origen who, through
their ingenious efforts, sought to reconcile the older texts with the new
revelation of Jesus. Thus, Marcion took the biblical words as literally
true—the words of the Creator God—yet not from the true God who
alone was divine. Ironically, it was Marcion’s unorthodox canon that,
more than any other influence, pushed Bishop Irenaeus and other
Church authorities to establish their own canon and dogma.

32
 The Great Gnostic Schools

Marcion’s church did expand, not only to Egypt, Syria, Armenia,

and Asia Minor, but into the East as well. He was actively combatted
by the Church Fathers, however, who, among other things, denounced
him as being the “First-Born of Satan,” “the devil’s mouthpiece,” “a
raging beast,” and the “mouth of godlessness” (Adv. haer. III.3; I.27,
in Nigg, pp. 58-59). Nonetheless, the church of Marcion survived the
persecutions of Rome until the fourth century when the Christianized
Roman rulers issued edicts against the Gnostics whom they classified
as heretics. Remnants of the Marcion church can be traced beyond this
to East Syria and the Orient, but little is heard of them after the fifth
century. Finally, it can be seen that the Marcion ecclesiology paved the
way for Manicheism, the most organized and powerful of any of the
non-orthodox churches. In many instances, moreover, the Marcionites
merged with their more successful brothers.
The key element in Marcion’s system is the antithesis between what
he called the God of the Law and the God of salvation. This latter is
the true God, “good” and “strange,” whose essence of perfection is to-
tally beyond this world, in which he is unknown. In contrast to Him is
the imperfect and despicable God of creation, the Cosmocrator. This is
the false God of the Old Testament who created the phenomenal world
and rules it through the Law, which is both just and vengeful. It is only
the true God who is merciful.
While the juxtaposition of the Law and Goodness is an integral part
of Pauline theology, Marcion wreaks havoc on the apostle’s system by
splitting off the two attributes that Paul saw present in the one God,
placing them into two mutually exclusive deities. Thus, this complete
denigration of the Old Testament God of the Law and the created
world—Marcion sees the world as petty, weak, and inconsistent: this
“puny cell in its Creator”—is certainly more akin to the Gnostic posi-
tion. In the words of Tertullian, the second- to third-century Church
Father who is our most extensive source of Marcion’s teachings:
“ turning up their noses the utterly shameless Marcionites take to tear-
ing down the work of the Creator: ‘Indeed,’ they say, ‘a grand produc-
tion, and worthy of its God, is this world!’” (Contra Marc. [= Adv.
Marc.] I.13, in Jonas, p. 141).
Despite the good God’s total lack of involvement in the world, He
nonetheless, according to Marcion, sends his son Jesus into the world
as savior and redeemer. Marcion thus calls this purely good and mer-
ciful One the God of salvation, and Tertullian states about his theology:

33
Chapter 1 GNOSTICISM

This one work suffices our God, that he has liberated man by his
supreme and superlative goodness, which is to be preferred to all
grasshoppers [another instance of Marcion’s contempt for the cre-
ated world] (ibid., I.17, in Jonas, p. 142).
The nineteenth-century German Harnack, the leading scholar of
Marcion’s work, summarizes Marcion’s radical view of the redemp-
tion: “He [Jesus] has saved us from the world and its god in order to
make us children of a new and alien God” (in Jonas, p. 139).
Marcion believed that Jesus’ body was a “phantasm,” thus exhibit-
ing characteristics of the docetic strand of Gnosticism. Jesus’ crucifix-
ion was ordained by the Creator God, and Marcion did believe, in
contrast with Basilides, that the savior died on the cross. Thus, despite
his docetic strain, Marcion shared the Pauline view that Jesus
“redeemed us from the curse of the Law” (Ga 3:13), purchasing our sal-
vation by his own death. In contradistinction to Paul, however, Marcion
held that the “purchase price” of Jesus’ blood was not as ransom for our
sins, nor was his bloody sacrifice reflective of a vicarious atonement
reminiscent of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. Rather, Jesus’ death was to
cancel out the Creator God’s claim to what had been truly his. The cru-
cifixion was, in effect, the “paying off ” of the Creator God for the
human souls he created. Properly compensated, this Old Testament
God released humanity to the true God, who has now rightfully and
legally purchased its salvation.
Marcion also taught that Jesus descended into the underworld to
save the entrapped souls. Yet, in true Gnostic fashion Jesus releases
just those who had been condemned by the Old Testament God, while
the “righteous” remain condemned below. Irenaeus reports:
[Marcion assumes] the role of the devil … saying everything con-
trary to the truth. When the Lord descended to Hades, Cain and
those like him, the Sodomites, the Egyptians, and those like them,
and in general all the peoples who have walked in every compound
of wickedness, were saved by him … . But Abel, Enoch, Noah, and
the rest of the righteous, and the patriarchs related to Abraham,
along with all the prophets and those who pleased God, did not
participate in salvation (Adv. haer. I.27.3, in Grant, Gnosticism:
A Source Book … , p. 46).
One can well imagine the reaction of the orthodox Church leaders to
this clever and polemic reversal of biblical teaching.

34
 The Great Gnostic Schools

Finally, Marcion reflects his Gnostic influences not only in his

devaluation of the world and the body, but in the pronounced ascetic
implications he drew from such an anti-cosmic theology. As history has
shown, this asceticism—in Marcion and other Gnostic teachers—
made its way into orthodox ascetic spirituality and the desert monasti-
cism that arose in the fourth and fifth centuries. We shall discuss this
asceticism in more depth in Part II-A. However, Marcion departs from
the other Gnostics in seeing not only the body as alien from God, but
the soul too. In his system, the soul is derived from the false Creator
God and not, as in all other Gnostic systems, from the God of the
Pleroma. Thus, both body and soul share in the evil of the Cosmocrator.
Unlike other Gnostics who taught that our true home is in God, Marcion
held that our home was here in the evil world of the Creator God. As
Jonas writes of Marcion’s theory:
He [the true God] does not gather lost children from exile back
into their home but freely adopts strangers to take them from their
native land of oppression and misery into a new father’s house
(Jonas, p. 139).
Thus we can see the influence of Paul’s teaching that we are adopted
sons of God, Jesus being the only true Son (Ga 4:5; Ep 1:5). Humanity
is therefore totally corrupt, and can be saved only through the omni-
beneficence and mercy of the true God who intervenes by sending Je-
sus, teaching those with ears to listen to transform their evil souls.
As a final illustration of Marcion’s independence from Gnosticism,
we find the total lack of any mythological speculation—e.g., no aeons
emanating from the Father, a characteristic of almost all other Gnostic
systems. He limits himself solely to the biblical narrative and characters.
Thus we have in Marcion a strikingly original and independent thinker,
who freely borrowed from both traditions—biblical and Gnostic—to
fuse his own theology.

3. Valentinus
Valentinus is the third of our second-century Gnostic teachers, and
certainly the most influential. As with Basilides and Marcion, little is
known biographically of him, although he and his school were preoc-
cupations of the Church Fathers for three centuries. He was born in
Egypt, probably around the turn of the second century, and was

35
Chapter 1 GNOSTICISM

educated in Alexandria where he embraced Christianity, albeit most

likely in a form that was intermingled with Gnostic ideas. Valentinus
claimed to have received his teaching from a certain Theudas, not the
zealot mentioned in Acts 5:36, but probably, according to scholars, the
disciple of Paul mentioned in the apocryphal “Acts of Paul” (in NTA II,
p. 336). Like his two Gnostic counterparts, Valentinus never saw him-
self outside the Christian tradition. In fact, though no connection be-
tween the two is ever reported, he was studying and teaching in
Alexandria roughly at the time that Basilides did. Valentinus then trav-
elled to Rome around 140, the period of Marcion’s Roman stay. Val-
entinus, too, was repudiated as a heretic, yet he was more successful
in Rome than was Marcion, and remained there for about twenty
years where his school apparently flourished. Tertullian wrote that
Valentinus had aspirations to the bishopric which, if true, reflects
Valentinus’ self-estimation as a Christian within the Church. One re-
port states that he remained in Rome until his death around 160; an-
other that he left for Cyprus.
Even the heresiologists were forced to admit his great gifts as
teacher and poet. As St. Jerome wrote: “No one can bring a heresy
into being unless he is possessed, by nature, of an outstanding intel-
lect and has gifts provided by God. Such a person was Valentinus”
(in F I, p. 121). Unfortunately, precious little has remained of his writ-
ings, save for some isolated fragments. We are told, however, that his
work included sermons, hymns, and letters. Much of his teaching was
done orally and, until recently, was available to us solely through the
reports of the Church heresiologists. The Nag Hammadi documents
substantiate considerably what the Church Fathers have provided,
and indicate the wide range of Valentinian teaching. His pupils —
such as Ptolemaeus and Heracleon—were obviously comfortable
with disagreeing with their mentor, elaborating on and often changing
different aspects of the original system.
We shall spend considerable time later discussing the specific
components of the Valentinian Gnosis, and so will confine ourselves
here to a brief outline of the system. It appears that all the Valentinians
concurred that the Pleroma (Heaven) consisted of at least fifteen pairs
of aeons (worlds) or emanations, of which the first two tetrads or
Ogdoad are primary. The Valentinians differed among themselves on
whether God was alone before the emanations, or whether the aeons
coexisted with Him from the beginning. The final aeon is Sophia

36
 The Great Gnostic Schools

(Wisdom), who “falls” through striving to know the Unknown and

Unknowable Father, seeking to create like Him. Her error, known as
Ignorance, ultimately results in the creation of the material world by
the Demiurge, sometimes called Ialdabaoth (the Gnostic corruption
for Ya and Sabaoth, Old Testament appellations for God). As in many
of the Gnostic systems, Ialdabaoth is characterized by ignorance and
arrogance.
The events that follow from Sophia’s error occur both within and
without the Pleroma. The Valentinians differ here in many of the de-
tails, but the following summary of the system, based largely on
Rudolph (pp. 320-22), can be taken as representative. In order to re-
store the disturbance within the Pleroma, created by what is sometimes
referred to as Sophia’s folly, the Father creates an additional pair of
aeons, Christ and the Holy Spirit, who lead the errant Sophia back into
harmony. This restored aspect is called the upper Sophia, which be-
comes separated from the lower Sophia which consists of her original
passion to be like her Father. The lower part falls outside the Pleroma
and is the object of salvation. Jesus is brought forth as “the perfect fruit
of the Pleroma,” and is the savior who brings knowledge (the correc-
tion for the original ignorance). The Valentinian Jesus corresponds
closely to the orthodox view, in that Valentinus taught that Jesus had
suffered and died in the flesh.
Finally, there is the Valentinian threefold division of the world, sim-
ilar to Basilides. From Sophia’s passion arises the hylic, the material
world and the body; from her repentance comes the psychic, or the
mind; and from the purified Sophia is the pneuma, or the spirit. These
divisions, which categorize the people of the world, are thus ontolog-
ically rooted in the original activity of the Pleroma.
In summary, the Valentinian system renders the fall and redemption
of the mythological Sophia as psychological constructs, occurring
within the mind. This system is summarized in the sophisticated
“formula” found in “The Gospel of Truth”:
Since the deficiency came into being because the Father was not
known, therefore when the Father is known, from that moment on
the deficiency will no longer exist (GT I.24.28-32, in NHL, p. 41).
In Part II we shall consider in greater depth the error of moving from
knowledge to ignorance, and the subsequent correction and return to
knowledge.

37
Chapter 1 GNOSTICISM

4. Mani
Mani was born in A.D. 216 in Babylonia (southern Mesopotamia)
to Persian parents, said to be of noble descent. Mani’s early environ-
ment was permeated with Gnostic ideas, as his father was a member
of a Gnostic baptist sect, the Jewish-Christian Elkesaites, while the
Mandeans also constituted an important part of this community. When
he was about twelve years old Mani had the first of several visions
which eventually led him to oppose these baptist communities, culmi-
nating in his expulsion along with his father and two disciples.
While little is known of the details of his later life, Mani quite
clearly saw himself as an “apostle of light,” called by God to bring His
message to the world. In a hymn, Mani describes his apostleship:
I am a grateful hearer
who was born in the land of Babylon
..............................
and I am set up at the gate of the truth.
I am a singer, a hearer,
who has come from the land of Babylon
.................................
to send forth a call in the world.
(In Rudolph, p. 330)
Mani began to extend his ministry outside of Persia, himself travelling
to India, while his missionaries spread his message to the Western
provinces:
I have sown the corn of life … from East to West; as you see my
hope has gone towards the East of the world and all the regions of
the globe (i.e., the West), to the direction of the North and the
South. None of the apostles has ever done this … (in Rudolph,
p. 330).
Manicheism flourished for a while under favorable Persian rulers,
successfully holding off the Zoroastrian priestly caste. However, even-
tually a new king took the throne who sympathized with the
Zoroastrians in their struggle against this insurgent new religion.
Mani’s attempts to gain this king’s favor failed, and he was thrown into
prison where he died in 276. As was the custom with heretics, his body
was mutilated and put on public display. This was taken by his follow-
ers as an example of the martyrdom which preceded his ascension into

38
 The Great Gnostic Schools

light. The Manichean church then entered into a difficult period, with
persecutions from without and schisms from within storming its cita-
dels. It continued to have its influence, however, for at least another two
centuries (St. Augustine, interestingly enough, joined this “teaching of
light” in North Africa in the years 373-382) before it began to wane and
eventually disappear as a religious form in the sixth century. Its influ-
ence continued, however, for centuries to come, extending from China
to Spain, leading Jonas to comment that “from the point of view of the
history of religions Manichaeism is the most important product of
Gnosticism” (Jonas, p. 208).
Scholars have commented on the identification Mani probably
made between himself and the apostle Thomas, whom legend taught
also travelled to India where he was martyred. For Mani, therefore,
Thomas acted as a mediating figure between Jesus and himself. The
extreme dualism and severe asceticism of “The Acts of Thomas,” the
early third-century Gnostic text we shall consider in greater detail in
Part II-A, were a great influence on Manicheism. In addition, we find
the collected sayings of Jesus in “The Gospel of Thomas” quoted in
several Manichean sources.
While the Manicheans quoted from the four canonical gospels—
there is an extensive quotation by Mani himself of the Matthean par-
able of “The Last Judgment”—they also availed themselves of the
non-canonical Gnostic gospels, including those attributed to Peter,
Philip, and Thomas. In addition, there is a gospel reportedly written
by Mani himself, “The Living Gospel,” which apparently contains
the Manichean system as well as perhaps a correction for the canon-
ical gospels. Only two brief fragments of this gospel have survived,
however.
Therefore, as with the other Gnostic systems, it is difficult to know
exactly what the founder of Manicheism taught. The following sum-
mary is based upon Rudolph’s distillation (pp. 336-39) of various
sources which include some recently discovered original writings, as
well as the anti-heretical Church writings of the fourth, fifth, and
eighth centuries. The purpose of the summary is to provide a general
orientation to the Manichean theology. Later chapters will elaborate on
certain aspects of the system.
Mani’s theology shares the basic Gnostic dualism that opposes spirit
and body, light and darkness, and underscores the salvation of the light
from enslavement in the darkness. Mani’s emphasis was eminently

39
Chapter 1 GNOSTICISM

practical, concentrating on this salvation rather than on cosmological

issues. He begins with an ontological duality of light and darkness,
good and evil. These coexist from the beginning, a principle different
from the basic Valentinian position that saw evil arising from within the
good.
There is a boundary between these two worlds, which the agitated
Darkness eventually penetrates. Called into action against this “inva-
sion,” the God of Light responds by creating beings, from whom
comes Ormuzd, Primal Man. Ormuzd does battle with the Darkness, is
defeated, and leaves his “soul” behind. In response, the God of Light
sends the Living Spirit to awaken the sleeping Ormuzd. This action is
successful, yet the soul is still imprisoned in the darkness. Thus, the
Living Spirit creates the material world from particles of light and
darkness for the soul’s deliverance. (This differs from most Gnostics,
yet is similar to Origen’s notion that God created the world after the
fall, as a means—classroom—to return to God.) Next is set in motion
what we may call a cosmic ferris wheel, consisting of the zodiac.
Herein the trapped particles of light are released and borne above
where they are safely deposited in the world of light.
To fight against this activity which would deprive it of the light
particles, the Darkness devises a plan to entrap the light still further.
This plan involves sexuality which combines the seeds of light and
darkness, fertilizes them, and gives rise to the plant and animal king-
doms. The culmination of this plan is the creation of man and woman
(Adam and Eve) by two demons chosen by the Darkness. Sex thus
serves the specific purpose of ensuring that souls continue to remain
trapped in bodies through the process of reproduction. This tactic is
now countered by the light’s calling on “Jesus Splendor” (a mytho-
logical, not the historical figure), who is sent to enlighten man’s soul
through the knowledge of the light, which is spirit, as opposed to the
dark evil of the body. This is the plan of redemption which awaits the
awakening of the soul. If this does not occur at death, the soul must
return again and again until its final redemption. Humanity, therefore,
needs messengers of light to bring this message to it, and these are the
great religious prophets of history, beginning with Seth and Noah, in-
cluding the Old Testament holy men, Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, Paul,
and then finally Mani who, according to himself, is the consumma-
tory fulfillment of all the past religions. After him there will be no
other.

40
 The Fifth Century and Beyond

The Manichean church was thus the community of salvation,

whose responsibility was to look after the light in the world and purify
it of contamination by evil matter. This led to a strong asceticism
which, when practiced in the extreme, led to an almost total passivity.

The Fifth Century and Beyond

Having cut off the historical connection with Jesus that the apos-
tolic Church provided through the transmission of the New Testament
and the authority of the bishops, the Gnostics were not able to build a
popular base of support. In addition, they were not in the main really
interested in establishing religious structures with clergy, sacraments,
etc., but rather in having schools. Thus they promoted individual ex-
pressiveness rather than conformist thinking or behavior, and this was
not conducive to building large institutions that met the security needs
of the population.
The Gnosticism of the fourth and fifth centuries largely survived
through Manicheism, which in time also did not meet the social and re-
ligious needs of the people that required a more conservative and pop-
ularized gospel. Largely through the efforts of St. Augustine, as we
shall see in the next chapter, this Gnostic religion virtually disappeared
from history, the victim of persecution and wholesale destruction of its
documents. With the demise of Manicheism, ancient Gnosticism died
out as well. As Rudolph comments:
… the Christian Church, by adapting to its environment, and by ac-
cepting the legitimate concerns of gnostic theology into its consoli-
dating body of doctrine, developed into a forward-looking
ideology and community structure, which ultimately made it heir
to the religions of antiquity. By avoiding extremes and by trans-
forming the radical traits of the early Christian message into a
form acceptable to the world, thus not persisting in mere protest
but at the same time accepting the cultural heritage of antiquity, it
increasingly reduced the influence of Gnosis until it ultimately,
after having been invested with the authority of the state (in the 4th
century), succeeded in mobilizing the physical political power
against it which the remaining adherents could not resist for any
length of time (Rudolph, p. 367).

41
Chapter 1 GNOSTICISM

How one traces Gnosticism from this time on depends on one’s

definition, and
it is difficult to prove continuity in any detail, as the connecting links
often are “subterranean” channels, or else the relationships are based
on reconstructions of the history of ideas which have been under-
taken especially in the realm of the history of philosophy (Rudolph,
p. 368).
Some scholars have extended the history of Gnosticism to include
Boehme, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Heine, and Goethe, even
Marx, not to mention twentieth-century figures such as Jung and Weil,
among many, many others. One source even included Plato, Virgil,
Kant, Beethoven, and Schopenhauer as Gnostics, while some modern
day writers have attempted to organize esoteric, astrological, and
Jungian elements around a medieval or even contemporary Gnosticism.
All these have made for more rather than less confusion, for the defini-
tion of Gnosticism becomes hopelessly diluted by calling Gnostic al-
most any philosophical or artistic genius who contains even a twinge of
rebelliousness. This radically shifts the focus of Gnosticism, wrenching
it from the original definition of the early Christian centuries that gave
this ancient tradition its primary identity: a systematized body of
thought representing the radically transcendental and transmundane
view of God and the human spirit.
For the purposes of this book, therefore, we have adopted the more
traditional understanding, which restricts Gnosticism to its classical
expression, deriving its primary definition from an anti-cosmic dual-
ism. In this vein the most important heirs are the Bogomils who arose
in Bulgaria in the tenth century and obviously owed their debt to
Manicheism. The Bogomils penetrated Italy and France in the eleventh
century, and metamorphosed into the Cathars and Albigensians. Their
neo-Manichean church was finally vanquished by the Inquisition in the
fourteenth century. But obviously, as pointed out in the Preface, the
Church has never totally shaken itself of what it has always considered
to be its greatest threat. Rudolph summarizes the situation of the
Church:
One can almost say that Gnosis followed the Church like a
shadow; the Church could never overcome it, its influence had
gone too deep. By reason of their common history they remain
two—hostile—sisters (Rudolph, p. 368).

42
 The Fifth Century and Beyond

The sole exception to this concluding history of Gnosticism is the

Mandeans, an extant Gnostic community of approximately 15,000 in
Iraq, whose roots date back to the beginnings of Gnosticism. Their or-
igins, if not pre-Christian as claimed by some scholars, certainly date
from at least the first century of the Christian era. Thus they can almost
be termed an “historical relic.” Their strong anti-Jesus, pro-John the
Baptist mentality distinguished them from their Christian counterparts,
and it has led many scholars to assert that they originally began as an
heretical Jewish group who followed the Baptist.
The Mandeans fled Palestine after the Roman destruction of Jeru-
salem in 70, which the Mandeans believed was divine punishment for
the Jewish persecution of their community. They fled further perse-
cution and moved North and East, making their way to what was then
northwest Iran, and then on to Baghdad; and it was in Iraq that the
Mandeans finally settled and remain to this day. They were constant
victims of persecutions, suffering at the hands of the Christians and
Moslems, among others.
The Mandeans, therefore, escaped the fate of other Gnostic groups,
and a surprisingly large body of Mandean literature is extant, which
does not always provide a logical or consistent theoretical presentation
of the Mandean theology. It has been the burden of scholars for over a
century to make sense of the Mandean corpus, to sift out from the
many historical layers of literature what is closest to the Mandean be-
lief system. Basically, the Mandeans (the name means those who
know, i.e., Gnostics) fall into the dualistic camp we shall address in
Part II-A, of which Mani is the most important figure. In fact, as was
mentioned above, Mani had contact with the Mandeans, though with
some resultant theological disagreements. We shall draw from their
impressive body of literature below.

43
 Chapter 2

PLATO AND THE PLATONIC TRADITION

We have already presented as a key Gnostic belief that God did not
create this world. Moreover, in almost all Gnostic teachings the world
is seen as inferior or evil. While this world-denigration was revolution-
ary as far as the Judaeo-Christian milieu in which Gnosticism flour-
ished was concerned, it did have important philosophical antecedents,
most especially in the Greek philosophical schools of the preceding
centuries. The influence of Plato is so direct in the great Gnostic
schools of Alexandria that it is impossible to evaluate them properly
without consideration of him and the Platonic tradition. As Rudolph
comments:
In the question of the construction of the world and of theology,
the Alexandrine gnosis was an important link in the tradition of
Middle Platonism which united early and late Platonism (Rudolph,
p. 284).
As was emphasized in the Preface, we are exploring the central
philosophical issues of how the perfect unity of the Divine can lead to
the imperfect sensory world of multiplicity, and the implications of
this “descent” for individuals living in the phenomenal world. A para-
dox is found in almost all Platonic and Neoplatonic attempts to recon-
cile the “irreconcilable”—the ontological reality of good and evil, the
One and the many, the perfect and imperfect: The material cosmos is
good because it emanated from the Godhead, yet the material body, a
product of the same emanation, is evil because it imprisons the soul.
These issues, as we shall see, are absolutely central to Gnostic
thought, and in this chapter we shall explore some of its Greek philo-
sophical antecedents, as well as its Middle Platonic and Neoplatonic
contemporaries. This will lead to greater appreciation of one of the im-
portant cultural milieus in which Gnosticism, especially its Valentinian
variety, arose. For much of this discussion I am indebted to
A. H. Armstrong’s An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, which pro-
vides a succinct yet cogent overview of the principal themes that run
through the cradle of Western philosophy, from the pre-Socratics to
St. Augustine.

45
Chapter 2 THE PLATONIC TRADITION

Pre-Socratics

We begin with Orphism, whose origins trace back to the sixth cen-
tury B.C. Information about this movement’s beginning—its legendary
prophet is Orpheus—is mostly lacking. Among its central teachings is
a dualistic view of man—the divine soul and earthly body. Orphism
advocated elaborate rites of purification and ascetic norms to free the
soul from its prison that it might return to its home in the non-material
world. We shall see the influence of Orphism in some of the Gnostic
texts and groups witnessed to by the Church Fathers. However, its in-
fluence in philosophical history was more directly felt in the rise of Py-
thagoreanism, and through that movement into Plato.
Pythagoras (ca. 571-497), about whom and his teaching very little
is known, essentially built upon the Orphic dualism of the soul as
divine and good, and the body as an evil prison. The Pythagorean
school further elaborated this view by identifying the good with the
intellect, and with the order and harmony of the universe. It was the
contemplation of the musical harmony of the spheres that liberated
the soul (male) from its corporeal prison (female) and returned it to
its divine state. The basic Pythagorean question, so Gnostic in its
feeling, can be stated thus:
How may I deliver myself from the body of this death, from the
sorrowful weary wheel of mortal existence and become again a
god? (Armstrong, p. 1)
The early-fifth-century B.C. Parmenides (dates unknown) taught
that all reality is one, immovable and unchanging. He thus placed him-
self in opposition to his older contemporary Heraclitus, who empha-
sized perpetual change and conflict as the basic attribute of life.
According to Parmenides, this One is undivided yet also limited in that
it is contained in the form of a perfect sphere. Anything else that seems
real is denied and defies the logic of the One. Thus, Parmenides is the
first Greek philosopher to posit an unbridgeable gulf between this
reality and the material world of appearance, “this strange universal
mirage” (Armstrong, p. 14). Some of his successors attempted to
bridge this gap by having the One evolve into the many, yet remaining
undivided and unchanged. It remained for Plato, however, to develop
the more complete philosophical system to account for this “descent.”

46
 Plato

Plato

Plato’s teacher was Socrates (469-399), whose principal focus was

not metaphysics—which was left to his illustrious pupil and immedi-
ate successor—but rather ethics or, more specifically, the pursuit of
virtue or the Good. Socrates’ Good was a universal principle, of an
unchanging and non-relative nature, and was in sharp contrast to the
teachings of his Sophist opponents. One finds this voice of Socrates,
incidentally, echoed in A Course in Miracles, where the first law of
chaos (the ego’s laws as opposed to the Holy Spirit’s principles of
miracles) states that truth is relative (T-23.II.2:1).
Plato (427-348), who was twenty-eight when his teacher was
killed, was never able to forgive the rulers and citizens of Athens for
Socrates’ death through poisoning. This unforgiveness found its way
into his philosophy of the State, and the depiction of the world as con-
taining evil seeds which must be expunged. A basic and unresolved di-
chotomy permeated Plato’s work: On the one hand he saw the cosmos
as good, if not divine, while on the other hand he could never escape a
deep distrust and even hatred for the world of the body. We shall ex-
plore this in greater depth as we continue our discussion, for it be-
comes central to our book’s theme of the philosophical and theological
attempt to integrate reality and illusion, spirit and the flesh.
Pythagoras’ teachings of the eternal reality beyond our senses, and
the corporeal imprisonment of the divine soul, were a major influence
on Plato. Plato taught that there was a world of Ideas or Forms, perfect
and eternal, that transcended the phenomenal world we perceive, and
which Ideas are totally independent of the individual minds that seek
to know them. These unchanging Ideas are in sharp distinction to what
we perceive here in the sensory and imperfect world, where no true
knowledge can ever be attained. Moreover, the things of the visible
world are the mere reflections or shadows of these perfect Ideas.
There is thus a universal Idea to correspond to every category we
perceive here, both material (a bed, tree, etc.) and abstract (justice,
virtue, etc.). As Socrates is asked in the Parmenides:
Have you yourself drawn this distinction you speak of and sepa-
rated apart on the one side forms [abstract ideas] themselves and on
the other the [material] things that share in them? Do you believe
that there is such a thing as likeness itself apart from the likeness

47
Chapter 2 THE PLATONIC TRADITION

that we possess, and so on with unity and plurality and all the
terms …? Is there, for example, a form [idea] of rightness or of
beauty or of goodness, and of all such things? … And again, a form
[idea] of man, apart from ourselves and all other men like us … . Or
a form [idea] of fire or of water? … or mud or dirt or any other triv-
ial and undignified objects? … Then each thing that partakes re-
ceives as its share either the form [idea] as a whole or a part of it?
(Parm. 130b-c; 131a)
The collective grouping of these perfect Ideas (or Forms) is a radiant
world, resplendent with beauty.
The source of the Ideas is the Good. Though Plato employs differ-
ent metaphors that we shall examine later, he nowhere truly defines the
Good in any writings that are extant. Near the end of his life, however,
it is reported that he delivered a lecture at his Academy in which he
stated that the “Good is One,” a principle that certainly found its way
into the teachings of the great third-century Neoplatonist Plotinus.
The Good is an absolutely transcendent Idea. It is the cause of the
world of Ideas, yet is not the cause nor the sustainer of the world of the
senses, which for Plato was always there, a given that could never be
explained. It is the soul, as it were, that is the mediator between these
two worlds. The soul, seen in three descending parts—reason, emo-
tion, and the appetites—must be trained to look past the appearance of
the material forms in this world to the perfect Ideas beyond. The soul
is immortal and divine, has pre-existed physical birth, and will survive
beyond the grave. It must be freed from its attachment to the world of
the senses, and sex and death were seen by Plato to be the greatest hin-
drances to the soul’s release as it strives to be reunited with the Good.
Plato actually conceived of two aspects to the phenomenal world, the
world of the heavenly bodies which he considered to be divine, fixed
and unchanging, in great distinction to the lower world of the body
which is the seat of change and evil. The soul must become free of this
lower attachment, and make its home in the greater world of the cos-
mos, a divine and living creature.
The pre-existent soul, as we have seen, is totally alien to the
shadow world below and, in fact, can never be known through the
senses belonging to this lower world, for there is nothing in the world
of the body that is like its nature. Incidentally, how the soul became
embodied here is never explained by Plato, and there is nothing in his
metaphysics, contrary to his Pythagorean forerunners (or Christian

48
 Plato

and Gnostic successors) that deals with this. It is simply a fact to be

reckoned with. The divine world, therefore, can only be known by the
soul through a process of remembering (anamnesis) its true home
while it is imprisoned here. It is this remembering that is the function
of reason and education, helping the soul recall its divine origins by
recognizing those aspects of this world that “participate” in the divine
Ideas. This is discussed in great detail in the sections on education in
the Republic. What is important here, especially in contrast to Plato’s
pupil Aristotle, is that the sensory apparatus, despite appearances, is
not really involved in attaining knowledge of the Good. The senses are
but incidental to the mind’s proper perception of the reality that is
beyond the senses. Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave, which depicts
this process, will be discussed in Part II-A.
This bridge between the two worlds—the world of Ideas and that of
sense-perception—was of primary concern for Plato. Based on Py-
thagorean models, his thinking evolved to the belief that the soul was
the prime mover of the material universe and was responsible for
bringing its warring and discordant parts into harmony with the higher
world of the Ideas. This can be most clearly seen in the cosmogony of
the Timaeus, one of Plato’s last dialogues.
The key figure in the making of the visible world is the Demiurge,
who fashions it out of the pre-existing matter, based on the perfect
Ideas. The Demiurge is also called a god, maker, and craftsman, and it
is this last designation that most approximates his function. He con-
templates the Ideas, and then with the skill of a consummate craftsman
fashions the physical universe from the raw material. His is a purely
benevolent work, based on a wholly generous personality. As pointed
out by Armstrong, this Craftsman falls midway between the jealous
unpleasantness of the Greek pantheon and the perfect love and good-
ness of the Judaeo-Christian Creator. This view of the divine was thus
an important preparation for the Greeks’ acceptance of the Christian
message when it was presented to them four centuries later.
It is important for our later discussion of the Gnostic cosmogonies
to see that the Craftsman, though good and just, is not equated by
Plato with the ultimate Good, in which we might otherwise recognize
Plato’s God. It is from the Good that the world of Ideas emanates
which, in turn, is “copied” by the Craftsman when he makes the cos-
mos with the material substance. Thus the Demiurge-Craftsman, as in
the Valentinian Gnostic system, is the creator of “heaven and earth.”

49
Chapter 2 THE PLATONIC TRADITION

However, he is not the ultimate divine principle, for he is obviously

“limited” by the pattern of the Ideas and by his material.
Of special interest is Plato’s understanding of the origins of evil
and sickness in the world. Clearly, they cannot have their source in the
pattern of Ideas which are divine and perfect, or in the Craftsman him-
self, since he is only good. Rather, evil originates in the imperfect ma-
terial itself, which can be defined as all that is irrational in the
universe. Matter, which is constantly changing and indefinite, is found
within a space—the Receptacle or Nurse—which is continually
thrown about by the constant chaotic motion of what is within it, and
which is the task of the Craftsman to harness and put under control.
While Plato certainly placed responsibility for the presence of evil
with matter, he never specifically identified evil with material sub-
stance. Rather, matter was disordered and thus in opposition to the
order of the Good. From this disorder evil arose. This was in contrast
to Pythagoras who did see matter as evil, expressing the Persian dual-
ism that was such an important influence on certain Gnostic schools.
It was this dualistic thought that held matter to be the embodiment of
evil that found its way into much of Middle Platonism.
Plato hardly shared the later Gnostic denigration of the cosmos;
quite to the contrary. Though making a clear distinction between the
Good, the world of Ideas, and the visible world—the latter being the
place of evil and imperfection—he nonetheless saw the cosmos as
good, as it was the product of the Demiurge, the good god. On the
other hand, Plato also saw the embodied soul as entrapped in the body
and so, foreshadowing Freud, he viewed life as a rehearsal for death.
In the Phaedo Plato writes that
the body provides us with innumerable distractions in the pursuit of
our necessary sustenance, and any diseases which attack us hinder
our quest for reality. … We are in fact convinced that if we are ever
to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body … .
[and] avoid as much as we can all contact and association with the
body. … keeping ourselves uncontaminated by the follies of the
body … . the corporeal is heavy, oppressive, earthly, and visible. So
the soul which is tainted by its presence is weighed down and
dragged back into the visible world … (Phaedo 66b-d; 67a; 81c).
Yet Plato would not have shared Freud’s pessimistic outlook, for he
urged people to transcend the phenomenal world and attain the vision
of the Good.

50
 Aristotle

His denigration of the body, however, did not lead Plato to advocate
a life of physical purity or extreme asceticism, as did the earlier Orphics
and Pythagoreans, or Neoplatonists such as Plotinus. Moreover, Plato
emphasized, especially in the Republic, that the philosopher-king had
as his sacred duty to live in the world, guiding it through reason to the
contemplation of the world of Ideas. This guidance was more a form of
persuasion, just as the Craftsman “persuaded” the unstable matter to
enter into the best form possible. This persuasion comes through edu-
cation, guiding, and controlling the baser emotions and lusts. On the in-
dividual level we again see a foreshadowing of Freud’s system, wherein
the ego had the responsibility of harnessing the raw drives of the id.
In summary, we may say that Plato did not recognize the inconsis-
tency of his position in having the Demiurge create both the higher
world of the cosmos, seen as divine and therefore real, as well as the
lower and inferior world of the body. Thus, he never truly resolved the
problem of reconciling the perfect, divine cosmos with the imperfect,
visible world.

Aristotle

We continue our discussion with the towering figure of Aristotle

(384-322 B.C.), with apologies for the otherwise scanty space given to
this philosophic giant, the intellectual co-equal of his teacher Plato.
Contrasting Plato with Aristotle helps to clarify still further the essen-
tial Platonic teaching. It was these differences with Plato, not to men-
tion with those who succeeded him as head of the Academy, that led
Aristotle eventually to found his own school called the Lyceum. While
Aristotle certainly did not disagree with his master regarding the pres-
ence of objective universals, he most definitely differed in seeing the
relation between these and the specifics of the visible world.
We have seen that Plato’s unchanging, perfect, and eternal imma-
terial Ideas were independent and transcendent of the things of the vis-
ible world. These Ideas—all that are truly real—were the only beings
capable of being known, and were in sharp distinction to the changing
material world which cannot truly be known, for its contents are but
reflections of what is real. On the other hand, Aristotle taught that the
objects of our physical senses were very real, and through their careful
and systematic study one would be led to the unchanging universals.

51
Chapter 2 THE PLATONIC TRADITION

These latter are seen therefore as characteristics of, and immanent in,
the visible and real objects. They do not exist separately in a transcen-
dent world.
It is because of this difference that Christians made such a distinc-
tion between the two philosophers, seeing Aristotle, understood later
through the great theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, as theologically
materialistic, while Plato, mediated through the Neoplatonic Greek
theologians such as St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Basil, and the pseudo-
Dionysius, as more mystical and spiritual. While it is true that later in
his life Plato moved closer to serious study of the phenomenal world,
understanding it as mediated through the soul, he nonetheless empha-
sized the “other-worldly,” with an accompanying de-emphasis on the
body. This sowed the ascetic seeds for seeing the body as the locus of
sin and source of evil. For Aristotle, on the other hand, the spiritual
principle was, again, immanent in matter.
These two philosophers likewise differed in their understanding of
the soul. For Aristotle the soul was inextricably joined with the body,
as it was the soul that established and maintained the body’s life. For
Plato, as we have seen, the soul was imprisoned in the body, and its
pure state, which alone was real, was outside the corporeal. Thus,
again, Aristotle opposed Plato’s teaching that truth can only be known
through the apprehension of the transcendent Ideas, and advocated in-
stead the search for knowledge and truth in this physical world by sci-
entific study mediated through our physical senses. He believed that
the specifics of our world were real, and were hardly the shadow forms
of Plato’s transcending and abstract reality.
The only immaterial substance Aristotle recognized was the Mind,
which he called the Unmoved Mover. This notion metamorphosed
through the later Christian centuries into God, the uncreated Creator.
This Divine Mind, unknowing of anything that is not itself, and eter-
nally active within itself—a single thought (“thinking upon thinking”)
—nonetheless became an object of love from the heavenly spheres,
which initiated the motion that parallels the world’s being. Armstrong
has summarized this process:
How, then, does this remote and self-contained being act as the
universal first cause of motion? Not by any action on its part, for
this would detract from its perfect self-sufficiency. There is, there-
fore, according to Aristotle, only one way in which it can cause
motion, and that is by being an object of love or desire. The first

52
 Middle Platonism – Philo

heaven, the sphere of the fixed stars, which seems to be thought of

as itself alive and intelligent, desires the absolute perfection of the
Unmoved Mover and by reason of its desire imitates that perfec-
tion as best it can by moving everlastingly with the most perfect of
all motions, that in a circle (Armstrong, pp. 88-89).
Thus we find in Aristotle a positive evaluation of the striving for the
perfection of the Divine—“the most perfect possible actuality”—that
in Valentinian thought became Sophia’s error, from which arose all de-
ficiency including the physical universe. The Aristotelian process be-
comes complicated, however, by the fact that the differing motions of
the sun, moon, and the planets led him eventually to postulate fifty-
five (!) Unmoved Movers to account for these differences. Though
Aristotle never worked this hierarchy through, it would certainly seem
from his overall teleology that he would have seen these other Movers
as subordinate to or proceeding from the original Unmoved Mover. We
find here, as in Plato, the positive evaluation of the divine cosmos—
“cosmic piety”—that also found prominence, in sharp distinction from
the cosmic denigration of the Gnostics, in Judaeo-Christian thought.

Middle Platonism – Philo

Middle Platonism, whose dates span the first century B.C. to the
second century A.D., is the term given to the revival of interest in the
philosophy of Plato. It played an important role in the evolution of
Christian theology in its early centuries, not to mention its strong in-
fluence on Gnostic thought, especially as it evolved in the first and sec-
ond centuries in Alexandria. While Middle Platonism is not a coherent
philosophical system, some basic notions can be isolated that are im-
portant for the development of our theme of reconciling the perfect
spiritual reality with the world of materiality.
One of the most important elaborations and extensions of Middle
Platonic thought was the placing of the divine Ideas within the Mind
of God, or the Good, whereas Plato saw these Ideas as outside the
Good, though coeternal with it. The Middle Platonic Ideas were thus
conceptualized as Thoughts within this Mind. We are not far removed
here, incidentally, from A Course in Miracles, which sees God’s
Thoughts as part of His Mind, never having left their Source: The Sons
of God—His Thoughts—are Ideas in the Mind of God.

53
Chapter 2 THE PLATONIC TRADITION

Like Plato, the Platonists of this period maintained the doctrine of

the remoteness of this Mind, or Supreme Principle, from the visible
world, identifying Mind with Plato’s Good. The Mind is transcendent,
and has no direct contact with the phenomenal universe, though the
Middle Platonists did posit intermediate beings such as the stars and
daemons, some of whom were the rulers of the physical universe. In
these philosophers, as in Plato, the cosmos or world was considered to
be a living being.
For the Middle Platonists, the transcendent Mind, so removed from
this world, made the apprehension of such Mind practically an impos-
sibility. Their best hope was to have a fleeting awareness or intuition
of this Divine Presence. This is in marked contrast to those who took
a more “optimistic” view of Plato, and believed that knowledge of the
Good was attainable by those who applied themselves to its pursuit
through the proper use of reason. The Middle Platonist belief that only
indirect knowledge of God was possible was a primitive forerunner of
what has come to be known in the mystical tradition as the “negative
theology.” This holds that God cannot be truly known by the senses or
conceptual thinking, but only through direct mystical experience,
which comes through negating all that He is not. In the East, this is ex-
pressed by the Hindu notion of going to all things in the phenomenal
universe saying, “Neti, Neti”—“God is not this, not that.” What then
remains is God Himself. We shall return to the “negative theology” in
Part II.
The leading Middle Platonist was Philo of Alexandria, the first-
century Jewish philosopher (ca. 20 B.C.–ca. A.D. 50) who sought to
reconcile biblical and Platonic thought. Following closely this
Platonic tradition, Philo contrasted the immaterial soul with the mate-
rial body, continually urging his readers to see the soul’s purpose as
separate from the body. Like Plato, however, he did not end up advo-
cating asceticism, but a more moderate approach to life in the body, not
too different, as we shall see, from the attitude found in A Course in
Miracles. Philo thus advised involvement in the world rather than
flight from it, and his ideal was the true philosophers (Plato’s
philosopher-kings) who would be able to transcend the imprisonment
of the soul in the body.
Philo shared Plato’s teaching that mind (nous) is divine, and not in-
herently part of this lower material world. Nous actually is a part of
God and can thus transcend this world through the practice of reason.

54
 Origen

Inheriting the Platonic tradition that God or the Divine Principle was
remote from the phenomenal world, Philo was faced with the dilemma
of reconciling this transcendent God with the biblical Creator who not
only created the visible world, but remained involved with it. Middle
Platonism offered Philo his solution through its doctrine of intermedi-
ary powers: The God who rules the world has created it only through
divine powers lower than Himself. Thus, by removing God from being
the direct source of the world, Philo was able to retain the integrity of
the Divinity’s transcendence and yet maintain the biblical view. He did
this, incidentally, by allegorically interpreting the Old Testament, a
practice enlarged on by the later Alexandrians Clement and Origen.
While Philo is never strictly consistent in his presentation of the di-
vine intermediaries, he does speak often of the Logos, which is usually
identified with the Platonic Ideas: the pattern that God subsequently
uses for creation. The Logos then is the divine instrument through
which the world is created, as well as later serving as the intermediary
through which the purified soul returns to its Creator. The world was
created by God out of pre-existent matter, as was anticipated by Plato,
although Philo never clarifies the issue of where the matter came from.
It does seem clear, however, that matter was not directly created by
God, for the Platonic Philo could never have God directly create any-
thing that was inherently disorderly and chaotic, as was the state of
matter before it was molded by the Logos. Thus, Philo remains consis-
tent in his Platonic denigration of matter, albeit at times subtly so.
With Philo we have come to the beginnings of the Christian era and
the gradual emergence of Gnosticism, which we briefly surveyed in the
preceding chapter. We shall leave for the next chapter a discussion of
the possible Gnostic and Platonic influences on the New Testament and
early patristic writings, and continue our survey with the Neoplatonists.

Origen

We skip two centuries now to the figure of Origen (A.D. 185-254)

a Christian theologian who, like Philo, attempted to integrate Platonic
thought with his faith. Interestingly enough, even though he attacked
the Gnostics, Origen’s thinking did not escape the anti-cosmic Gnostic
influence of his native Alexandria. Always a devout Christian, he
nonetheless avidly pursued studies in Greek philosophy, and evidently

55
Chapter 2 THE PLATONIC TRADITION

studied under Plotinus’ teacher Ammonius Saccas. From his youth

Origen was recognized as a brilliant scholar, and a reference by
Porphyry indicates that Origen even attended a lecture of Plotinus,
who felt he had nothing to teach the brilliant Alexandrian (in Plotinus,
Vol. I, pp. 41, 43).
Origen’s Christian-Platonist integration made him a controversial
teacher and preacher during his lifetime, and such controversy contin-
ued long after his death. Epiphanius, the fourth-century Church Father,
spoke of him as “the visionary who far preferred to introduce into life
the products of fantasy than the truth” (in Nigg, p. 55), while Abbot
Pachomius “testified before the face of God that every man who reads
Origen and accepts his writings will fall into the pits of hell,” and he
advised his monks to take no notice of the “foolish babble” of this blas-
phemer and apostate (in Nigg, p. 56). Such attack culminated after
Origen’s death in his denunciation by the sixth-century Second Council
led by Justinian. His influence, nonetheless remained strong, especially
in the more mystical Greek Fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa. Always
ascetic in his practice and teachings, Origen, according to the third-
century Eusebius, castrated himself “both to fulfill the Savior’s saying
(Mt 19:12), and also that he might prevent all suspicion of shameful
slander on the part of unbelievers” (in Origen, p. 3). Though a prolific
writer, especially in his biblical commentaries, few of Origen’s writ-
ings survived the Church’s “book-burning” wars against heresy.
Origen’s theology begins, in true Neoplatonic fashion, with an ab-
solutely transcendent and unified God who is beyond time and space.
God is immaterial, and Origen emphatically refutes the contention that
Heaven is a place where God resides as a body:
… no one should allow that God is in a corporeal place, since it
would follow that He is Himself corporeal. … and He will be
thought to be divisible, material, and corruptible (On Prayer
XXIII.3).
God therefore must not be thought to be any kind of body, nor to
exist in a body, but to be a simple intellectual [i.e., spiritual]
existence … (On First Principles I.1.6).
A corporeal God was a scandalous thought for any Platonist, and the
immateriality of the Neoplatonic God was extremely influential, as we
shall see below, in Augustine’s liberation from the Manicheans, whose
God lacked the abstract purity found in Neoplatonism.

56
 Origen

Origen’s theology of the Trinity is an example of Subordinationism,

the downward procession of the Son from the Father, and the Holy
Spirit from the Son. The Son is basically equated with Plato’s Demiurge
(with whom Plotinus later equated the Mind), through whom creation
of the “rational beings” occurs, a process antedating the onset of time
and matter. These “beings” constitute our true Identity as a spiritual
Self. Jesus likewise is a rational being, but one who does not fall. Thus
he becomes united with the Son (or Logos) who, for Origen, is thus the
Mediator between God and creation. Though bound by Catholic doc-
trine to assert the unity of Father and Son, the Platonist in Origen none-
theless upheld the absolute distinctness of the Father, whose Son is
subordinate to Him. Only the Father, according to Origen, has His power
extending to all created things, while the power of the Son and the Holy
Spirit is limited to rational beings. In his Introduction to Origen, Greer
summarizes:
Thus, the Father is archetype with respect to the Word, while the
Word is archetype with respect to the rational beings. In this way
life and knowledge are radiated from the Father through the Son
(and in the Holy Spirit) to the rational beings (Origen, p. 11).
It was this notion, among others, that led to Origen’s condemnation by
the Church. Origen’s teaching of the Son’s subordination to the Father
is reflected in the following quotes from his discussion of prayer and
the Agony in the Garden, where Jesus is portrayed as wishing to avoid
his impending crucifixion, yet ends up submitting his will to that of the
Father:
Now if we are to take prayer in its most exact sense, perhaps we
should not pray to anyone begotten, not even to Christ Himself, but
only to the God and Father of all, to whom even our Savior Himself
prayed … (On Prayer XV.1).
But this was not at all the Father’s will, which was wiser than the
Son’s will, since He was ordering events by a way and an order be-
yond what the Savior saw (Martyrdom XXIX).
In his On First Principles Origen writes:
But if the Father comprehends all things, and the Son is among all
things, it is clear that he comprehends the Son. But someone will
inquire whether it is true that God is known by himself in the
same way in which he is known by the only-begotten, and he will

57
Chapter 2 THE PLATONIC TRADITION

decide that the saying, “My Father who sent me is greater than I”
(Jn 14:28,24), is true in all respects; so that even in his knowl-
edge the Father is greater, and is known more clearly and per-
fectly by himself than by the Son (First Princ. IV.4.8).
Though the rational beings share in God’s immateriality, they none-
theless are distinct from Him by their capacity for change. Herein lies
the capacity for turning away from God and the Son, Origen’s version
of original sin. As with all other theologies, including A Course in
Miracles, Origen does not attempt any true explanation as to how or
why this occurred, other than to suggest that its cause was boredom
and negligence. Such turning away, however, occurred while the ra-
tional beings, or souls, were still disembodied. The physical world
was not created until after the fall, when it became necessary as a
place where the fallen souls could do penance and make restitution
for their sinfulness.
These fallen souls (formerly the rational beings) were then
“assigned” to bodies, each according to their state of sin. Even the
heavenly bodies were part of this plan, for they too contained sinful
spirits. The more dignified bodies—such as the sun, planets, and
human beings—belonged to those who had fallen less than those
found in “lower” forms of animal and vegetable life. Origen thus can
be placed among the Gnostic, Platonic, and Christian views: He did
not see the world as evil in itself, as did the Gnostics; but he also did
not hold that the world was necessary, as did Plotinus, nor inherently
good, as did the orthodox Church. In Armstrong’s words, Origen be-
lieved that “it would have been much better if there had never been any
need for it” (Armstrong, p. 173); for him, rather, the world was a class-
room in which the fallen souls learn (Plato would have said remember)
their true nature and origin.
This notion of souls learning in the classroom of the world, grade
by grade, expresses Origen’s belief in reincarnation, similar to Plato,
wherein souls continue to come into different bodily forms until able
to undo their sinful and corporeal natures. Finally, every soul com-
pletes the process, and is restored to the original purity and perfection
of spirit. Origen made no exceptions to this process of return, and so
hell had no place in his system. Here, too, he differs from the Gnostics,
who taught that only the true believers—the Gnostics—would be
restored to their home in the Pleroma. The remainder would die in the
final conflagration.

58
 Plotinus

Being Christian, Origen believed that redemption is brought about

only through Jesus and the Church. However, the follower of Jesus
must facilitate the process by a life of ascetic withdrawal from the
material world and the body—“the earthly tent that hinders us, weighs
down the soul, and burdens the thoughtful mind” (Martyrdom XLVII)
—and contemplate the truths of the intelligible (spiritual, non-material)
world. Martyrdom specifically was encouraged by Origen, who himself
suffered torture under the Emperor Decius, not to mention jealousy and
condemnation by Church authorities.

Plotinus

In Plotinus we have, after Plato, the most important non-Gnostic

figure in our book. He lived in the third century A.D., and was most ret-
icent about his personal life. Porphyry, his pupil and editor, wrote that
Plotinus
seemed ashamed of being in the body. As a result of this state of
mind he could never bear to talk about his race or his parents or his
native country (in Plotinus, Vol. I, p. 3).
Nonetheless, we know that Plotinus was born in Egypt, spent his for-
mative intellectual years in Alexandria, and the last twenty-five years
in Rome, where he founded his own school. We can see in Plotinus an
almost logical progression of Platonic thought, as it developed from
the beginnings of the Academy through the Middle Platonism of Philo
to Plotinus’ high level of Neoplatonism.
Plotinus is our only true non-Christian critic of the Gnostics from
the early centuries A.D., though paradoxically he was within the same
Platonic tradition that inspired the great Gnostic teachers. He is cer-
tainly the foremost Neoplatonist, and is perhaps the clearest expres-
sion of the dilemma that has faced all Platonists from the time of
Plato’s Academy. This dilemma strikes at the heart of this book, for
Plotinus presents a dualistic system which on the one hand clearly den-
igrates the body as the virtual embodiment of evil, while on the other
hand venerates the “higher” cosmos—the celestial spheres—as being
divine. Plotinus, ascetic in his teaching and personal practice (in clear
distinction to Plato and Philo, for example), was never truly able to

59
Chapter 2 THE PLATONIC TRADITION

bridge the gap between the two worlds of the spiritual and material.
Armstrong summarized the situation:
And we can sometimes detect a conflict … between that attitude of
respect for the visible world … and the sharply other-worldly Py-
thagorean temper … which regards embodiment as an evil, a fall-
ing below the highest … (Armstrong, p. 195).
The One, the First Principle of Plotinus’ Divine Triad (One, Mind,
Soul)—best understood vertically, proceeding in descending order—
stands absolutely transcendent of anything else. It thus comes closest to
the apophatic, indescribable God of the great Christian mystics, most
especially seen in the early Greek Fathers and later in Meister Eckhart.
This One is total unity, absolutely perfect and good, what Eckhart
termed the Godhead beyond God. This total transcendence of the One
is unique in Greek philosophical thought. Interestingly, for the orthodox
Church has always considered Plotinus to be a pagan, this apophaticism
brings Plotinus very close to the more mystical Christian concepts of the
God who is the Source of all Being, yet totally different and Other from
what has emanated from Him. While the Middle Platonists also spoke
of this Principle as transcendent, they nonetheless identified it with the
Mind, influenced by Aristotle’s notion of the Unmoved Mover.
Plotinus, on the other hand, understood the One as non-dualistic, be-
yond all thought and, in fact, beyond all Being. The One is the Source
of the Divine Mind, and subsequently, therefore, of the world of Ideas.
It is from the One, the true and unadulterated reality, that all being
is sequentially derived: the Divine Mind (the Nous), the Soul, and fi-
nally the material world. This process of emanation is inevitable, given
the nature of Plotinus’ spiritual reality, and is a procession that is eter-
nal and beyond time. However, as we shall see in later chapters, our
words, rooted in a temporal and spatial framework, cannot but convey
a sequential process. Plotinus wrote:
Things that are said to have come into being did not just come into
being (at a particular moment) but always were and always will be
in process of becoming … (Enn. II.9.3).
To describe this process of necessary emanation, Plotinus uses the
metaphor of the radiation of light from the sun, a metaphor which he
derived from Plato.

60
 Plotinus

The Divine Mind for Plotinus is the counterpart for Plato’s world of
Ideas. It is the One-Being, also known as the All (conceptually distinct
from the One, which is beyond all being). Within it is the perfect unity
of Mind and thought. The Divine Mind is thus the highest level of be-
ing, and everything below it in the visible world is only a shadow of
this reality. As with Plato, the Soul is the mediating principle between
the higher, spiritual world of the Ideas, and the lower, visible world.
Plotinus’ Soul has essentially two aspects: the higher and lower.
The lower soul emanates from the higher, as the higher Soul has ema-
nated from the Mind, paralleling the emanation of the Mind from the
One. This higher or Universal Soul is thus transcendent. Its immanent
aspect is the lower soul, which is confined to the body according to the
laws of the Universal Soul. The purpose of the lower soul’s living in
the body, once it has fallen, is to be in a spirit of contemplation beyond
the cares and concerns of the material world, reuniting with the higher
or Universal Soul, and eventually to be restored to Its place in the
Divine Mind. Plotinus taught that when the soul descends into the
body, part of Itself remains in the Mind, and thus the lower soul re-
unites with Itself. In Part II-A we shall see this unique idea expressed
in the Gnostic notion of the Redeemed Redeemer, part of whose self
becomes trapped in the body, requiring its own redemption. Rarely, the
Soul may pass beyond the Mind and enjoy the ecstatic union with the
One, and this is possible while the lower soul still remains in the body.
Plotinus conceived of this lower soul’s activity as being within a
dream; only the higher Soul and, of course, the Divine Mind, is awake.
The emanations from the sleeping soul are “dead,” unable within
themselves truly to contemplate the higher realms of being. They are
the end-product of the process of emanation and are the lowest on the
ladder of being. This is matter as manifest in bodies. Similar to Plato,
Plotinus saw matter as a formless darkness, awaiting the activation of
the Soul. This darkness is inherently negative, resistant within itself to
any change. Thus, Plotinus considered matter to be the source of evil
and, in some passages, he describes it as being evil itself.
However, while the basic stuff of matter is evil, the cosmos is most
definitely not. Plotinus did concede that the material universe is the
lowest form of being, yet he believed that it is nonetheless the best of
all possible material universes, and does in fact possess a soul. We shall
explore this in Part II-A when we consider Plotinus’ diatribe against the
Gnostics on the issue of the divinity vs. evilness of the cosmos.

61
Chapter 2 THE PLATONIC TRADITION

Again, we can denote in Plotinus the basic tension we have al-

ready observed. On the one hand, he shared Plato’s veneration for the
cosmos, as seen for example in the Athenian’s Timaeus, while on the
other hand, Plotinus shared the Pythagorean notion, as did Plato in
the Phaedo, that being in a body constituted a fall, a descent into evil.
Even though Plotinus never clearly articulated that life in a human
body was a sin, it was very much a part of his thinking in his later
years that the soul found itself in an infra-human body (animal or
vegetable) because of its own sinful nature. Embodiment thus be-
came for Plotinus a necessary evil, and one which the truly spiritual
would do their best to escape through a life of ascetic detachment
from the materiality of the visible world, identifying more and more
with the noble being of the intelligible world of the Ideas. Thus, a life
of suffering and conflict was inevitable, and it was the fate of the
enlightened person—the Sage—to struggle through this inherent ten-
sion of physical existence and attain the truth of the spiritual world
beyond it.

St. Augustine

The final Neoplatonist to be discussed is St. Augustine, Bishop of

Hippo (A.D. 354-430). Augustine is of particular interest for this study,
not only for his contribution to our history of the Platonic paradox, but
because of his early association and subsequent break with Manicheism.
Sometimes known as the Christian Plato he is, along with Origen, the
most important example of an orthodox Christian’s attempt to integrate
Christian doctrine with the Platonic tradition. It was, in fact, to his read-
ing of the Neoplatonists, especially Plotinus with his emphasis on the
absolute non-materiality of God, that Augustine attributed his deliver-
ance from the evils of Manichean thought:
… after reading those books of the Platonists and being instructed
by them to search for incorporeal truth, I clearly saw your [God]
invisible things which “are understood by the things that are
made.” … I was made certain that you exist, that you are
infinite … that you are truly he who is always the same, with no
varied parts and changing movements, and that all other things are
from you … (Conf. 7.20.26).

62
 St. Augustine

In the City of God Augustine favorably compared the Platonists (Ideal-

ists) to the Stoics, Epicureans, and other materialists who
having their mind enslaved to their body, supposed the principles of
all things to be material … . [they must] give place to the Platonic
philosophers who have recognized the true God as the author of all
things, the source of the light of truth, and the bountiful bestower of
all blessedness (City of God 8.5-6).
However, when he discovered the Bible, Augustine keenly felt the
absence in pagan thought of the incarnation and redemptive work of
Jesus. Nonetheless, he remained positive in his estimation of Plotinus,
and compared his and the Neoplatonists’ thought to the gold that the
children of Israel were allowed to take out of Egypt on their way to the
Promised Land.
I had come to you [God] from among the Gentiles, and I set my
mind on that gold which you willed your people to take out of
Egypt, for it was yours wherever it was (Conf. 7.9.15).
We will specifically focus on Augustine’s understanding of the rela-
tionship between God and the world, as well as the nature of the soul
and the body.
As with Plotinus’ One, Augustine’s God is beyond all attempts at
description. Pure and unlimited Being, He is yet beyond being as we
know it in the world. However, the Augustinian God includes not only
Plotinus’ One, but also his “Second Person” or Divine Mind, for within
God dwell all the eternal principles, roughly equivalent to the Platonic
Ideas. These Ideas are totally immutable and share God’s immutability.
Thus, while insisting on the absolute unity of God, Augustine nonethe-
less does not assume for God the extreme undifferentiated unity of
Plotinus’ One, which transcends even the divine Ideas.
Crucial to the distinction between the Plotinian and Augustinian
First Principle (the Godhead) is that despite his insistence on God as
pure Being, Augustine nonetheless also insisted on the personal love of
God, a characteristic impossible for the totally impersonal One. This
becomes directly relevant in discussing the origin of the material uni-
verse. For Plotinus, as we have seen, the cosmos is a natural result of
the One’s activity of emanation, an act that is inevitable because of what
the One is. Augustine, however, does not see the world as inevitable at

63
Chapter 2 THE PLATONIC TRADITION

all, but rather as having come into being as a direct result of God’s gen-
erosity towards His creations, expressed through the divine love of His
Son. Clearly, however, the Christian Augustine is very much in agree-
ment with the non-Christian Plotinus in affirming the essential good-
ness of the cosmos, and in sharp disagreement with the Gnostic cosmic
antipathy:
Some people read books in order to find God. Yet there is a great
book, the very appearance of created things. Look above you; look
below you! Note it; read it! God, whom you wish to find, never
wrote that book with ink. Instead, He set before your eyes the
things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?
Why, heaven and earth cry out to you: “God made me!” (Sermon,
in Bourke, p. 123).
God created the specific things of the material universe by implant-
ing the Ideas on the already planted seeds in matter:
Lord, you made the world out of formless matter … . Out of this
unordered and invisible earth, out of this formlessness, out of this
almost-nothing, you made all things, of which this mutable world
stands firm (Conf. 12.8.8).
Moreover, matter is inherently good because it comes from God, as
must be everything in the universe. Evil, on the other hand, is not an
inherent property of matter, as is expressed, albeit at times indirectly,
in Platonic thought. Rather, evil is defined by Augustine as the absence
of good, which should be present in all creation. Moral evil, however,
is an imperfection introduced by the free choice of the soul. It is this
proclivity towards evil or sin that must be transcended by humanity if
it is to remember its Source. Thus, Augustine, as did his Platonic pre-
decessors, urged the transcendence of the physical world, not only of
the evil tendencies of the soul.
Creation thus is the outpouring of God’s love through Jesus, and
His love can be truly known only through the Trinity—Father, Son,
Holy Spirit—three Persons in one. Further, this knowledge of the
Trinity can come only through the grace of God, one of the pillars of
Augustinian teaching. The doctrine of grace emphasized the insuffi-
ciency and helplessness of fallen humanity to redeem itself, a belief
that Augustine strongly upheld against the Pelagian “heresy” that God
is generally not necessary for salvation. Before the fall, for Augustine,
individuals were as God created them to be. After Adam’s sin this

64
 St. Augustine

innate perfection became thoroughly corrupted, and could only be un-

done through the active love and grace of God and the redemptive
work of Jesus, His Son.
Augustine’s position is in marked contrast to the Plotinian insis-
tence of knowing the One only through the negation and transcen-
dence of all else, including the Divine Mind. Plotinus shared the basic
belief of Greek antiquity that the person of reason, through the consis-
tent pursuit of virtue and a life of purity, could in fact attain the vision
of truth and even ascend to the experience of the ultimate union with
the One. In one passage, which can perhaps be taken as an allusion to
Christianity (his only one), Plotinus criticizes the notion of vicarious
salvation wherein Jesus is sent by God to die so that humanity is saved:
But it is not lawful for those who have become wicked to demand
others to be their saviors and to sacrifice themselves in answer to
their prayers, nor furthermore, to require gods to direct their af-
fairs in detail, laying aside their own life … (Enn. III.2.9).
The Gnostics in this respect are closer to the traditional Christian
stance than the Greek philosophers, since they emphasized the neces-
sity for reception of the divine gnosis (revelation) for redemption from
the material world.
The soul for Augustine, as for his Platonic predecessors, is essen-
tially independent of the body. However, unlike the soul for Plato and
Plotinus, the Augustinian soul is not divine, although it is defined as a
spiritual substance, a “trace” of the reality of the Idea, an image of God.
It is an active spiritual essence that is used by the Creator for the ruling
of the body, yet in its essence is totally unaffected by the body. The
body is used as the means whereby the soul can correct its fallen nature
and return to the vision and experience of God: “ … is it not so fash-
ioned, as to indicate that it was made for the service of a reasonable
soul?” (City of God 22.24). Nonetheless, the body is perceived as an
impediment to spiritual progress, as is seen in this passage reminiscent
of Plato’s Phaedo:
I was borne up to you [God] by your beauty, but soon I was borne
down from you by my own weight … . This weight was carnal
custom. … “For the corruptible body is a load upon the soul, and
the earthly habitation presses down upon the mind that muses upon
many things” (Ws 9:15) (Conf. 7.17.23).

65
Chapter 2 THE PLATONIC TRADITION

Thus we find in Augustine the basic Platonic tension of seeing the

material world as good because it was created by God, and yet empha-
sizing, if not the evil nature of matter, certainly the urgent need to leave
the world and the body to strive for the truth of the inner reality of
spirit. Like Plotinus before him, Augustine conceived that continually
choosing sin was a choice for the lower reality of the visible world,
against ascending to the higher truth of the intelligible and spiritual
world of God. The Mind of Jesus Christ remains the only source of
truth in our minds while we are here in the world. The light of this truth
shines into our minds and illuminates them, freeing them from the
shackles of sin that bind us to the body. Parallel to Plato’s notion of
anamnesis, the soul “remembers” where it came from and where it be-
longs. The crucial difference, again, is that this remembrance for Au-
gustine cannot occur without divine grace, which allows humanity to
exercise its free will on behalf of God, and turn away from sin.

66
 Chapter 3

GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

First Century: New Testament

Much scholarly blood has been shed on the issue of Gnostic ele-
ments in the New Testament, for it is one of the more controversial and
contested issues in contemporary scripture scholarship. While a de-
tailed examination of this issue would be beyond the scope of this
book, some comment is necessary in this historical overview.
Rudolph Bultmann contended that the New Testament was basi-
cally an adaptation of pre-Christian Gnostic ideas, leading him to see
Gnostic elements all through the New Testament, especially in John
and Paul:
… it [is] abundantly clear that it [Gnosticism] was really a religious
movement of pre-Christian origin, invading the West from the
Orient as a competitor of Christianity. … All its forms, its myth-
ology and theology, arise from a definite attitude to life and an in-
terpretation of human existence derived therefrom. In general, we
may call it a redemptive religion based on dualism.8 This is what
gives it an affinity to Christianity … . Consequently, Gnosticism
and Christianity have affected each other in a number of differ-
ent directions from the earliest days of the Christian movement
(Bultmann, Primitive Christianity, p. 162; see also pp. 193-95).
While Bultmann’s highly influential thesis has fallen out of favor with
recent scholars, it nonetheless continues to stimulate tremendous re-
search in this area. The interested reader may consult Rudolph,
pp. 299-307, and Yamauchi, pp. 13-55, 190-99, for a more thorough
discussion of this topic from opposing points of view. Rudolph, whose
views are heavily influenced by Bultmann and his school, has summa-
rized this position:
The process which is plain from the New Testament itself is twofold,
the Christianizing of Gnosis and the gnosticizing of Christianity.
The result of both processes is the canonizing of Christianity as an

8. See below, pp. 121-127; see also Appendix: Glossary.

67
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

orthodox Church on the one hand, and the elimination of Gnosis as

a heresy on the other (Rudolph, p. 300).
However, Simone Pétrement’s summation may be taken to reflect the
general scholarly consensus:
No decisive proof of the non-Christian origins of Gnosticism has
yet been found in the New Testament, in the Nag Hammadi library,
or in any other source. No Gnostic text has been discovered which
was certainly, or even probably, written before the emergence of
Christianity (Pétrement, “Sur le problème du gnosticisme,” in
Hanratty, p. 218).
We must also keep in mind that the New Testament as we have it
today is the end product of a long period of the Church’s rejecting,
selecting from, and editing of, the many gospels and epistles that
sprang forth during the first and second centuries. Thus, what remains
is a decidedly biased sample of the texts of that period. Since many of
these rejected texts (and portions of texts) were destroyed, scholars can
only work with what evidence is available, both primary as well as
subjective secondary sources.
As scholars have cautioned, we must not jump to conclusions
based on scriptural terminology that later on became more specifically
focused as Gnostic. In the first century, the best we can speak of is a
pre-, proto-, or incipient Gnosticism, but hardly any developed Gnostic
theology or community. The later polemicized polarity between the
orthodox and Gnostic Christians was non-existent earlier, and there was
instead a cross-fertilization that did find fruits in the New Testament,
notably in the epistles and the Johannine writings. Therefore, oppo-
nents of the Bultmannian position warn against inferring Gnostic teach-
ings from language that suggests Gnostic thought, such as the Essene
and Platonic, but is not exclusive to Gnosticism itself. Dissident or
heterodox elements only later focalized in the second century into what
we now call Gnosticism. In Gnosis and the New Testament, Scottish
scholar R. McL. Wilson states that
we need to pay greater attention to questions of chronology, for
sometimes it would appear that scholars have formulated a synthe-
sis on the basis of second or third century sources, and have then
proceeded to force the New Testament writings into the resultant
mold, on the assumption that the hypothetical pre-Christian gnosis
which they postulate was identical with their reconstruction from

68
 First Century: New Testament

the later documents. … To sum up: the problems of Gnosticism, and

in particular the problem of Gnostic origins, are more complex than
is sometimes recognized. Particular motifs and concepts can be
traced far back into the pre-Christian period, but it is not clear that
such motifs can be truly classed as Gnostic except in the context of
the developed Gnostic systems. Attempts to derive the whole move-
ment from any single source comes to grief (Wilson, pp. 9,143).
Thus, most scholars today would agree that there did exist what
we may call a proto-Gnosticism, to be distinguished from the more
fully developed schools of the second century. These Gnostic ele-
ments in the early decades of Christianity (extending into the second
century), regardless of their origin, began to become expressed within
the emerging churches, so that at times it would be difficult to know
where one ended and the other began. Yet these remain only Gnostic
tendencies. There are, for example, no instances of the denigration of
the Old Testament Creator God that is so common in later Gnostic
teachings, and certainly nothing that denies this God His role as
Creator of the world. This fact, in and of itself, would mitigate against
speaking of a genuine New Testament Gnosticism. Nonetheless, we
can certainly see the battle lines beginning to form in the later
New Testament writings.
New Testament evidence for the influence of proto-Gnostic ideas
can therefore be grouped into two basic categories: those texts which
reflect proto-Gnostic elements, and those which specifically refute
these elements. We shall treat the Johannine writings (the gospel and
epistles of John) separately, as they reflect a different stance regarding
the Gnostics.

1. Proto-Gnostic Elements in the New Testament (Non-Johannine)

The earliest Christian witness is St. Paul (ca. 10-67), in whom we
find (as well as in the later letters falsely attributed to him, though be-
longing to his school) not only opposition to the Gnostic influences he
felt were contaminating his churches, but also great sympathy for many
ideas later embraced by the Gnostics. These ideas included: 1) the anti-
pathy of the powers of light and darkness, the true God versus the god
of the world; 2) the anti-corporeal dualism of flesh and spirit; and 3) the
redeemer Christ who descends from Heaven, delivers the world from
the powers of evil, and finally ascends back to God uniting all believers.

69
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

We first examine the evidence in the authentic Pauline letters: Romans,

Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, and Thessalonians.
1) In Second Corinthians Paul warns against the “god of this world,”
whom the later Gnostics termed the Demiurge or Ialdabaoth:
If our gospel does not penetrate the veil, then the veil is on those
who are not on the way to salvation; the unbelievers whose minds
the god of this world has blinded, to stop them seeing the light
shed by the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of
God (2 Co 4:3-4).
In Galatians Paul equates this world god (not the Creator God, as in
Gnosticism) with the Law, whose purpose is to rule and judge in the
world, acting through intermediate figures. These angelic figures,
though not perceived by Paul as evil, are nonetheless considered in-
ferior to the supreme God, the Father of Jesus. Here, by the way, we
find ourselves in the philosophical world of Middle Platonism, with
which Paul was certainly familiar:
What then was the purpose of adding the Law? This was done to
specify crimes, until the posterity came to whom the promise was
addressed. The Law was promulgated by angels, assisted by an in-
termediary. Now there can only be an intermediary between two
parties, yet God is one. … The Law was to be our guardian until
the Christ came and we could be justified by faith. Now that that
time has come we are no longer under that guardian, and you are,
all of you, sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. … Now be-
fore we came of age we were as good as slaves to the elemental
principles of this world … . Once you were ignorant of God, and
enslaved to “gods” who are not really gods at all; but now that you
have come to acknowledge God—or rather, now that God has ac-
knowledged you—how can you want to go back to elemental
things like these, that can do nothing and give nothing, and be their
slaves? (Ga 3:19-20,24-26; 4:3,8-9).
The world is seen as the realm of darkness, while Jesus came from
Heaven with the light. Darkness and light are irreconcilable enemies
and we are urged to become sons of light and spirit, renouncing the un-
spiritual darkness, a theme we also find prominently expressed in the
Essene literature. Some Pauline examples are:
But it is not as if you live in the dark, my brothers, for that Day to
overtake you like a thief. No, you are all sons of light and sons of the

70
 First Century: New Testament

day: we do not belong to the night or to darkness, so we should not

go on sleeping, as everyone else does, but stay wide awake and so-
ber. Night is the time for sleepers to sleep and drunkards to be drunk,
but we belong to the day and we should be sober … (1 Th 5:4-8).
… you know “the time” has come: you must wake up now: our sal-
vation is even nearer than it was when we were converted. The
night is almost over, it will be daylight soon—let us give up all the
things we prefer to do under cover of the dark; let us arm our-
selves and appear in the light (Rm 13:11-12).
2) The issue of the world is obviously an ambivalent one for Paul, and
there are many passages in which his antipathy for the flesh adumbrate
the later Gnostic denigration of the material world.
… flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God: and the per-
ishable cannot inherit what lasts for ever (1 Co 15:50).
We are always full of confidence, then, when we remember that to
live in the body means to be exiled from the Lord, going as we do
by faith and not by sight—we are full of confidence, I say, and ac-
tually want to be exiled from the body and make our home with the
Lord (2 Co 5:6-8).
In First Corinthians Paul cautions against marriage as being, in ef-
fect, a waste of time for one focused only on God:
I would like to see you free from all worry. An unmarried man can
devote himself to the Lord’s affairs, all he need worry about is
pleasing the Lord; but a married man has to bother about the
world’s affairs and devote himself to pleasing his wife … [likewise
with an unmarried woman] (1 Co 7:32-34).
Sex, too, is considered a dangerous distraction:
Yes, it is a good thing for a man not to touch a woman; but since
sex is always a danger, let each man have his own wife and each
woman her own husband. … This is a suggestion, not a rule: I
should like everyone to be like me [i.e., celibate], but everybody
has his own particular gifts from God … . There is something I
want to add for the sake of widows and those who are not married:
it is a good thing for them to stay as they are, like me, but if they
cannot control the sexual urges, they should get married, since it is
better to be married than to be tortured (1 Co 7:1-3,6-9).

71
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

3) Finally, we see in Paul an emphasis on the heavenly Christ as op-

posed to the earthly Jesus, an emphasis that foreshadows the Johannine
Christ, and in turn anticipates some of the second-century Gnostic
teachings (see Bultmann’s Redeemer Myth, Yamauchi, pp. 29-30).
Paul’s Christology reflects a mid-point between the “low” Christology
of the Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) and the “high”
Christology of the Fourth Gospel (John), whose Christ (Logos) is pre-
existent with the Father. Paul writes to the Corinthians:
… still for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things
come and for whom we exist; and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom all things come and through whom we exist. … The
first man, Adam, as scripture says, became a living soul; but the
last Adam [Jesus] has become a life-giving spirit. … The first man,
being from the earth, is earthly by nature; the second man is from
heaven. As this earthly man was, so are we on earth; and as the
heavenly man is, so are we in heaven. And we, who have been
modeled on the earthly man, will be modeled on the heavenly man
(1 Co 8:6; 15:45-49).
The famous Philippian hymn, probably taken by Paul from an un-
known source, poetically summarizes this Pauline view of the cosmic
Christ:
His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God
but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became
as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to
accepting death, death on a cross. But God raised him high and
gave him the name which is above all other names so that all be-
ings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld, should bend the
knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Je-
sus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Ph 2:6-11).
The post-Pauline letters of Colossians and Ephesians (ca. 80) also
reflect the influence of these proto-Gnostic ideas. In Colossians we
have the interesting example of “Paul” combating a heresy which
seems to have been an early form of Jewish Gnostic asceticism, while
at the same time utilizing ideas and language that have much in com-
mon with an incipient Gnosticism. The Colossians are warned:
Make sure that no one traps you and deprives you of your free-
dom by some secondhand, empty, rational philosophy based on the
principles of this world instead of on Christ. … Do not be taken in

72
 First Century: New Testament

by people who like grovelling to angels and worshipping them;

people like that are always going on about some vision they have
had, inflating themselves to a false importance with their worldly
outlook . … It may be argued that true wisdom is to be found in
these, with their self-imposed devotions, their self-abasement, and
their severe treatment of the body; but once the flesh starts to pro-
test, they are no use at all (Col 2:8,18,23).
Käsemann has commented:
We thus arrive at the peculiar fact that heresy in Colossians is com-
batted by a confession of faith, the formulation of which has itself
been very strongly conditioned by heterodox views (in Yamauchi,
p. 45).
On the other hand, in the hymn in Colossians we find the cosmic
Christ who is “the image of the unseen God and first-born of all cre-
ation, for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth … ”
(Col 1:15-16), and who, suggestive of Gnostic dualism—perhaps as
Rudolph suggests, an example of the Christianizing of Gnostic ideas
—overturns the powers of darkness, leading us to abandon the flesh
and the Law:
He [Christ] has overridden the Law, and canceled every record of
the debt that we had to pay; he has done away with it by nailing it
to the cross; and so he got rid of the Sovereignties and the
Powers … Let your thoughts be on heavenly things, not on the
things that are on the earth … . That is why you must kill every-
thing in you that belongs only to earthly life: fornication, impurity,
guilty passion, evil desires and especially greed … all this is the
sort of behavior that makes God angry. … You have stripped off
your old behavior with your old self, and you have put on a new
self which will progress toward true knowledge the more it is re-
newed in the image of its creator … (Col 2:14-15; 3:2,5-6,9-10).
In Ephesians we find reference to themes—light and darkness,
awakening from the sleep of the dead—we found in the earlier epistles:
You were darkness once, but now you are light in the Lord; be like
children of light … . Try to discover what the Lord wants of you,
having nothing to do with the futile works of darkness but expos-
ing them by contrast. … Wake up from your sleep, rise from the
dead, and Christ will shine on you (Ep 5:8,10-11,14).

73
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

We also find here allusions to the cosmic Christ who freed the world
from the divisions created by the Law. He is the head of the Church, to
which he is joined. The following are some representative passages:
But now in Christ Jesus, you [the pagans] that used to be so far
apart from us have been brought very close, by the blood of Christ.
For he is the peace between us, and has made the two into one and
broken down the barrier which used to keep them apart, actually
destroying in his own person the hostility caused by the rules and
decrees of the Law. This was to create one single New Man in him-
self out of the two of them … to unite them both in a single Body
and reconcile them with God. … When it says, “he ascended,”
what can it mean if not that he descended right down to the lower
regions of the earth. The one who rose higher than all the heavens
to fill all things is none other than the one who descended. … who
is the head, by whom the whole body [of Christ] is fitted and
joined together … (Ep 2:13-16; 4:9-10,15-16).

2. Anti-Gnostic Elements in the New Testament (Non-Johannine)

We come now to texts that refute the dissident voices in the
churches; voices that contained proto-Gnostic elements in the earlier
epistles, and a more pronounced and specific Gnosis in the later ones.
One may infer that these proto-Gnostic elements were in Paul’s mind
when he issued this warning to the elders of the church of Ephesus
while in Miletus, as reported by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles, writ-
ing around A.D. 80:
Be on your guard for yourselves and for all the flock of which the
Holy Spirit has made you the overseers … . I know quite well that
when I have gone fierce wolves will invade you and will have no
mercy on the flock. Even from your own ranks there will be men
coming forward with a travesty of the truth on their lips to induce
the disciples to follow them (Ac 20:28-30).
In fact, Paul’s letters are replete with denunciations and warnings
against what he considered to be false doctrines. The clearest example
comes in Paul’s letters to the people of Corinth, which seemed to be a
stronghold of what appears to have been proto-Gnostic teachings and
practices. As the American scholar R. M. Grant has written:
Though the ability of modern scholars to recover Paul’s opponents’
ideas may be over-estimated, it would appear that a movement like

74
 First Century: New Testament

the one which later became Gnosticism was probably present in

Corinth (Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity, p. 157).
The following statement in Chapter 2 of Paul’s first letter to the
Corinthians could very likely be aimed against those proto-Gnostics
who believed “hidden wisdom” was the truth:
As for me, brothers, when I came to you, it was not with any show
of oratory or philosophy … . During my stay with you, the only
knowledge I claimed to have was about Jesus … . The hidden wis-
dom of God which we teach in our mysteries is the wisdom … that
none of the masters of this age have ever known … . Therefore we
teach, not in the way in which philosophy is taught, but in the way
that the Spirit teaches us: we teach spiritual things spiritually
(1 Co 2:1-2,7-8,13).
In Chapters 10 and 11 of the second letter to the Corinthians, Paul
defends himself against enemies who could include these proto-
Gnostic groups, presumably of Jewish origin.
We demolish sophistries, and the arrogance that tries to resist the
knowledge of God … . Face plain facts. Anybody who is convinced
that he belongs to Christ must go on to reflect that we all belong to
Christ no less than he does. … I am afraid that … your ideas may
get corrupted and turned away from simple devotion to Christ. Be-
cause any newcomer has only to proclaim a new Jesus, different
from the one that we preached … and you welcome it with open
arms. As far as I can tell, these arch-apostles have nothing more
than I have. … These people are counterfeit apostles … disguised as
apostles of Christ. … Hebrews, are they? So am I. Israelites? So am
I. Descendants of Abraham? So am I (2 Co 10:4,7; 11:3-5,13,22).
As we have seen, one Gnostic strand was docetism, the belief that
Jesus never truly inhabited a body, though he appeared to. Thus, the
cosmic or spiritual Jesus was sometimes emphasized at the expense of
the earthly man. It likely is this incipient docetism that Paul observed
in Corinth:
I want you to understand that on the one hand no one can be speak-
ing under the influence of the Holy Spirit and say, “Curse Jesus”
[i.e., the earthly Jesus], and on the other hand, no one can say, “Je-
sus is Lord” unless he is under the influence of the Holy Spirit (1
Co 12:3).

75
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

Some of the later Gnostic schools taught that the resurrection has
already occurred in us with the acquisition of knowledge, and is not to
be exclusively identified with the corporeal resurrection of Jesus. This
teaching seems to have made its way into the Corinth community, as
witness to Paul’s emphasis on the actual resurrection of Jesus and our
future resurrection:
Now if Christ raised from the dead is what has been preached, how
can some of you be saying that there is no resurrection of the dead?
If there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ himself cannot have
been raised, and if Christ has not been raised then our preaching is
useless … (1 Co 15:12-14).
For we know that when the tent [body] that we live in on earth is
folded up, there is a house built by God for us, an everlasting home
not made by human hands, in the heavens. … Yes, we groan and
find it a burden being still in this tent, not that we want to strip it
off, but to put the second garment over it and to have what must
die taken up into life. This is the purpose for which God made us,
and he has given us the pledge of the Spirit (2 Co 5:1, 4-5).
Finally, in Paul’s warnings against the sexual excesses of the Cor-
inthians (1 Co 5:1-13; 6:9,15-20) we find pre-echoes of the patristic
concerns with the Gnostic libertines.
In the later canonical writings, coming about the turn of the cen-
tury, we find the attack on the Gnostics becoming more pointed.
These include “Paul’s” two letters to Timothy, one to Titus, the letter
of Jude, the second letter of “Peter,” and Revelation. At this time there
were almost definitely Gnostic circles, although the great schools—
Basilides, Marcion, Valentinus—were yet to come. Wilson has com-
mented that the
cumulative effect of a number of features shared with the later
Gnostics by the opponents attacked in these documents … makes us
think of an incipient Gnosticism as the heresy in view. But there is
nothing … to suggest that this incipient Gnosticism had as yet ad-
vanced very far in the direction of later developments (Wilson,
p. 42).
These teachings were considered a threat to the emerging Christian
churches, as is seen in the following excerpts from these epistles. One
can hear in these writings the beginning voices of what would emerge

76
 First Century: New Testament

several decades later as the “official” Church’s denunciation of this

“Gnosis, falsely so-called” (1 Tm 6:21). As Rudolph states:
The process of separation of orthodoxy and heresy, Church and
sect, begins to make itself felt; the early Catholic Church declares
itself (Rudolph, p. 303).
The “enemy” is clearly identified as Gnostic:
My dear Timothy, take great care of all that has been entrusted to
you. Have nothing to do with the pointless philosophical discus-
sions and antagonistic beliefs of the “knowledge” [gnosis] which is
not knowledge at all; by adopting this, some have gone right away
from the faith (1 Tm 6:20-21).
The authors of these letters continually warn against the dangers of
affiliating with these sects, specifically identifying them by their ex-
tensive mythologizing, a salient characteristic of many of the later
Gnostic schools:
As I asked you when I was leaving for Macedonia, please stay at
Ephesus, to insist that certain people stop teaching strange doc-
trines and taking notice of myths and endless genealogies; these
things are only likely to raise irrelevant doubts instead of further-
ing the designs of God which are revealed in faith (1 Tm 1:3-4).
The time is sure to come when, far from being content with sound
teaching, people will be avid for the latest novelty and collect
themselves a whole series of teachers according to their own
tastes; and then, instead of listening to the truth, they will turn to
myths (2 Tm 4:3-4).
So you will have to be severe in correcting them, and make them
sound in the faith so that they stop taking notice of Jewish myths
and doing what they are told to do by people who are no longer in-
terested in the truth (Tt 1:13-14).
Specific teachers are even mentioned:
Some people have put conscience aside and wrecked their faith in
consequence. I mean men like Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I
have handed over to Satan to teach them not to be blasphemous
(1 Tm 1:19-20).
Have nothing to do with pointless philosophical discussions—
they only lead further and further away from true religion. Talk

77
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

of this kind corrodes like gangrene, as in the case of Hymenaeus

and Philetus, the men who have gone right away from the truth
and claim that the resurrection has already taken place. Some
people’s faith cannot stand up to them (2 Tm 2:16-18).
Aside from the extensive mythologizing of this Jewish-Gnostic
sect, another characteristic emerged that outraged the early Christian
Church; namely that women played an important role in the commu-
nity (although this was not always the prevailing Gnostic practice):
During instruction, a woman should be quiet and respectful. I am
not giving permission for a woman to teach or to tell a man what to
do. A woman ought not to speak, because Adam was formed first
and Eve afterwards, and it was not Adam who was led astray but
the woman who was led astray and fell into sin (1 Tm 2:11-15).
This deutero-Pauline argument is modeled after Paul’s sexist teaching
in Corinth (1 Co 11:3-16), which concludes: “To anyone who might
still want to argue: it is not the custom with us, nor in the churches of
God.”
In Part II-A we shall explore the strict asceticism that ran through
many Gnostic groups. Here at the turn of the century we can hear warn-
ings against such practices. Ironically, the Church in the following cen-
turies increasingly adopted the Gnostics’ pronounced anti-corporeal
stance, culminating in the emergence of an ascetic monasticism.
The Spirit has explicitly said that during the last times there will be
some who will desert the faith and choose to listen to deceitful
spirits and doctrines that come from the devils; … they will say
marriage is forbidden, and lay down rules about abstaining from
foods which God created to be accepted with thanksgiving by all
who believe and who know the truth. … You should give up drink-
ing only water and have a little wine for the sake of your digestion
and the frequent bouts of illness that you have (1 Tm 4:1,3; 5:23).
The other side of the Gnostic morality coin was also present. The
writer of Jude warns the faithful against the Gnostic libertines, who
will be repaid by the Old Testament’s promise of vengeful judgment:
Certain people have infiltrated among you, and they are the ones
you had a warning about, in writing, long ago, when they were
condemned for denying all religion, turning the grace of our God
into immorality … . in their delusions they … defile their bodies
and disregard authority … . May they get what they deserve … . It

78
 First Century: New Testament

was with them in mind that Enoch … made his prophecy when he
said, “I tell you, the Lord will come with his saints in their tens of
thousands, to pronounce judgment on all mankind and to sentence
the wicked for all the wicked things they have done … . [“These
unspiritual and selfish people”] are mischief-makers, grumblers,
governed only by their own desires, with mouths full of boastful
talk … (Jude 4,8,11,14-16).
In the letters to the churches that we find in the second chapter of
Revelation (ca. A.D. 100), there is a specific attack against Gnostics
whose influence was spreading throughout Ephesus, Smyrna,
Pergamum, and Thyatira. This was a decidedly libertine group named
the Nicolaitans:
It is in your favor … that you loathe as I [Jesus] do what the
Nicolaitans are doing . … I know the trials you have had … and the
slanderous accusations that have been made by the people who pro-
fess to be Jews but are really members of the synagogue of Satan … .
I know where you live, in the place where Satan is enthroned … .
you are encouraging the woman Jezebel [a Nicolaitan] who claims
to be a prophetess, and by her teaching she is luring my servants
away to commit the adultery of eating food which has been sacri-
ficed to idols. … Now I am consigning her to bed, and all her part-
ners in adultery to troubles that will test them severely, unless they
repent of their practices; and I will see that her children die …
(Rv 2:6,9,13,20,22-23).
The Nicolaitans were believed by the later Church Fathers to have been
named after the deacon Nicolas of Antioch, mentioned in Acts 6:5. As
Irenaeus wrote:
The Nicolaitans have as teacher a certain Nicolaus, one of the
seven who were first ordained to the diaconate by the Apostles. …
They live in promiscuity. Who they are is revealed quite clearly in
the Revelation of St. John … since they teach that adultery, or the
eating of meat sacrificed to idols, is a matter of indifference
(Adv. haer. I.26.3, in Haardt, p. 63).
In what is generally conceded by scholars to be the latest New
Testament book, the Second Letter of Peter, we have one of the most
vicious denunciations of these Gnostic “heretics.” The author, obvi-
ously not the apostle, virtually copies out Jude’s letter in his second
chapter, but adds to the vituperation against “those who are governed

79
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

by their corrupt bodily desires and have no respect for authority”

(2 P 2:10), and warns those in his circle not to be lured away from the
true faith:
… these people … are … simply animals born to be caught and
killed, and they will quite certainly destroy themselves by their
own work of destruction, and get their reward of evil for the evil
that they do. They are unsightly blots on your society: men whose
only object is dissipation all day long … with an infinite capacity
for sinning, they will seduce any soul which is at all unstable.
Greed is the one lesson their minds have learnt. They are under a
curse. … People like this are dried-up rivers … and the dark under-
world is the place reserved for them. With their high-flown talk,
which is all hollow, they tempt back the ones who have only just
escaped from paganism, playing on their bodily desires with
debaucheries. … anyone who has escaped the pollution of the
world once by coming to know our Lord and savior Jesus Christ,
and who then allows himself to be entangled by it a second time
and mastered, will end up in a worse state than he began in. …
What he has done is exactly as the proverb rightly says: The dog
goes back to his own vomit [Pr 26:11] and: When the sow has been
washed, it wallows in the mud (2 P 2:12-14,17-18,20,22).
In words that foreshadow the patristic diatribes against the later
Gnostics for their treatment of scripture, “Peter” writes:
… these are the points [in “our brother Paul”] that uneducated and
unbalanced people distort, in the same way as they distort the rest
of scripture—a fatal thing for them to do (2 P 3:16).

3. Gnostic Elements in the Johannine Writings

We come now to the gospel of John and the three epistles written in
his name, and find the same paradox we observed in Paul: an anti-
Gnostic polemic in a framework that exhibits some decidedly Gnostic
characteristics. However, as we have already observed, the presence of
themes that would later emerge in second-century Gnosticism does not
decisively show Gnostic influence, but perhaps another example of the
cross-fertilization we have observed before. As Yamauchi writes:
One need not subscribe to Bultmann’s theory to recognize that
the author of the Gospel of John used concepts which occur in
Gnostic literature and that the Gospel was popular among

80
 First Century: New Testament

Gnostics. … [It] has recently [been] argued that the Gospel of

John illustrates diversity and development rather than any con-
scious heterodoxy or orthodoxy. … There is none the less still a
great gulf between both the concepts and the language used by
John and the Gnostic texts as recovered in the Nag Hammadi
library (Yamauchi, p. 34).
In The Epistles of John, scripture scholar I. H. Marshall comments:
These false teachers were forerunners of the heretics who were
responsible for the developed Gnostic sects of the second cen-
tury. The seeds of Gnosticism were already to be found in the
New Testament period, although it is misleading to use the actual
term “Gnosticism” to describe the incipient Gnosticism or “pre-
gnosticism” of this period (in Yamauchi, p. 199).
It certainly appears that John drew upon a pre-existent tradition,
shared by many different groups, and that this tradition later extended
into the second century when the orthodox and heterodox split in terms
of their relation to this tradition. We shall return to this idea at the end
of this chapter. Some of the more obvious proto-Gnostic elements in
John include 1) dualism; 2) Christology; and 3) the resurrection.
1) A strong dualism permeates the gospel, although one never finds the
radical anti-cosmic feeling as in the Gnostics. The Prologue, in fact,
quite clearly states that the world was created by the Divine Logos:
“Through him [the Word] all things came to be, not one thing had its
being but through him” (Jn 1:3). Nonetheless, a dualism similar to
what we observed in the Pauline writings is present, as seen in the fol-
lowing passages when Jesus speaks of overcoming the prince of this
world (the devil):
Now sentence is being passed on this world; now the prince of this
world is to be overthrown (Jn 12:31).
I shall not talk with you any longer, because the prince of this
world is on his way. He has no power over me, but the world must
be brought to know that I love the Father … (Jn 14:30-31).
And when he [the Advocate, i.e., the Holy Spirit] comes, he will
show the world how wrong it was … about judgment: proved by the
prince of this world being already condemned (Jn 16:8,11).

81
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

In his conversation with Nicodemus, the Johannine Jesus enunciates

this duality:
I tell you most solemnly, unless a man is born from above, he can-
not see the kingdom of God. … unless a man is born through water
and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God: what is born of
the flesh is flesh; what is born of the Spirit is spirit (Jn 3:3,5-6).
The Last Discourses continually return to this theme of the contrast
between heaven and this world:
If the world hates you, remember that it hated me before you. If you
belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own; but be-
cause you do not belong to the world, because my choice withdrew
you from the world, therefore the world hates you (Jn 15:18-19).
I came from the Father and have come into the world and now I
leave the world to go to the Father. … I have conquered the world
(Jn 16:28,33).
I have made your [God] name known to the men you took from the
world to give me. … I pray for them; I am not praying for the
world but for those you have given me, because they belong to
you … . I passed your word on to them, and the world hated them,
because they belong to the world no more than I belong to the
world (Jn 17:6,9,14).
In John’s first epistle we read words of Jesus’ hatred for the world that
could just as easily have come from a second-century Gnostic text:
You must not love this passing world or anything that is in the
world. The love of the Father cannot be in any man who loves the
world, because nothing the world has to offer—the sensual body,
the lustful eye, pride in possessions—could ever come from the
Father but only from the world … (1 Jn 2:15-16).
Jesus repeatedly contrasts his heavenly gifts with those of the
world, as with the woman at the well:
If you only knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying
to you: “Give me a drink,” you would have been the one to ask,
and he would have given you living water. … Whoever drinks this
water will get thirsty again; but anyone who drinks the water that I
shall give will never be thirsty again … (Jn 4:10,13-14).
To the disciples requesting food, Jesus replies:

82
 First Century: New Testament

I have food to eat that you do not know about. … My food is to

do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete his work
(Jn 4:32,34).
Light and darkness are common symbols of this duality:
The light will be with you only a little longer now. Walk while
you have the light, or the dark will overtake you; he who walks in
the dark does not know where he is going. While you still have
the light, believe in the light and you will become sons of light
(Jn 12:35-36).
And in the first epistle:
God is light; there is no darkness in him at all. If we say that we
are in union with God while we are living in darkness, we are
lying because we are not living the truth. But if we live our lives
in the light, as he is in the light, we are in union with one
another … (1 Jn 1:5-7).
John’s gospel is a polemic tract, clearly separating out the Johannine
community from the world. The dualism thus is not only between the
light of Heaven and the darkness of the world, but also between their
representatives on earth: the Johannine community and those it consid-
ered its enemies, even including fellow Christians. Raymond Brown,
one of this generation’s leading Johannine scholars, has enumerated six
groups perceived by the Johannine community as falling within this
category: the world, the Jews, the followers of John the Baptist, the
crypto-Christians (Jews remaining in the synagogue), the Jewish-
Christians (Jews who left the synagogue but did not accept the high
Christology of John’s community), and other Christians who also did
not accept the Johannine Christology (Brown, Community of the
Beloved Disciple, pp. 168-69).
2) The Christology in the Johannine writings is loftier than in the
Synoptics, and in time became the dominant view of the Church. The
Synoptic focus is on Jesus’ miraculous birth into this world, while in
John, despite the explicit statements that Jesus was human and did
come in the flesh, the overriding emphasis remains on the pre-existent,
cosmic Christ who is but barely human, prefiguring the Gnostic
Revealer: “The stress is on the glory of God which shines through this
humanity” (Brown, Community of the Beloved Disciple, p. 114). The

83
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

cosmic Christ who descends and ascends, foreshadowed in the Pauline

hymns, here finds its grandiloquent expression:
In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the
Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him
all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him.
All that came to be had life in him and that life was the light of
men, a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not
overpower . … The Word was the true light that enlightens all men;
and he was coming into the world. … The Word was made flesh,
he lived among us, and we saw his glory, the glory that is his as the
only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth (Jn 1:1-5,9,14).
This theme is carried through the whole gospel, where Jesus makes
statements about himself not found previously in the New Testament.
These include:
No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down
from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven; … For God sent his
Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through
him the world might be saved (Jn 3:13,17).
All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes
to me I shall not turn him away; because I have come from heaven,
not to do my own will, but to do the will of the one who sent me
(Jn 6:37-38).
I tell you most solemnly, before Abraham ever was, I Am (Jn 8:58).
The Father and I are one. … the Father is in me and I am in the
Father (Jn 10:30,38).
Now, Father, it is time for you to glorify me with that glory I had
with you before ever the world was. … Father, I want those you
have given me to be with me where I am, so that they may always
see the glory you have given me because you loved me before the
foundation of the world (Jn 17:5,24).
In Chapter 6, this idea of the cosmic Christ is expressed in the context
of John’s version of the Eucharist, which moves away from the re-
membrance aspects of the Last Supper (“Do this as a memorial of me”
Lk 22:19), focusing more on the body and blood as nourishers of eter-
nal life. Jesus says:
I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone
who eats this bread will live for ever … . I tell you most solemnly,

84
 First Century: New Testament

if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you will not have life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and
drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last
day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who
eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him
(Jn 6:51,53-56).
Brown has discussed how John’s pre-existence Christology colored
his portrait of Jesus’ earthly life, and we excerpt from his succinct
summary that treats how, based on this coloration, the gospel could
have been read by these later docetic Gnostic groups:
The Johannine Jesus seems scarcely to eat or drink in the nor-
mal sense, for when he discusses food (4:32), bread (6:33ff), or
water (4:7-14; 7:38; 9:7), they are symbolic of spiritual realities.
He loves Lazarus but with a love strangely lacking in human
sympathy … (11:5-6,11-15,33,35) … . The Johannine Jesus knows
all things (16:30), so that he cannot ask for information. When he
says to Philip, “Where shall we ever buy bread for these people
to eat?” (6:5), the evangelist feels impelled in the next verse to
insert parenthetically: “Actually, of course, he was perfectly
aware of what he was going to do, but he asked this to test
Philip’s reaction.” [Likewise with his foreknowledge of Judas’
betrayal.] … The Johannine Jesus is one with the Father (10:30), and
so he cannot really pray to the Father in the sense of seeking a
change in the divine will. When he speaks to God on the occasion of
the raising of Lazarus, he says, “Father, I thank you because you
heard me. Of course, I knew that you always hear me; but I say it be-
cause of the crowd standing around, that they may believe that you
sent me.” … [In contrast to the Synoptics’ Jesus in Gethsemane pray-
ing to have the cup pass from him,] the Johannine Jesus has a
very different attitude: “What should I say?—‘Father, save me
from this hour?’ No, this is precisely the reason why I came to
this hour. ‘Father, glorify your name!’” (12:27-28). In other
words the Johannine Jesus refuses to pray in the manner in which
the Synoptic Jesus prays because … there is no distinction be-
tween Jesus’ will and the Father’s will, and the Father’s name has
been given to Jesus (Brown, Community of the Beloved Disciple,
pp. 114-16).
It is interesting to consult Origen’s conclusions based upon the very dif-
ferent Synoptic version of the scene in Gethsemane. (See pp. 57-58.)

85
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

Moreover, the view of the crucified Jesus differs too. The Synoptic
as well as Pauline Jesus is very much the victimized savior (Isaiah’s
Suffering Servant) (see “The Suffering Servant” in Chapter 9 of
Forgiveness and Jesus). In John, however, Jesus willingly chooses a
death in which he is in full control, a death of triumph, hardly
humiliation:
He is in such control that only when he affirms, “It is finished,” does
he bow his head and hand over his Spirit (19:30). This sovereign
affirmation is far from the cry of the Marcan Jesus, “My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me?” (15:34)—a cry that would have
been inconceivable on the lips of the Johannine Jesus who claimed
in the face of desertion by his disciples, “I am never alone because
the Father is with me” (16:32) (Brown, Community of the Beloved
Disciple, pp. 118-19).
Brown concludes his discussion by quoting Johannine scholar Forestell:
The cross of Christ in Jn is evaluated precisely in terms of revela-
tion in harmony with the theology of the entire Gospel [i.e., his
divine glory], rather than in terms of vicarious and expiatory sacri-
fice for sin [i.e., his suffering humanity] (ibid., p. 119).
3) We have seen how one of the key differences between the orthodox
and Gnostic communities was the view of the resurrection (see again,
2 Tm 2:16-18). John’s gospel, established in the late second century as
orthodox, here sets forth a view decidedly different in emphasis from
the Synoptic gospels and the epistles, which stressed the physical res-
urrection of Jesus. John’s Jesus, however, stresses the internal resur-
rection of those who believe:
I tell you most solemnly, whoever listens to my words, and be-
lieves in the one who sent me, has eternal life; without being
brought to judgment he has passed from death to life. I tell you
most solemnly, the hour will come—in fact it is here already—
when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and all who
hear it will live (Jn 5:24-25).
Before calling Lazarus forth from the grave, Jesus tells Martha:
I am the resurrection. If anyone believes in me, even though he
dies he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never
die (Jn 11:25-26).

86
 First Century: New Testament

The later Gnostics believed they were especially called out by God
(or Jesus). Many Gnostics referred to themselves as “pneumatics,”
(i.e., those who received or were filled with the Holy Spirit), and we
find that idea of “spiritual specialness” presaged here in John’s first
letter:
Whoever keeps his commandments lives in God and God lives in
him. We know that he lives in us by the Spirit that he has given us.
… anyone who has been begotten by God has already overcome the
world; this is the victory over the world—our faith (1 Jn 3:24; 5:4).

4. Anti-Gnostic Elements in the Johannine Writings

Despite these expressions of proto-Gnostic themes and a leaning
towards a moderately docetic Christology, we find strong anti-Gnostic
statements in both the gospel and letters. These focus not only on
1) docetism, but also on 2) the assertion of these dissident groups that
they were sinless.
1) The dissident groups did not hold fully to a docetic view of Jesus,
but they greatly downplayed his human life in terms of having any
salvific significance. Brown has summarized their position:
For the secessionists [i.e., dissident groups] the human existence
was only a stage in the career of the divine Word and not an intrin-
sic component in redemption. What Jesus did in Palestine was not
truly important for them nor the fact that he died on the cross; sal-
vation would not be different if the Word had become incarnate in
a totally different human representative who lived a different life
and died a different death. The only important thing for them was
that eternal life had been brought down to men and women through
a divine Son who passed through this world. In short, theirs was an
incarnational theology pushed to exclusivity (Brown, Community
of the Beloved Disciple, pp. 113-14).
We shall see in Part II-A how closely this view approximates the later
teachings of many of the Gnostic groups.
With this understanding of the opposition, gleaned from the gospel
and epistles, we can better understand the counter-arguments—
a strong statement of witness—found in the first letter of John which
attempted to offset a docetic interpretation of the gospel. Though the
gospel does lean towards the idea of a divine Christ, a docetism such as

87
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

is seen in many second-century Gnostics is avoided: Jesus remains

human as well as divine. Thus, the Johannine statements that Jesus
came in the flesh and was perceived by the flesh were a distinct rebuttal
to the already strong docetic tendencies of these proto-Gnostics.
Something which has existed since the beginning, that we have
heard, and we have seen with our own eyes; that we have watched
and touched with our hands: the Word, who is life—this is our sub-
ject. That life was made visible: we saw it and we are giving our
testimony … (1 Jn 1:1-2).
Later, the author issues a similar warning, re-emphasizing that “The
word was made flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory … ”
(Jn 1:14). Thus, whatever docetism was present, was certainly not the
extreme form found in the later Gnostic groups:
It is not every spirit, my dear people, that you can trust; test them,
to see if they come from God, there are many false prophets, now,
in the world. You can tell the spirits that come from God by this:
every spirit which acknowledges that Jesus the Christ has come in
the flesh is from God; but any spirit which will not say this of Je-
sus is not from God, but is the spirit of Antichrist, whose coming
you were warned about (1 Jn 4:1-3).
The author of the first letter reinforces his argument by stating:
Jesus Christ who came by water and blood, not with water only,
but with water and blood … (1 Jn 5:6).
Water and blood signify the baptism and death of Jesus, and they are
stressed here not only to denote Jesus’ humanness, but the beginning
and end of his ministry of salvation. Thus the author of the epistle
highlights what had only been in the background of the gospel: the
saving act of the crucifixion:
This has taught us love—that he gave up his life for us; and we,
too, ought to give up our lives for our brothers. … this is the love I
mean: not our love for God, but God’s love for us when he sent his
Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away (1 Jn 3:16; 4:10).
These teachings seem directed against those proto-Gnostic groups
who would have sought to emphasize only the docetic aspects to the
gospel, minimizing his suffering and salvific death.
In the second letter we find the same warning as in the first:

88
 First Century: New Testament

There are many deceivers about in the world, refusing to admit

that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. They are the Deceiver; they
are the Antichrist. Watch yourselves, or all our work will be lost
and not get the reward it deserves. If anybody does not keep within
the teaching of Christ but goes beyond it, he cannot have God with
him: only those who keep to what he taught can have the Father
and the Son with them. If anyone comes to you bringing a differ-
ent doctrine, you must not receive him in your house or even give
him a greeting. To greet him would make you a partner in his
wicked work (2 Jn 7-11).
Returning to the gospel, the story of the doubting Thomas—who
would not believe unless he sees “the holes that the nails made in his
[Jesus’] hands and can put my finger into the holes they made, and un-
less I can put my hand into his side” (Jn 20:25), and then is allowed to
do so by the risen Jesus—seems directed to this anti-docetic argument.
2) The first letter also repudiates those perfect ones—the proto-Gnostics
—who believe that they cannot sin:
If we say we have no sin in us, we are deceiving ourselves and re-
fusing to admit the truth; but if we acknowledge our sins, then God
who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and purify us from
everything that is wrong. To say that we have never sinned is to
call God a liar and to show that his word is not in us (1 Jn 1:8-10).
However, later in the epistle the author himself states that
No one who has been begotten by God sins; because God’s seed
remains inside him, he cannot sin when he has been begotten by
God. … the begotten Son of God protects him, and the Evil One
does not touch him (1 Jn 3:9; 5:18).
The difference between these two statements appears to be that the
Johannine position maintains sinlessness as an obligation to be met by
the true Christian (i.e., the Johannine Christian), and one which can
always be returned to:
I am writing this, my children, to stop you sinning; but if anyone
should sin, we have our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ,
who is just; he is the sacrifice that takes our sins away, and not
only ours, but the whole world’s (1 Jn 2:1-2).
The opponents, on the other hand, presaging the more developed
Gnostic position, seemed to believe that their sinlessness was true. This

89
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

was but a short step away, as Brown points out (Community of the
Beloved Disciple, p. 127), from the later Gnostic belief in an ontological
sinlessness, wherein the Gnostics saw themselves pre-existent with Je-
sus. This perfection was guaranteed by their divine heritage as pneumat-
ics, children of the spirit.
In the decades that followed its writing around the turn of the cen-
tury, John’s gospel became for the Church the most controversial book
of scripture. The Gnostics claimed it as their own, and forged from its
Gnostic leanings justification for their own beliefs. The second-century
Fathers were thus hesitant to draw upon the Fourth Gospel, and we find
no specific mention of it in Ignatius, Polycarp, or Justin Martyr. On the
other hand, the noted Valentinian teacher Heracleon gave us the first
known commentary on the gospel and, in fact, it was among the most
favored scriptural books for the Valentinians. As Brown summarizes:
The fact that these secessionists brought the Johannine Gospel with
them offered to the docetists and gnostics, whose thought they now
shared, a new basis on which to construct a theology—indeed, it
served as a catalyst in the growth of Christian gnostic thought. The
Great Church, which had accepted elements of the Johannine tradi-
tion when it accepted the Johannine Christians who shared the au-
thor’s views, was at first wary of the Fourth Gospel because it had
given rise to error and was being used to support error. Eventually,
however, having added the Epistles to the Gospel as a guide to
right interpretation, the Great Church … championed the Gospel as
orthodox over against its gnostic interpreters (ibid., pp. 146-47).
Thus the first Johannine letter, by showing how the gospel could be
read non-docetically, “saved” it from the embrace of the Gnostics and
“returned” it to the orthodox Church.
The division within the churches, already expressed in these later
New Testament writings, hardened as the second century began. What
had begun as disagreements within essentially the same Christianity,
now emerged as a virtual state of war between the orthodox Church
and the Gnostic “heretics.”

90
 Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

1. The Beginning Stages: Fluidity of Doctrine

When the Gnostic systems began to flourish in the middle of the
second century there was no organized Church. There was, to be sure,
a Church hierarchy, but an authorized canon to instruct the faithful
about which gospel or epistle was truly the Word of God was lacking;
nor was there a prescribed body of dogmas to lead and instruct. When
the Gnostic teachers formed their schools and attracted disciples unto
themselves they had no thought of opposing the Church. These teach-
ers identified as Christians and, as noted above, both Marcion and
Valentinus presented themselves before the Roman bishops. Thus, to
reiterate our earlier discussion, the rigid typological distinctions that
have been made between the orthodox and Gnostic groups were not
generally valid in the beginning stages, for the two were not as dis-
cretely separate as they were to become. It was only as the polemic
grew among the Church Fathers that the differences became more
pronounced. Wilson has written:
At this stage the situation is still fluid, the lines of division not yet
clearly drawn. … it is by no means uncommon for “heretic” and
“orthodox” to live in peaceful coexistence for a period, for the men
of one generation to tolerate with equanimity ideas and concep-
tions, theories and doctrines, which a later generation will de-
nounce as heretical. It is only in the light of subsequent
developments that we can determine which was to become the
“orthodox” position and which the “heretical.” We have therefore to
guard against the danger of judging by the standards of a later age,
of transferring the clear distinctions of a later period back into a sit-
uation in which the final cleavage had not yet taken place and the
full implications of a particular theory had not yet been realized
(Wilson, p. 32).
Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-211) is one example of a theolo-
gian who bridged this orthodox-Gnostic gap. Considered by some a
Father of the Church and by others a near heretic, he wrote:
For in the doctrines of the schools of heretics, in so far as they have
not become totally obtuse … are to be found many things which,
dissimilar as they appear, agree in category with the Wholeness of
truth (Strom. I.xiii.57, in Nigg, p. 28).

91
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

Such bridging led to the German theologian Hornschuh’s coining of

the term “semi-gnosis,” which stood “in the midst between early
Catholicism on the one hand and extreme Gnosis on the other”
(in NTA II, p. 84).
The mid-second-century “Gospel of Peter” exemplifies this diffi-
culty in categorization. Its mythological rather than historical treatment
of the death and resurrection of Jesus led Maurer to state that these
references
show no articulated Gnostic theology, but they indicate that such a
theology is already on the way, since the representation is taken out
of the framework of the divine act of revelation and set in that of a
Gnostic myth. Thus the Gospel of Peter stands on the one hand
through its comparative sobriety nearer to the canonical Gospels
than to the later Gnostic embellishments, but on the other hand it
prepares a way for them (in NTA I, p. 182).
Schneemelcher and Schaferdiek, introducing the five apocryphal
(i.e., non-canonical) “Acts of the Apostles” (John, Peter, Paul,
Andrew, and Thomas) which date from the second and third centuries,
have written:
The circles from which the apocryphal Acts took their origin have
been … a subject of sharp dispute. The controversy on this prob-
lem has been handicapped by the fact that Gnosticism and primi-
tive Catholicism have been contrasted as if they were fixed
quantities, and the origin of the apocryphal Acts has been sought in
terms of an “Either-Or”. But the boundaries between the two phe-
nomena, Gnosticism and primitive Catholicism, remained fluctuat-
ing for a considerable period … (in NTA II, pp. 176-77).
The second-century “Acts of Andrew,” which we shall explore later,
exhibits some definite Gnostic characteristics; e.g., a dualism (though
not the radical cosmic dualism we find in true Gnostic systems), a cer-
tain antipathy towards a world seen as transitory and illusory, and a
goal of realizing one’s true being by returning to the One. That these
Gnostic elements could be incorporated in a text that originated within
the existing Church of the second half of the second century is yet
again another example of the fluid boundaries between Gnostic and
orthodox Christians. These elements, as we have seen, could also re-
flect the Middle Platonism that influenced some of the orthodox.

92
 Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

The late-second-century “Acts of Peter,” most decidedly not Gnostic,

nonetheless exhibits definite Gnostic traits of extreme asceticism and
docetism, as seen in the following teachings:
And hearing [from Peter] the preaching of purity and all the words
of the Lord they were cut to the heart and agreed with each other to
remain in purity renouncing intercourse … . And many other
women besides fell in love with the doctrine of purity and sepa-
rated from their husbands, and men too ceased to sleep with their
own wives since they wished to worship God in sobriety and
purity. … You who hope in Christ, for you the cross must not be
this thing that is visible; for this passion [Peter’s imminent martyr-
dom], like the passion of Christ, is something other than this which
is visible [i.e., reflecting the docetic view that the crucifixion was
illusory] (APt II.9.33,34,37 in NTA II, pp. 316-17,319).
Finally, the “Acts of Thomas” presents the interesting phenomenon
of a decidedly Gnostic work of third-century Syria that found favor
with the Church, which then proceeded to Christianize it one or two
centuries later by deleting the offensive Gnostic elements and substi-
tuting more orthodox Catholic teaching. We shall examine some of
these changes in Part II-A.

2. The Emerging Polarity: “We – They”

The fluid situation, of course, did not remain this way, a loss for all
Christians, “orthodox” and “heterodox” alike. Without the ego’s in-
vestment in separateness, all Christian groups could have remained
united in their devotion to Jesus, yet accepting of differing interpreta-
tions. Gnosticism could have infused the Catholic understanding with
a greater profundity, while the orthodox could have grounded the
speculative Gnostic theorizing in a more compassionate application of
the gospel to everyday living. Brown has penetratingly criticized the
“we-they” mentality of the Johannine corpus, suggesting that the
Church’s hatred of its opponents found its justification in John’s gospel
and epistles which, in effect, sowed the seeds for the later struggles be-
tween the orthodox and heterodox. He comments:
Here we come upon the great anomaly of the First Epistle. No
more eloquent voice is raised in the NT [New Testament] for love
within the Christian brotherhood and sisterhood; … Yet that same
voice is extremely bitter in condemning opponents who had been

93
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

members of his community and were so no longer. They are de-

monic, antichrists, false prophets, and serve as the embodiment of
eschatological lawlessness or iniquity … . Although the members
of the community are exhorted to love one another, the way they
should treat dissenters is illustrated by 2 Jn 10-11: “If anyone
comes to you who does not bring this teaching, do not receive him
into your house, for whoever greets him shares the evil he
does.” … The Matthean Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray
for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44), but there is no such
maxim in the Johannine tradition. The command to love is not in
terms of love of neighbor … but in terms of loving one another …
and John 15:13-15 allows that “one another” to be interpreted in
terms of those who are disciples of Christ and obey the command-
ments. The attitude of the Johannine Jesus who refused to pray for
the world (17:9) is easily translated in the First Epistle (5:16) into
a refusal to pray for other Christians who have committed the
deadly sin by apostasizing from the Johannine community. …
When we discussed the Gospel, we found a sense of estrange-
ment, of “us” against “them,” especially toward those who had
made the Johannine Christians suffer. As understandable as this
sense is, its dualistic articulation is dangerous; and in fact it en-
couraged Christians of later centuries to see a dualistic division of
humankind into believers (Christians) and non-believers, into an
“us” who are saved and a “them” who are not. Inevitably such a
dualistic outlook will shift over to divisions within the “us,” and
the cannons that once pointed outwards to protect the fortress of
truth against the world will be spun around to point inwards
against those betraying the truth from within (for whom there is al-
ways a more special hatred). Those who believe that God has given
His people the biblical books as a guide should recognize that part
of the guidance is to learn from the dangers attested in them as
well as from their great insights. … the author of the Epistles did
the church a great service in preserving for it the Fourth Gospel; he
did this by showing that the Gospel did not have to be read the
way the secessionists [i.e., the proto-Gnostics] were reading it. In
his struggle against the secessionists he had to take stern means.
Nevertheless, one must recognize that his defense of the truth as
he saw it was at a price. In his attitude toward the secessionists in
a passage like 2 Jn 10-11 he supplied fuel for those Christians of
all times who feel justified in hating other Christians for the love
of God (Brown, Community of the Beloved Disciple, pp. 132-35).

94
 Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

On one level, therefore, John’s gospel was written to counteract the

groups that the Johannine Church identified as threatening, as Brown
explains. However, this included not only dissident Christians, such as
the emerging Gnostic tendencies within the Church but, among others,
the Jewish groups that opposed these early Christians. Thus, we read
in John these words of Jesus to the Jews:
You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am
not of this world. I have told you already: You will die in your sins.
Yes, if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins. …
If God were your father, you would love me, since I have come here
from God … . Do you know why you cannot take in what I say? It is
because you are unable to understand my language. The devil is
your father, and you prefer to do what your father wants. … A child
of God listens to the words of God; if you refuse to listen, it is be-
cause you are not God’s children (Jn 8:23-24,42-44,47).
Only the most conservative fundamentalist would maintain today that
these were the actual words of the Prince of Peace, whose message of
God’s love for all His children literally saved these children from the
ego’s belief in the “world, the flesh, and the devil,” and the ego’s God
who seeks to punish us for our mistaken beliefs.
It would take us beyond the theme of this book to discuss the
Johannine literature in any greater detail. However, this literature is in-
structive not only to illustrate the interface of the early Church and
Gnosticism, but also to point out the “we-they” mentality that Brown
has isolated in the gospel and epistles, and how it has provided “divine”
justification for a theology of hatred. Obviously it was a practice that
both sides embraced, to the detriment of all who through the centuries
sought to follow the loving example and teachings of Jesus.

3. One Church: The Bible and the Apostolic Tradition

This defensiveness and fear of the Gnostic threat led to the estab-
lishing of the regula fidei, the rule of faith, as the means of establishing
once and for all the norm for the true interpretation of the gospel. Such
a rule, being “divinely inspired,” automatically rejected all dissident
teachings as false or heretical, originating from the devil.
Schneemelcher summarized the situation:

95
 Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

This is bound up with the historical development of the Church

from a multiplicity into a visible unity. In the early period the
multiplicity of doctrines and opinions was no hindrance to faith in
the one ecclesia catholica [Catholic Church], which certainly was
an element of the faith. But in the 2nd century, as a defense
against an all-subversive syncretism, it became necessary to
search for uniform norms for life and doctrine, for the compass of
Scripture and for worship, and thus to make membership of the
one Church visible and manifest. In the course of this develop-
ment it came about in various places and countries that what hith-
erto had been recognized as “orthodox,” i.e. as Christian, now all
at once became “heretical” and had to be rejected. As a designa-
tion that could express unmistakably what ecclesiastically was
now obligatory the word “canon” [given in Greek, meaning
“rule”] presented itself (in NTA I, p. 23).
In distinction from the first-century Paul, for example, whose stan-
dard for God’s truth was his own experience of Jesus, the third-century
Christian’s standard was set by the Church. By the middle of the fourth
century the books of the Old and New Testaments, as we know them
today, were firmly established as canonical (in NTA I, p. 24), the cul-
mination of the process that began two centuries earlier.
The guiding force in this “counter-Gnostic” movement was Bishop
Irenaeus, who decided in the latter half of the second century that the
best defense against the perceived Gnostic threat was to choose those
gospels and epistles that corresponded to the Church’s understanding
of Jesus and God’s plan of salvation, and to announce that all other
texts were false or apocryphal. Perkins discusses this action:
The brilliance of Irenaeus’ counterattack was to see that such argu-
ments [based upon each individual Gnostic’s gnosis] have no con-
clusion and to move the locus of authority onto new ground. This
move required that the teaching community be associated with a
smaller group which had come to have responsibility for Christian
churches. It also required what they were to teach to be regulated
by a fixed, normative text that would be subject to certain stan-
dards of interpretation. The full flowering of this move was not yet
realized in Irenaeus’ time. But it fit into the larger pattern of reli-
gious developments that would dominate the third through the fifth
centuries (Perkins, p. 203).

96
 Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

The Church’s need to solidify the Christian message was of course

heightened by the ending of the age of the apostles—presumed to be
the only authentic witnesses to Jesus—and the increased proliferation
of the Christian message. Schneemelcher continues:
Here lies the proper starting point of the formation of the canon,
but here there must also be seen the beginnings of the association
of the problem of the canon with that apostolicity. The need of gen-
uine authority and of certainty in the proclamation led to the for-
mation of a canon. Only what in the opinion of the churches in the
2nd century had authority was canonized and this authority was de-
termined by apostolicity (in NTA I, p. 37).
As each side vied for the correctness of its position, it sought
authority in the apostolic tradition. The Church Fathers accused the
Gnostics of claiming that they had special and superior knowledge that
had been given to them alone, the “perfect ones,” and lifted them
above the benighted Church faithful. Irenaeus wrote:
Jesus, they [the Valentinian Marcosians] say, spoke in a mystery to
his disciples and apostles privately, and charged them to hand these
things on to the worthy and those who assented. … [The disciples
did not understand Jesus, but after his resurrection] to a few of his
disciples whom he knew to be capable of such great mysteries he
taught these things … . They claim that they have more knowledge
than all others, and that they alone have attained the greatness of
the knowledge of the ineffable power. They claim that they are in
the heights beyond every power … (Adv. haer. I.25.5; 30.14; 13.6,
in F I, pp. 38,93,202).
According to Irenaeus, as well as many of the Church Fathers, the
source of all Gnostic heresy was Simon Magus, Peter’s opponent men-
tioned in the biblical Acts of the Apostles.
All those who in any way corrupt the truth, and harm the teaching
of the church, are the disciples and successors of Simon Magus of
Samaria. … They put forth, indeed, the name of Jesus Christ as a
kind of lure, but in many ways they introduce the impieties of
Simon … spreading to their hearers the bitter and malignant poi-
son of the great serpent (Satan), the great author of apostasy
(Adv. haer. I.27.4, in Pagels, p. 46).
The Gnostics’ appeal to the apostolic tradition was to a more eso-
teric source of revelation, which usually included only those apostles

97
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

specifically called out by the Lord as able to receive his gnosis—Peter,

James, John, Philip, and Paul were among the Gnostic favorites—not
to mention those special ones who were able to receive this secret
teaching. Basilides asserted a connection with Peter through Glaucias,
an alleged interpreter of Peter, while Valentinus claimed to have been
instructed into the secret teachings of Jesus by Theudas, a disciple of
Paul. The late-second-century Clement of Alexandria, one of the first
and foremost of the “orthodox” Christian Gnostics, also reflects the
Gnostic apostolic tradition of transmission of the secret teachings,
which he set down from the
instructive lectures of those holy and remarkable men whom it was
his [Clement’s] privilege to hear and who held fast the true “tradi-
tion of the blessed doctrine” originating directly from the holy
apostles Peter, James, John and Paul, and received by them “as by
a son from his father.” “And by God’s grace they reach into our
time to sow in us those apostolic seeds inherited from the
fathers … . This knowledge has descended from the apostles in un-
broken sequence to a few only through oral tradition.” Clement
thus claims to have access to secret teaching traditions … . Only
few of the believers of the succeeding generations, those namely
“who are capable of grasping it” were found worthy of initiation
into the secret wisdom. To the rank and file of Christians the ap-
proach to it is closed (compiled and paraphrased by Hornschuh,
in NTA II, pp. 79-80; my italics).
The third-century Gnostic “Gospel of Bartholomew” contains a
strong statement of this theme of “a few only” who understood the true
gospel. It is interesting to note that the string of name calling, so com-
mon in Church attacks on the Gnostics, is here used aggressively by a
Gnostic author against the Church:
Jesus answered him: Bartholomew, my beloved, entrust them [the
revealed mysteries] to all who are faithful and can keep them for
themselves. For there are some who are worthy of them; but there
are also others to whom they ought not to be entrusted, for they are
boasters, drunkards, proud, merciless, idolaters, seducers to forni-
cation, slanderers, teachers of falsehood, and doers of all the works
of the devil, and therefore they are not worthy that they should be
entrusted to them (GB IV.67, in NTA I, pp. 501-502).
In their own blindness, however, the Church Fathers failed to
realize that they were guilty of the same “spiritual specialness” that

98
 Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

was reflected in the gospel of Bartholomew. They believed that their

special status as bishops and church leaders was conferred upon them
by Jesus himself, through the line of apostolic succession. This was
clearly expressed in a number of texts, scriptural and apostolic, which
reflect the importance placed on the oral apostolic tradition. Hornschuh
has summarized this principle, highlighting the teaching of A Course
in Miracles: projection makes perception. Wanting to believe that there
was a single line extending from Jesus to themselves, the Fathers per-
ceived the gospels and epistles to be expressing a unity:
In view of the existing differences in doctrine, of the great number
of tendencies and opinions, as also of the increasing Gnostic peril,
recourse to the beginnings of the Christian faith seemed to provide
the only sure guarantee of a verdict as to the truth. This thought
took for granted the supposition that originally Christianity had
been of a dogmatically uniform mould. In the beginning there was
unity; subsequently multiplicity developed as a depravation of
what was historically original. The recovery and full establishment
of unity could therefore take place only through a return to what
was early, i.e. by way of a faithful bringing back of the original
mould, consequently of the Christian faith in the form in which it
was revealed by the Lord. … On the basis of the conception of tra-
dition thus characterized there grew up in the second century the
doctrine of an apostolic succession of bishops. An attempt was
made to connect the tradition backwards by drawing up a series of
bishops for each of the chief places, and so to bind the present to
the beginning . … [i.e.] an actual connection of the doctrine with
the apostles; these lists prove that the church is the place where the
original truth is taught (in NTA II, pp. 74-75; my italics).
In the canonical Acts of the Apostles, Luke (the same Luke who au-
thored the third gospel) states that the early Christians “remained faith-
ful to the teaching of the apostles … . The many miracles and signs
worked through the apostles made a deep impression on everyone”
(Ac 2:42-43). The letter of Jude exhorts the faithful to remember
“what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ told you to expect”
(Jude 17), while “Peter” writes:
That is why I am continually recalling the same truths to you … .
I am sure it is my duty … to keep stirring you up with reminders … .
and I shall take great care that after my own departure you will still
have a means to recall these things to memory. It was not any

99
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

cleverly invented myths that we were repeating when we brought

you the knowledge of the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ; we had seen his majesty for ourselves (2 Pt 1:12-13,15-16).
Clement, Bishop of Rome (not to be confused with the later Clement
of Alexandria), wrote to the Corinthians at the end of the first century
in the earliest extant non-biblical statement of this apostolic philosophy
of the Church:
The Apostles have preached to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Je-
sus Christ from God. Christ therefore was sent by God, the Apos-
tles by Christ; so both were orderly sent, according to the will of
God. For having received their command … they went
abroad … preaching through countries and cities, they appointed
the first fruits of their conversion to be bishops and ministers over
such as should afterwards believe, having first proved them by the
Spirit. … So … our Apostles knew by our Lord Jesus Christ, that
there should contentions arise, upon account of the ministry. And
therefore having a perfect fore-knowledge of this, they appointed
persons, as we have before said, and then gave direction, how,
when they should die, other chosen and approved men should suc-
ceed in their ministry (Clement, “First Epistle to Corinthians”
XIX.1-5,16-17, in Lost Books, pp. 131-32).
At the beginning of the second century St. Ignatius, Bishop of
Antioch, wrote a series of letters upholding the same principle. To the
Trallians he wrote:
I exhort you therefore … that ye use none but Christian nourish-
ment; abstaining from pasture which is of another kind, I mean
heresy. For they that are heretics, confound together the doctrine of
Jesus Christ, with their own poison: whilst they seem worthy of
belief … . Wherefore guard yourselves against such persons. …
continue inseparable from Jesus Christ our God, and from your
bishop, and from the commands of the Apostles. He that is within
the altar is pure; but he that is without, that is, that does anything
without the bishop, the presbyters, and deacons, is not pure in his
conscience (Ignatius, “Trallians” II.1-2,4-5, in Lost Books, p. 177).
Finally, in his treatise against the Gnostics, St. Irenaeus, within a
declaration of the Catholic faith which became more formally adopted
by the later Church councils as the true believer’s creed, made the fol-
lowing statement of the one church:

100
 Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

The Church … throughout the world … carefully preserves the faith

that she received from the Apostles and from their disciples, be-
lieving in one God, the Father Almighty … . The Church … having
received this message and this faith, diligently guards it, as though
she inhabited but one house; and her faith is conformable to these
doctrines, as though she had but one soul and one heart; and she
preaches these things harmoniously, and teaches and hands them
on, as though she had but one mouth. For, dissimilar as the
languages of the world may be, still the power of the tradition is
one and the same … . But as the sun, the creature of God, is one
and the same in all the world, such also is the preaching of the
truth in its universal phase, enlightening all men who wish to ap-
proach the knowledge of the truth. He that among the Bishops of
the Church is mightiest in the word speaks no other doctrine than
this, for none is above his Master … (Adv. haer. I.10.1,2, in Man-
sel, pp. 241-42; my italics).
Moreover, we next see Irenaeus giving the most succinct statement of
this principle that was rapidly becoming the Church doctrine:
One must obey the priests who are in the church—that is … those
who possess the succession from the apostles. For they receive
simultaneously with the episcopal succession the sure gift of
truth. … One must hold in suspicion others who depart from the
primitive succession, and assemble themselves in any place at all.
These one must recognize as heretics … or as schismatics … or as
hypocrites. All of these have fallen from the truth (Adv. haer.
IV.26.2, in Pagels, p. 45).

4. “We – They”: The Church

Armed now, as it perceived itself, with apostolic justification for
the truth of its position, the orthodox Church launched an embarrass-
ing barrage of vituperation against the Gnostics. Hanratty has written
that
since the many-sided heresy threatened the faith and order of the
Church, it is understandable that care was taken in the suppression
and destruction of the theological devotional texts which were com-
posed by the Gnostics. … even more crucial were the apologetic
concerns which led the Fathers to highlight those features of the
Gnostics’ speculation which threatened the unity and continuity of
the Church. For polemical purposes too, the Fathers concentrated

101
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

on the fractious nature of the movement and on the exorbitant

claims of the most spectacular Gnostic teachers. Yet, the Fathers al-
ways insisted that the numerous Gnostic sects shared certain funda-
mental philosophico-religious attitudes and ideas which were
incompatible with the apostolic tradition (Hanratty, pp. 214-15).
Jean Guitton is an example of a Catholic writer who has preserved
his objectivity and has, in fact, exposed the Church Father’s preoccu-
pation with the “heretical” thinking of their opponents, providing
some telling comments about the heresiologists’ attitude towards the
doctrine of their “enemy” and their “mystery of iniquity”:
… in most of the ancient treatises, even in … [some contemporary]
works … the passages that deal with gnosticism spread out before us
an array of absurd and extravagant doctrines, and read like a cata-
logue of theological monstrosities (Guitton, p. 52).
Of these writers, Guitton states,
the heresy, like a Platonic idea, seems to have always existed in
the realms of shadows and temptations; as though it had come
down to earth by settling in an agitated and obstinate brain to be-
come visible among men’s minds … it was the clandestine history
of all conspiracies; orthodoxy has exposed to the bright light of
day a traitor who had always existed in its bosom (Guitton, p. 14).
Abundant examples will be found throughout the heresiological lit-
erature cited in Part II-A, so we shall confine ourselves here to only a
few illustrations. Eusebius (ca. A.D. 264-339), the first true though
hardly objective Church historian, wrote:
Like brilliant lamps the churches were now shining throughout the
world, and faith in our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ was flourish-
ing among all mankind, when the devil who hates what is good, as
the enemy of truth, ever most hostile to man’s salvation, turned all
his devices against the church. Formerly he had used persecutions
from without as his weapon against her, but now that he was ex-
cluded from this he employed wicked men and sorcerers, like
baleful weapons and ministers of destruction against the soul, and
conducted his campaign by other measures, plotting by every
means that sorcerers and deceivers might assume the same name
as our religion and at one time lead to the depth of destruction
those of the faithful whom they caught, and at others, by the deeds
which they undertook, might turn away from the path to the saving

102
 Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

word those who were ignorant of the faith (Eccles. Hist. IV.7,
in Rudolph, pp. 275-76).
Eusebius then turned to the Gnostic heresy beginning with the
“sorcerer” Simon Magus; from his disciple, Menander, came Saturninus
and Basilides like “a double-tongued and double-headed serpent,” who
founded “ungodly heretical schools”; and on and on Eusebius’ “history”
went.
Bishop Irenaeus, in the preface of his five-volume denunciation of
the Gnostic heretics, stated that its purpose was to
set forth the views of those who are now teaching heresy … to
show how absurd and inconsistent with the truth are their
statements … I do this so that … you may urge all those with whom
you are connected to avoid such an abyss of madness and of blas-
phemy against Christ (Adv. haer., in Pagels, p. xvii).
And later:
… in the same way have I … shown … what is wicked, deceitful,
seductive, and pernicious, connected with the school of the
Valentinians, and all those other heretics who promulgate wicked
opinions respecting the Demiurge [the Creator God of the Old
Testament] … (Adv. haer. II.19.8, in Layton, p. 152).
Bishop Hippolytus, writing in the early part of the third century,
claimed that the theories of the heretics were “stolen from the inven-
tions of heathen men” (Mansel, p. 275); while Tertullian, the late-
second- to early-third-century convert who became among the most
vociferous of the heresiologists, and then later, ironically, joined the
heretical Montanist sect, viciously depicted the Gnostics in the fol-
lowing passage, as summarized by Mansel:
… our duty is to avoid them as we would some deadly
sickness … they are the offspring of a perverse will and idle curi-
osity, doctrines of demons, borrowed from heathen philosophy,
with which Christians ought to have nothing to do. … the Church
has a rule of faith to be accepted without further seeking. … the
faith was committed by Christ to the Apostles and their succes-
sors, and no other teachers should be sought than those who were
instructed in all truth by Christ and the Holy Ghost, and who
taught no secret doctrine beyond that which has been handed
down by the Church. … [The heretics] not being Christians, they

103
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

have no share in the Christian Scriptures; … they have perverted

and mutilated the Scriptures; … their teaching is from the Devil,
introducing profane imitations of Christian rites (in Mansel,
pp. 251-53).
The Gnostic groups of the aforementioned Epiphanius seemed to
be an amalgam of various sects, some of which already were the prod-
uct of the process of deterioration, far from the speculative heights of
the great second-century teachers. His principal work, the “Medicine
Chest” (Panarion) led to Epiphanius being recognized as the
“Patriarch of Orthodoxy.” Rudolph describes his opus this way:
The basic idea of this book is to portray all the heretics as fierce
and venomous wild beasts (especially as serpents), whose poison
endangers the purity of the faith; in its defense and as an antidote
for those already bitten he offers his “medicine chest.” … His at-
tempt to adduce as many sects or names of sects as possible [eighty
in all, based on the eighty concubines mentioned in The Song of
Songs, 6:8] makes him act quite uncritically in his treatment of the
facts, and even seduces him into invention and quite improbable re-
ports. By this he brought the history of early Christian heresy into
great confusion, and critical research has first laboriously had to
separate the wheat from the chaff, a task which even today is not
complete. … For Epiphanius all heretics are … “worthless” and
“evil-minded”; their apostasy from the pure apostolic doctrine of
the church condemns them to destruction (Rudolph, pp. 19-20).
The “Epistula Apostolorum” (“Letter of the Apostles”), dating from
the early part of the second century, was a strong anti-Gnostic (yet
nonetheless docetic) text as can be seen in these excerpts:
[It] was written because of the false apostles Simon and Cerinthus,
that no one should follow them—for in them is deceit with which
they kill men—that you may be established and not waver, not be
shaken and not turn away from the word of the Gospel that you have
heard. As we have heard it, kept it, and have written it for the whole
world, so we entrust it to you … (Epistula Apostolorum, in NTA I,
pp. 191-92).
Interestingly enough, the “Epistula” also reflected the Gnostic myth of
the descent and ascent of Jesus (see Chapter 6). The strange forms in
which this myth expressed itself evidently led to this controversial text
being suppressed by the Church, in such an effective manner that its

104
 Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

existence was not even known to scholars until its discovery at the end
of the nineteenth century.
The ninth-century Photius described the five Acts of the Apostles
—many of which contain strong Gnostic teachings—with words such
as: “corrupt,” “stuffed with foolishness, inconsistency and incon-
gruity,” “invents foolish absurdities,” “concocts senseless and childish
(stories)”, and concludes:
In short this book contains innumerable childish, improbable, ill-
conceived, false, foolish, self-contradictory, profane and godless
things; and if anyone called it the source and mother of all heresies
he would not be far from the truth (in NTA II, pp. 178-79).
These Acts, probably organized by the Manicheans in the fourth cen-
tury, also brought down the expressed condemnation of Pope Leo the
Great in the fifth century:
The apocryphal writings, however, which under the names of the
Apostles contain a hotbed of manifold perversity, should not only
be forbidden but altogether removed and burnt with fire (in NTA II,
p. 193).
One of the most Gnostic of these Acts, as we shall consider in Part II-A,
is John, and this led to the following pronouncement of the Nicene
Council of A.D. 787:
No one is to copy this book: not only so, but we consider that it de-
serves to be consigned to the fire (in NTA II, p. 193).
The late-second-century “Acts of Paul,” including apocryphal let-
ters from and to the Corinthians, is decidedly not Gnostic and, in fact,
takes a strong position against various Gnostic ideas, including the re-
jection of the Old Testament, denial of the physical resurrection,
docetism, and tendencies towards libertinism. This text provides still
another example of the vituperative vengeance the Church felt towards
the Gnostics who disagreed with them. The Corinthians write to Paul,
complaining of Gnostic teachers who seem to reflect the teachings of
Basilides and Marcion:
Two men are come to Corinth named Simon and Cleobius, who
pervert the faith of many through pernicious words, which thou shalt
put to the test. For never have we heard such words, either from thee
or from the other apostles; but what we have received from thee and
from them, that we hold fast (AP 8.I.2, in NTA II, p. 374).

105
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

Paul responds:
Since I am in many tribulations, I do not wonder that the teach-
ings of the evil one are so quickly gaining ground. … And who-
ever abides by the rule which he received through the blessed
prophets and the holy Gospel, he shall receive a reward … . But he
who turns aside therefrom—there is fire with him and with those
who go before him in the way, since they are men without God, a
generation of vipers; from these turn ye away in the power of the
Lord … (AP 8.3.2,36,37, in NTA II, pp. 375,377).
In the fourth- to fifth-century non-canonical “Apocalypse of Paul,”
in which the apostle is given a vision of Paradise and hell, we find, an-
tedating Dante by several centuries, that the Church’s enemy (here, of
course, the Gnostic) is confined to the fiery inferno:
Then when the well was opened there came up immediately a dis-
agreeable and very evil smell which surpassed all the punish-
ments. And I looked into the well and saw fiery masses burning on
all sides… . And I said [to the angel]: Who are these, sir, who are
sent into this well? And he said to me: They are those who have
not confessed that Christ came in the flesh and that the Virgin
Mary bore him, and who say that the bread of the Eucharist and the
cup of blessing are not the body and blood of Christ (ApocPaul
V.41, in NTA II, pp. 785-86).
The Manicheans certainly received their share of vituperation as
well, as seen in these three brief examples: Aphraates, a fourth-century
Syrian Church Father, refers to the Manicheans as
the children of darkness, the doctrine of the wicked Mani, who
dwell in darkness like serpents, and practice Chaldeism [i.e., as-
trology], the doctrine of Babel (Enc. of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 8,
p. 394).
Augustine—who again was first a follower of Mani, and then a con-
vert to Christianity and later Bishop of Hippo—refers to the “insane
doctrine” of Mani (in Haardt, p. 341), and, in what is probably the ear-
liest diatribe against the Manicheans, a parish letter from Theonas,
Bishop of Alexandria (282-300), we read:
As I stated above, I have quoted this briefly from a document
of the Manichaean delusion, which came into my hands, so that
we may be on guard against those who penetrate into houses with

106
 Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

deceiving and lying words, and especially against women, who

call them (the Manicheans) Elect, and hold them in honor, appar-
ently because they require their menstruation blood for the abom-
ination of their delusion (in Haardt, p. 336).
As indicated in the Preface, the maligning hardly ended in the an-
cient period. Writing in the late nineteenth century, the influential
German scholar Harnack, who did some of the important pioneering
work in contemporary Gnostic scholarship from the perspective of a
believer in the New Testament, stated, as reported by Pagels, that the
Gnostics “distorted the Christian message, and propagated false,
hybrid forms of Christian teaching [meaning the Platonic influence]”
by what he referred to as the “acute Hellenizing of Christianity”
(in Pagels, pp. xxix-xxx). The contemporary British scholar Nock
agreed, asserting that Gnosticism was “Platonism run wild” (in Pagels,
p. xxx). Wilson has cited another British scholar, Robert Law, who ob-
served that the emergence of Gnosticism “forms one of the dimmest
chapters in Church history” (Wilson, p. 1). The highly influential
twentieth-century German scholar Rudolph Bultmann, in discussing
the influence of Gnostic ideas in first-century Christianity, not to men-
tion Judaism, writes also from the perspective of the orthodox Church:
Christian evangelism was thus faced from the beginning with the
danger of absorbing not only pieces of Gnostic terminology, but
also Gnostic types of problem and speculation, and the danger was
increased by the fact that Jewish circles were already infected
(Bultmann, Gnosis, p. 41; my italics).
Claude Tresmontant, a French Catholic twentieth-century philoso-
pher, dismisses the Gnostics in this way:
It is the character of reason, balance and wisdom which impresses
me personally, in the great stream of patristic thought. Faced with
systems that depreciate and despise matter, the body, the world
and creation, Christian thought teaches the excellence of this
creation, and rejects the notions accepted by modern psycho-
pathology: these are notions that trouble the sick. Someday
Gnosticism and Manicheism should be subjected to psycho-
analysis. The psychologist and psychotherapist should realize that
Christian orthodoxy is found on the side of balance, wisdom and
sanity (Tresmontant, pp. 120-21).

107
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

Finally the contemporary Hanratty, writing in a two-part article dis-

cussing the Gnostics, but from the point of view of the Church looking
at an ancient heresy and its influence, falls into the same polemic ex-
aggeration as did the earlier Church Fathers. He writes:
The Gnostics frequently taught that the process of regeneration and
divinization was accomplished by astrological, magical and al-
chemical techniques which they borrowed from various esoteric
traditions. Complementing the Fathers’ denunciations of these
techniques, there are extant accounts of the use of magical “pass-
words” and “seals” … (Hanratty, p. 289).
The reader unfamiliar with the Gnostic literature would understand-
ably find little appeal in such descriptions, as well one might who
knew nothing of the often profound theological and Christological dis-
cussions found in the great Gnostic schools.

5. “We – They”: The Gnostics

These ego beliefs and motives, however, were not restricted to the
early Church. One can see in many second-century Gnostics the same
tendency to attack and contemptuously exclude the other side as we
find in the patristic sources. According to Irenaeus, although hardly an
objective source, the Valentinian Marcus and his disciples believed
that “none could equal the extent of their knowledge, not even if you
were to mention Paul or Peter, or any other of the apostles” (Adv. haer.
I.13.6, in F I, p. 202); the Ophites stated that the disciples did not rec-
ognize nor understand Jesus:
When the disciples saw that he had risen, they did not know him;
they did not even know Christ himself, through whom he rose from
the dead. … the greatest error which arose among his disciples was
that they thought he had risen in a worldly body, and did not know
that “flesh and blood do not possess the kingdom of God”
(1 Co 15:50) (Adv. haer. I.30.13, in F I, p. 92).
In the apocryphal “Acts of Peter” we hear the infidel Simon Magus,
enemy to Peter, quote Jesus as saying: “Those who are with me have
not understood me” (APt 4.10, in NTA II, pp. 292-93); while the anti-
Jewish Marcion “can see only people [the apostles] who in their
indiscretion have adulterated the teaching of Jesus with Judaism”
(Bauer, in NTA II, p. 41).

108
 Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

The Nag Hammadi texts likewise furnish examples of such Gnostic

vituperation. The third-century “Apocalypse of Peter” reflects a rather
advanced stage of the conflict between the Gnostics and the orthodox
Church. In this particular Gnostic circle Peter is seen as recipient of the
gnosis revealed by Jesus:
But you yourself, Peter, become perfect in accordance with your
name with myself, the one who chose you, because from you I
have established a base for the remnant [the Gnostics] whom I have
summoned to knowledge (ApocPt VII.71.15-21, in NHL, p. 340).
This remnant is contrasted to the orthodox who will
praise the men of the propagation of falsehood, those who will
come after you. And they will cleave to the name of a dead man
[i.e., worshipping the crucified body of Jesus instead of his resur-
rected spirit], thinking … that they will fall into a name of error,
and into the hand of an evil, cunning man and a manifold dogma,
and they will be ruled heretically. … Some who do not understand
mystery speak of things which they do not understand, but they
will boast that the mystery of the truth is theirs alone. And in
haughtiness they shall grasp at pride. … And there shall be others
of those who are outside our number who name themselves bishop
and also deacons, as if they have received their authority from
God. They bend themselves under the judgment of the leaders.
Those people are dry canals (ApocPt VII.74.10-22; 76.27-35; 77.1;
79.22-31, in NHL, pp. 341-43).
This last phrase, “dry canals,” is taken from 2 Peter 2:17, where the
orthodox Church of the early second century is decrying false proph-
ets and teachers, a group which certainly would have included the
Gnostics, who here are using the “enemy’s” own words against it.
The author of “The Testimony of Truth,” probably dating from the
third century, likewise attacks the orthodox Christians:
The foolish—thinking in their heart that if they confess, “We are
Christians,” in word only but not with power, while giving
themselves over to ignorance, to a human death, not knowing
where they are going nor who Christ is, thinking that they will live,
when they are really in error—hasten towards the principalities
and the authorities [i.e., the evil rulers of the world] (Test. Tr. IX.
31.23–32.5, in NHL, p. 407).

109
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

6. Martyrdom
A major issue on which the orthodox Church and the Gnostics tan-
gled was martyrdom. Identifying with the sufferings of Jesus was
clearly central to the orthodox Church’s understanding of the gospel,
for it was seen as the ultimate expression of the disciples’ love for their
Lord. Such suffering, whether in the form of the ascetic turning away
from the pleasures of the world, or actively seeking to suffer and die in
the name of Jesus, was all seen as the Will of God.
One of the scriptural cornerstones of this apostolic tradition of suf-
fering martyrdom was the boastings of Paul to the Corinthians,
whereby he proved his superiority over other Christian witnesses, and
unfortunately lay the quantitative standard for future Christians to
evaluate theirs and others’ fidelity to Jesus:
… because I have worked harder, I have been sent to prison more of-
ten, and whipped so many times more, often almost to death. Five
times I had the thirty-nine lashes from the Jews; three I have been
beaten with sticks; once I was stoned; three times I have been ship-
wrecked and once adrift in the open sea for a night and a day. Con-
stantly travelling, I have been in danger from rivers and in danger
from brigands, in danger from my own people and in danger from
pagans; in danger in the towns, in danger in the open country, dan-
ger at sea and danger from so-called brothers. I have worked and
labored, often without sleep; I have been hungry and thirsty and of-
ten starving; I have been in the cold without clothes (2 Co 11:23-27).
St. Ignatius of Antioch proved worthy of Paul’s example, as wit-
nessed to in his rather graphic letter to the Romans, written while in
Syria awaiting death in the amphitheater:
Wherefore ye cannot do me a greater kindness, than to suffer me to
be sacrificed unto God, now that the altar is already prepared … . I
am the wheat of God; and I shall be ground by the teeth of the wild
beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. … [by my suf-
fering] I shall then become the freeman of Jesus Christ, and shall
rise free. … Let fire, and the cross; let the companies of wild
beasts; let breakings of bones and tearing of members; let the shat-
tering in pieces of the whole body, and all the wicked torments of
the devil come upon me; only let me enjoy Jesus Christ. … Permit
me to imitate the passion of my God (Ignatius, “Romans” I.6; II.3;
II.7; II.13; II.16, in Lost Books, pp. 179-181).

110
 Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

Many Gnostics, too, emphasized martyrdom as being part of salva-

tion. Since they were the targets of the Church Fathers, it logically fol-
lows, as it did for the orthodox who were attacked by the synagogue and
the Romans, that they would lift the experience of a suffering victim-
hood to a spiritual ideal. One representative Gnostic text that took on
the Church is “The Second Treatise of the Great Seth,” a Christian doc-
ument in spite of its title:
After we went forth from our home [the Gnostic believers who
left the Pleroma, i.e. Heaven], and came down to this world … in
bodies, we were hated and persecuted, not only by those who are
ignorant, but also by those who think that they are advancing the
name of Christ, since they were unknowingly empty, not knowing
who they are, like dumb animals. They persecuted those who have
been liberated by me [Jesus], since they hate them—those who,
should they shut their mouth, would weep with a profitless groan-
ing because they did not fully know me (Gr. Seth VII.59.19–60.1,
in NHL, pp. 333-34).
In “The Testimony of Truth” which, as we have already seen, con-
tains a bitter attack on the orthodox Church, we find the following
polemic against the Church’s emphasis on martyrdom:
They are blind guides, like the disciples. … These are empty mar-
tyrs, since they bear witness only to themselves. And yet they are
sick, and they are not able to raise themselves.
But when they are “perfected” with a martyr’s death, this is the
thought that they have within them: “If we deliver ourselves over
to death for the sake of the Name we will be saved.” These mat-
ters are not settled in this way. But through the agency of the wan-
dering stars they say that they have “completed” their futile
“course.” … They do not have the word which gives life (Test. Tr
IX.33.21-27; 34.1-26, in NHL, p. 408).
The late-second-century Heracleon, called by Clement of Alexandria
the “most celebrated of Valentinus’ school,” is more subtle than the
author of “The Testimony of Truth,” though yet unmistakably un-
impressed by the embrace of martyrdom. As reported by Clement,
Heracleon comments on two kinds of confession, or profession of
faith: that made by one’s faith and conduct, the other simply by mouth.
This latter

111
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

the multitudes consider to be the only confession, but not correctly,

for even the hypocrites can make this confession. But it will be
found that this word was not spoken universally. For not all who are
saved made the confession by mouth, among whom are Matthew,
Philip, Thomas, Levi, and many others (Strom. IV.9, in F I, p. 182).
The “multitudes” of course refers to the orthodox Church, and the ref-
erences to the disciples are, as Pagels has pointed out, conspicuous by
the absence of the prominent apostolic martyrs such as Peter and Paul.
Clement continues:
What is universal is the one he [Heracleon] now mentions, the one
in works and action which correspond to faith in him [Jesus] . …
For the latter [confession by mouth] … deny him, since they do not
confess him in action. Only those who live in confession and ac-
tion which conform to him confess “in him,” and in their case he
confesses himself, since he has grasped them and is held by them
so that they can never deny him (ibid.).
Thus, while the orthodox emphasis on martyrdom is never directly at-
tacked, it is certainly devalued by this prominent Gnostic teacher who
considers the daily Gnostic life of witnessing to the truth of Jesus’
words as the higher salvation path.
The Fathers of the Church were obviously not silent on this sub-
ject. Martyrdom struck right at the heart of their understanding of the
Christian message, and they felt that the position of many Gnostic
groups opposing martyrdom, as in the above quotation, was a direct
attack on themselves. This “attack” was perceived to be the strongest
from those Gnostics who adopted a docetic position. This in effect
stated that since Jesus’ body was illusory, not to mention his suffer-
ing, there was nothing with which to identify. The aforementioned
great martyr Ignatius was quite explicit in his repudiation of such
“false teachings”:
Be not deceived with strange doctrines … . For they that are here-
tics, confound together the doctrine of Jesus Christ, with their own
poison … . Who was truly born and did eat and drink; was truly
persecuted under Pontius Pilate; was truly crucified and dead … .
But if, as some who are Atheists, that is to say infidels, pretend,
that he only seemed to suffer: (they themselves only seeming to
exist) why then am I bound?—Why do I desire to fight with
beasts?—Therefore do I die in vain: therefore I will not speak

112
 Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

falsely against the Lord. Flee therefore these evil sprouts which
bring forth deadly fruit; of which if any one taste, he shall pres-
ently die. For these are not the plants of the Father … . (Ignatius,
“Epistle to the Magnesians” III.1; “Epistle to the Trallians” III.1;
II.2,11,13-15, in Lost Books, pp. 174,177-78).
Once again, Irenaeus attacks the Gnostics as
“false brethren” … [who] have reached such a pitch of audacity that
they even pour contempt upon the martyrs, and vituperate those
who are killed on account of confessing the Lord, and who …
thereby strive to follow in the footsteps of the Lord’s passion, them-
selves bearing witness to the one who suffered (Adv. haer. III.18.5,
in Pagels, p. 87).
Tertullian extols the virtue of martyrdom in face of the rampant perse-
cution, and explains away the Gnostic stance as nothing but a cow-
ardly response to the situation:
You must take up your cross and bear it after your Master … . The
sole key to unlock Paradise is your own life’s blood … . This
among Christians is a time of persecution. When, therefore, the
faith is greatly agitated and the church on fire … then the gnostics
break out; then the Valentinians creep forth; then all the opponents
of martyrdom bubble up … for they know that many Christians are
simple and inexperienced and weak, and … they perceive that they
will never be applauded more than when fear has opened the en-
tries of the soul, especially when some terrorism has already ar-
rayed with a crown the faith of martyrs (Tertullian, De Anima 55;
Scorpiace 1, in Pagels, p. 88).

7. Conclusion
The Church’s ruthless destruction of virtually the entire Gnostic lit-
erature must remain as one of the sadder elements in Christian history,
and rank among history’s greatest losses. Further, it points to a funda-
mental ego dynamic that insidiously thwarts the avowed goal of most
religions to be instruments of God’s love. To believe that the destruc-
tion and obliteration of a thought system different from one’s own is
to one’s benefit, or that such attacks protect truth and advance God’s
plan for the salvation of His children, is part of the same ego insanity
that leads one to believe that destruction of a people different from
one’s own serves a “noble” or “holy” purpose. Religious fanaticism

113
Chapter 3 GNOSTICISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH

and political demagoguery are but different forms sharing identical

premises. The Orwellian nightmare world of 1984 has always been
with us, however subtle or catastrophic its forms of expression have
been throughout history.
The second-century Church did believe that attack under the guise
of “heresy hunting” was serving the cause of love, holiness, and the
Kingdom of God. Irenaeus was clearly sincere in his upholding the
truth of God, teaching that there was only one Church and, outside of
that Church, “there is no salvation” for only the members of that one
Church are true Christians. It is tempting on the one side to condemn
such belief as malicious and evil, or on the other to ascribe the oblit-
eration of the Gnostic literature to lofty spiritual motives that were
guided by the Holy Spirit. The truth lies, however, in the recognition
that these Church leaders merely followed the same ego plan for sal-
vation we all do. In order to maintain itself, as the ego counsels every
last one of us, the early Church had to create an enemy. Thus the
Gnostics became, for all intents and purposes, agents of the devil, and
for the next century the theological and political life of the Church
was dominated by the need to eliminate the Satanic influence of the
enemy, perceived to be outside the “true” Church.
As answer to this ancient (though still widely held) Church posi-
tion, the fresh breeze of a Christian voice that opens wide the doors of
dogmatic truth to inquiry and personal experience is heard in The End
of Religion by Dom Aelred Graham, a Benedictine monk. Writing of
the history of the Church and Gnosticism, Graham says:
In this way Christianity itself partook of the prevailing religious
syncretism; for a time the boundaries between the Church and the
contemporary cults were ill-defined. The door was open to the
so-called Gnostic movement and the adoption of Christianity into
the various syncretistic systems. At the same time, the Church
was becoming aware of the danger that threatened it from the en-
croachment of foreign beliefs and the need to make clear its
uniqueness at the cost of a life-and-death struggle. … The Church
took its stand on its universality. By the strict enforcement of unity
in creed and worship it sought to make its Catholic character more
manifest. There was established a “rule of faith” [regula fidei]—an
authoritative standard of belief by which all innovations could be
tested. From this arose the formal creeds of succeeding times,
which still remain the test of orthodoxy. Slowly the official canons

114
 Second Century: The Church vs. Gnosticism

of both the Old and New Testament scriptures were formulated,

largely, in both cases, for controversial purposes: to provide ammu-
nition for the anti-Gnostic polemic rather than as a result of calm re-
flection on the nature of the Christian religion and what might be
compatible with the future spiritual needs of the faithful (Graham,
pp. 85,89).
As it was inherent to Gnostic systems to resist institutionalization,
emphasizing instead individual revelation (or gnosis), these systems,
as we have seen, proved no match for the heavy structure of Church
teaching and authority. Perkins has commented that the Gnostics saw
themselves as an “inner circle” of Christianity. In this role, therefore,
they resisted any kind of adaptation to social and religious needs, in
contrast to the ecclesiastical authorities, and were “unable to move into
the new world of stable, local Christian communities” (Perkins,
p. 204). Moreover, judging from the literary evidence we do possess,
the Gnostic theology that reached its pinnacle in the great schools of
the second century seemed to deteriorate rapidly in the centuries that
followed into an anti-Church polemic, and an extensive mythologizing
that often strikes the modern reader as simply silly. These Gnostic
writings seem merely to regurgitate, as it were, the teachings of the
great teachers that preceded them, without creatively adding to their
systems. Therefore, through its hatred and systematic destruction of
virtually all the Gnostic literature, coupled with the Gnostic loss of
true creative inspiration, the Church had won, emerging virtually as
the sole voice in Christendom.

115
 PART II-A

THE BASIC MYTH:

PLATONISM, CHRISTIANITY,
GNOSTICISM
 INTRODUCTION TO PART II-A

Regardless of their particular emphases and differences, all reli-

gions tell a myth or story that reveals a common base, for all people
share the same Source, as well as a belief in separation from that
Source. These myths begin with God—Creator, Source, Father—in
and from whom all life begins and emanates. At some point there is a
fall or separation from this Source, setting into motion a cosmic crisis
which entails a long and wearying journey away from God into a
world variously seen as sin, separation, and materiality. Salvation con-
sists of the journey back, usually with the help and/or example of a re-
deemer figure. One major exception is in classical Greek thought—
referred to by Christianity as pagan—where there is no redeemer, as
reason alone is seen as necessary for the return. Thus we journey home
to the God that had been forsaken, although religions differ as to who
specifically does ultimately return, a point we shall address later. This
myth can be divided into the following seven stages.
1) The Nature of God and His Heaven: The Pre-Separation State
2) The Separation from God
3) The Origin and Nature of the World
4) The Nature of Humanity: Spirit, Mind (Soul), Body
5) The Meaning of Salvation
6) The Redeemer – Jesus
7) Practical Implications
Throughout these chapters we shall in greater detail continue our
examination of the God-world paradox in light of these stages of the
myth; in other words, how the basic cosmogonic premises of any
theology (essentially discussed in Chapters 5, 6, and 12, 13) determine
the understanding of the body, world, and the process of redemption or
salvation (Chapters 7, 8, 10, and 14, 15, 17). Thus the in-depth treat-
ment of these stages in Part II will enable us in Part III to compare and
contrast Gnosticism with A Course in Miracles, in the historical con-
text of Neoplatonic and Christian thought. Our discussion is not ex-
haustive, though it is representative of these traditions. However, since
for most readers the Gnostic literature is relatively unfamiliar, and the
work of Plotinus practically unknown to all but philosophers, a more

119
INTRODUCTION TO PART II-A

generous selection from their writings is provided than this book’s

theme would otherwise require.

120
 Chapter 4

THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN:

The Pre-Separation State

We begin our story, as did Alice, at the beginning. One’s view of

God and the state of Heaven—dualistic or non-dualistic, perfect non-
dualism or partial—leads inevitably to the succeeding aspects of the
myth, which follow logically from how the Source and its creation is
perceived. As we shall see much later, only A Course in Miracles fol-
lows this logic consistently from beginning to end. Again, it is the bur-
den of Part II to present the data upon which this conclusion can be
understood in Part III.

Duality vs. Non-Duality

Hans Jonas has divided the multitudinous Gnostic systems into

two essential categories, what he has termed the Iranian and Syrian-
Egyptian speculations or schools, designations based upon the pri-
mary locus of their adherents. The former presents a dualistic meta-
physics that traces back to the Persian Zoroastrianism of approximately
1000 B.C., and which later became part of the Gnostic scene. Examples
include Mandeanism, the Poimandres (originally attributed to the leg-
endary and pre-Christian Hermes Trismegistus, later dated in the sec-
ond and third centuries A.D.), and finally in its most complete form the
new religion founded by Mani. The latter non-dualistic category,
stands in sharp contrast to the former, and comprises by far the greater
number of Gnostic adherents. Of these, the most fully developed is the
Alexandrian Valentinian school, followed (though not chronologically)
by the Syrian Basilides, hence Jonas’ term: Syrian-Egyptian.
In this book we shall utilize Jonas’ categories, but will simply refer
to them as dualistic and non-dualistic. It should be mentioned at the out-
set, to be elaborated as we proceed, that these designations refer basi-
cally to the origin of what becomes essentially in almost all Gnostic
systems a strictly dualistic view of the world. The dualistic systems
begin with two pre-existent states, from which evolve the dualistic view
of the world; the non-dualistic systems posit an original monism, out of

121
Chapter 4 THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN

which arises an opposing system, after which is found the characteristic

Gnostic duality of spirit and matter.
Basically, the dualistic systems posit a pre-existent Light and
Darkness, which constitute the pre-separation (or pre-fall) state. In
contrast, the non-dualistic schools write only of Light or God as pre-
existing. The Darkness emerges later, in what the Judaeo-Christian
tradition has called sin, but the Gnostics (especially the Valentinian
school) called ignorance. This position has its counterpart in the
teachings of the East where, for example, in the Vedanta philosophy
the non-dualism is called advaita. This distinction between these two
systems becomes crucial, in fact, for one of the principal points of this
book: The original premise of what is ontologically real directly af-
fects one’s understanding of salvation and, even more importantly,
one’s attainment of this salvation. Thus, within the metaphysical
framework we have adopted, we can state that if only God is ontolog-
ically pre-existent, then only He is real and everything else must be il-
lusory. Recognizing this truth (which recognition was called gnosis)
is salvation. If, on the other hand, the Darkness (or evil or sin) shares
in God’s ontological reality, then it too is real and cannot be denied:
Sin’s presence would always be among us, and salvation from it there-
fore would ultimately be impossible. We shall build to this under-
standing slowly and logically, as the thesis of the book is developed.

Duality

Dualism is essentially a primitive and less sophisticated thought

system than its non-dualistic counterpart, despite its most complete
emergence in Mani a century later than Valentinus. It has several
modes of expression, all of which reflect this essential duality of pre-
existing forces of good and evil, light and darkness.
Zoroastrian dualism found its most pronounced and influential
expression in the system of Mani, which gave rise to the religion that
bore his name, Manicheism. It is the foundation of Mani’s system and,
despite the many different accounts of his teaching, this dualism remains
constant throughout. Here, in a passage taken from what appears to be
Mani’s own words to a disciple in the “Epistula Fundamenti,” we read
one of its clearest statements:

122
 Duality

These in the primeval beginning [before the existence of heaven

and earth] were the two substances separated from one another. God
the Father ruled over the Light, eternal in his holy descendants, glo-
rious in his power, by nature true, forever rejoicing over his eter-
nity. In himself he contained wisdom and the living forces of the
spirit by which he also embraces the twelve Members (i.e., Aeons)
of his Light, which are the abounding riches of his rule. In each of
his members, however, thousands of countless and immeasurable
treasures are concealed. The Father himself, exalted in his glory and
incomprehensible in his greatness, had joined with himself blessed
and illustrious Aeons, whose number and extent cannot be
estimated. … Near the one section, but on one side of that elevated
and holy land, was situated the Land of Darkness, deep and of im-
measurable extent; in it resided fiery bodies, baneful breeds. [Jonas
has added in his account: “The world of Light borders on that of
Darkness without a dividing wall between the two” (Jonas, p. 210).]
Here, out of the same principle, came a boundless and incalculable
darkness, together with its abortions. On the other side [of the
Darkness] lay filthy whirling waters with their inhabitants … . Next
follows another fiery Region a prey to destruction, with its leaders
and peoples. In the same way there lived inside it a breed filled
with dark and smoke, in which the horrible Ruler and Leader of all
[these worlds] dwelt, who had congregated around himself innu-
merable Princes, the origin and spirit of all of whom was he him-
self. And these were the five Natures of the corruption-bearing
Land (in Haardt, pp. 297-98).
From the Manichean psalms, composed within a century of Mani’s
death, we read from the Psalms of Thomas:
When the Holy Spirit came he revealed to us the way of Truth and
taught us that there are two Natures, that of Light and that of
Darkness, separate one from the other from the beginning. The
Kingdom of Light, on the one hand, consisted in five Greatnesses
[elsewhere named Reason, Knowledge, Thought, Imagination,
Reflection], and they are the Father and his twelve Aeons and the
Aeons of the Aeons, the Living Air, the Land of Light; the great
Spirit breathing in them, nourishing them with his Light. But the
Kingdom of Darkness consists of five storehouses, which are
Smoke and Fire and Wind and Water and Darkness; their Counsel
creeping in them, moving them and inciting them to make war
with one another (in Allberry, p. 9).

123
Chapter 4 THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN

Central to this teaching is the identification of the evil Darkness with

materiality. Where the Persian and Arabic Manichean sources person-
ify Darkness (Ahriman and Iblis, the latter being derived from the
Greek diabolos, meaning devil), the Greek sources use the word hyle,
which means matter. It is this word that is found in the Syriac, Latin,
and Coptic writings, and evil was certainly rendered this way by Mani
himself. Thus we are speaking not only of an abstract philosophic con-
cept, but an active principle, co-existent with God: The Darkness has
“powers, movements, and striving of its own which differ from those
of God only by being evil” (Jonas, p. 211). Some Manichean sources
teach that the Devil was created out of pre-existing elements of the
Darkness. As an example of this, Jonas quotes an early seventh-
century Christian formula that opposed this heresy to the Christian
teaching that Satan originally was “created a good angel by God and
changed afterwards by his own perversity” (Jonas, p. 211n).
These two co-eternal states exist side by side, though separate and
disconnected. The Light, for its part, wants nothing to do with the
Darkness, being content to let it be itself; it is indifferent to the
Darkness’ raging and tormented turbulence. In the following chapter
we shall return to this point in the Manichean myth and consider the
succeeding stages in its development.
The Mandean literature offers many rich examples of this dualistic
system, parallel to the Manichean. The Light consists of:
The great Lord of all kings [the “kings” are elsewhere called “uth-
ras,” literally riches, our identity as emanations of the supreme
principle]: nothing was when he was not and nothing would be
were he not to be; he is under no obligation to death and destruc-
tion means nothing to him. His light illuminates and his radiance
irradiates all the worlds, and the kings … stand before him and shine
in their radiance and in the great light which rests upon them. … He
is the Light, in whom is no darkness, the Living One, in whom is
no death, the Good One, in whom is no malice, the Gentle One, in
whom is no confusion and anger, the Kind One, in whom is no
venom or bitterness (GR I.4-37 [selections], in F II, pp. 148-49).
The Mandean world of Light is summarized in the following psalm:
The world, in which he (the King of Light) stands, cannot pass
away: A world of radiance and light, in which there is no dark-
ness, a world of gentleness, in which there is no rebellion, a world

124
 Duality

of integrity, in which there is no disorder or confusion, a world of

fragrance, in which there is no vile odour, a world of eternal life, in
which there is no demise or death, a world of living waters, in
whose aroma kings rejoice, a world of goodness, in which there is
no malice, a world of truth and faith, in which there is no deceit or
lying; it is a pure world, without evil admixtures (GR I.41, in F II,
p. 151).
Next comes the extension of the Light, the aforementioned kings or
emanations.
He (the King of Light) spoke with great power and with mighty
utterance: and there came into being kings of light of pure radiance
and great light which passes not away. Kings of praise blossomed,
came into being, and were set up, for whom there is no end, num-
ber, or transitoriness. They are all full of praise and stand there,
praising the sublime King of Light … (GR I.40, in F II, p. 157).
Other passages describe the emanations of the world of Light in terms
of stages, the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Lives. It is the Fourth
Life from which comes the imperfection and deficiency—“and uproar
broke out in the world”—which we shall describe in the next chapter.
The world of darkness, pre-existent, endless and eternal, is de-
scribed thus:
Beyond the earth of light downwards and beyond the earth Tibil
southwards is that earth of darkness. It has a form which differs in
kind and deviates from the earth of light, for they both deviate from
each other in every characteristic and form. Darkness exists through
its own evil nature, is a howling darkness, a desolate gloom … . But
the King of Light … perceived that evil was there, but he did not
want to cause it harm, just as he said: “Harm not the wicked and the
evil, until it has done harm itself.” … From the black water the
King of Darkness was fashioned through his own evil nature and
came forth. He waxed strong, mighty, and powerful, he called forth
and spread abroad a thousand thousand evil generations without
number and ten thousand times ten thousand ugly creations beyond
count. Darkness waxed strong and multiplied through demons,
devs, genii, spirits… Satans, all the detestable forms of darkness …
gloomy, black, clumsy … poisonous … filthy, and stinking. Some
among them are dumb, deaf, mute, stupid, stuttering, unhearing …
insolent, hot-headed, violent … debauched … of flashing fire, and
devastating conflagration. … They are master-builders of every

125
Chapter 4 THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN

wickedness, instigators of oppression who commit murder and shed

blood with no pity or compassion. They are artists of every hid-
eous practice … (GR XII.6, in F II, pp. 159-60).
As with the Manicheans, we shall await the next chapter before con-
tinuing the saga.
A variation of the dualistic systems is the Three Root Principle,
though these principles essentially rest on the duality of light and dark-
ness. The Nag Hammadi Library provides a few examples of the tri-
adic schools, and one of the clearest statements for these positions is
in “The Paraphrase of Shem,” a non-Christian Gnostic text, albeit in a
Christianized form, almost certainly known to Hippolytus, the third-
century heresiologist. It was once thought to have had roots dating
back to pre-Christian times. The context of the tractate is a revelation
to Shem (Seth) by Derdekeas, the son of the Light.
I heard a voice saying to me, Shem … hear and understand what I
shall say to you first concerning the great Powers who were in exis-
tence in the beginning, before I appeared. There was Light and
Darkness and there was Spirit between them. Since your root fell
into forgetfulness—he who was the unbegotten Spirit—I reveal to
you the truth about the Powers. The Light was mind full of atten-
tiveness and reason. They were united into one form. And the
Darkness was wind in … waters. He possessed the mind wrapped in
a chaotic fire. And the Spirit between them was a gentle, humble
light. These are the three roots. They reigned each in themselves,
alone. And they covered each other, each one with its power
(Para. Shem VII.1.16–2.10, in NHL, p. 309).
Reporting on the Sethians, Hippolytus provides the clearest statement
of this Three Root Principle:
Let us now see what the Sethians say. They think that the uni-
verse has three clearly defined principles, and each principle has
an infinite number of powers. … But the essential natures of the
principles, he says, are light and darkness; and in between these is
a pure spirit (Ref. V.19.1-2, in F I, p. 300).
But the spirit is ethereal (“like a scent of myrrh … a subtle power”), with
no real energy of its own; however, it is infused by the light above:
But since the light is above and the darkness below, and between
them, as I said, the spirit which is of this kind, and since the light,
like a ray of the sun, was such as to shine from above on the

126
 Non-Duality: God

darkness below, and again the fragrance of the spirit, which is sit-
uated between them, extends and diffuses everywhere … since
this is the power of the (elements) divided into three, the power
of the spirit and of the light is present together in the darkness
that is situated below them (ibid., 3-4).
Thus, with spirit and light now combined, we end up with an essen-
tially dualistic system.

Non-Duality: God

The non-dualistic story begins with God, and with God alone. Al-
most all these Gnostic writers affirm that God is unknowable and inef-
fable. In this they share in the Christian apophatic mystical tradition,
which has its roots in the same soil as does Christian Gnosticism. All
thus have the similar theological perspective that God is perfect and
that His essence is spirit. Where these theologies differ, and differ
sharply, is in what can be termed the transmundane quality of God
that is central to the Gnostic position, yet is clearly an unacceptable
idea in orthodox Christian theology. This belief in God’s transmun-
dane nature—that He is independent of the phenomenal or physical
world He did not create—marks one of the principal divergences be-
tween the Gnostics and their Christian contemporaries, not to mention
other philosophical traditions such as Neoplatonism, with which
Gnosticism would otherwise have much in common. We shall return
to this transmundane aspect of God when we discuss the nature of the
world.
Apophaticism has been described by Lossky as
the perfect way, the only way which is fitting in regard to God,
who is of His very nature unknowable … . God is beyond all that
exists. In order to approach Him it is necessary to deny all that is
inferior to Him, that is to say, all that which is. … It is by unknow-
ing that one may know Him who is above every possible object of
knowledge. Proceeding by negations one ascends from the inferior
degrees of being to the highest, by progressively setting aside all
that can be known, in order to draw near to the Unknown in the
darkness of absolute ignorance. … which is the only way by which
one can attain to God in Himself. … [Apophaticism] is, above all,
an attitude of mind which refuses to form concepts about God.

127
Chapter 4 THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN

Such an attitude utterly excludes all abstract and purely intellectual

theology which would adapt the mysteries of the wisdom of God to
human ways of thought (Lossky, pp. 25,38-39).
Lossky quotes and paraphrases pseudo-Dionysius, the anonymous
mystic who lived around the fifth or sixth century, who prays to the
Holy Spirit to lead him
“to the supreme height of mystical writings, which is beyond what
is known, where the mysteries of theology, simple, unconditional,
invariable, are laid bare in a darkness of silence beyond the light.”
… It is necessary to renounce both sense and all the workings of
reason, everything which may be known by the senses or the under-
standing, both that which is and all that is not, in order to be able to
attain in perfect ignorance to union with Him who transcends all
being and all knowledge. … One must abandon all that is impure
and even all that is pure. … It is only thus that one may penetrate to
the darkness wherein He who is beyond all created things makes
his dwelling (Lossky, p. 27).
A modern expression of apophaticism is seen in this poetic passage
from Thomas Merton:
Desert and void. The Uncreated is waste and emptiness to the crea-
ture. Not even sand. Not even stone. Not even darkness and night.
A burning wilderness would at least be “something.” It burns and is
wild. But the Uncreated is no something. Waste. Emptiness. Total
poverty of the Creator: yet from this poverty springs everything.
The waste is inexhaustible. Infinite zero. Everything wants to re-
turn to it and cannot. For who can return “nowhere”? But for each
of us there is a point of nowhereness in the middle of movement, a
point of nothingness in the midst of being: the incomparable point,
not to be discovered by insight. If you seek it you do not find it. If
you stop seeking, it is there. But you must not turn to it. Once you
become aware of yourself as seeker, you are lost. But if you are
content to be lost you will be found without knowing it, precisely
because you are lost, for you are at last, nowhere (Cables to the
Ace, 84).
We begin now by presenting the Gnostic treatment of the ineffability
of God. In his introduction to the discussion of the important second-
century Gnostic document “The Apocryphon of John,” Jonas writes in
words that could apply to almost all the Gnostic descriptions of God:

128
 Non-Duality: God

… here we meet with the kind of emphatic and pathetic verbosity

which the “ineffable” seems to have incited in many of its profes-
sors: the over four pages of effusive description devoted to the very
indescribability of the divine Absolute—expatiating on the theme
of His purity, boundlessness, perfection, etc., being beyond mea-
sure, quality, quantity, and time; beyond comprehension, descrip-
tion, name, distinction; beyond life, beatitude, divinity, and even
existence—are a typical example of the rising “negative theology”
[i.e., apophaticism] whose spokesmen did not tire for centuries of
the self-defeating nature of their task (Jonas, p. 199).
A few examples will suffice, and we begin with a condensation of the
“effusive … verbosity” of “The Apocryphon of John,” where Jesus re-
veals the truth to his chosen disciple:
The Monad is a monarchy … . who exists as God and Father of
everything … . he did not lack anything that he might be completed
by it. But at all times he is completely perfect in light. He is illimit-
able because there is no one prior to him to limit him. He is un-
searchable because there exists no one prior to him to examine
him. He is immeasurable because there was no one prior to him to
measure him. He is invisible because no one saw him. He is eter-
nal who exists eternally. He is ineffable because no one could com-
prehend him to speak about him. He is unnameable because there
is no one prior to him to name him.
He is the immeasurable light which is pure, holy, and immacu-
late. He is ineffable, being perfect in imperishability, not in perfec-
tion nor in blessedness nor in divinity, but being far superior. He is
not corporeal nor incorporeal. He is not great and not small. It is
not possible to say, “What is his quantity” or “What is his quality,”
for no one can know him. He is not one of the existing ones, but is
far superior. … For the perfect one is majestic; he is pure and im-
measurable greatness. He is an aeon-giving Aeon, life-giving Life,
a blessedness-giving Blessed One, knowledge-giving Knowledge,
goodness-giving Goodness, mercy and redemption-giving Mercy,
grace-giving Grace, not because he possesses it, but because he
gives immeasurable and incomprehensible light.
How shall I speak with you about him? His aeon is indestructible,
at rest and being in silence, reposing and being prior to everything.
He is the head of all the aeons, and it is he who gives them
strength through his goodness (ApocryJohn II.2.26–4.15, in NHL,
pp. 100-101).

129
Chapter 4 THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN

Basilides, whose life and teachings we summarized in an earlier

chapter, taught, according to Hippolytus, that Being
is not simply something ineffable which is named (indicated); we
call it ineffable, but it is not even ineffable. For what is not (even)
inexpressible is called “not even inexpressible,” but is above every
name that is named (Ref. VII.20.3, in F I, 64).
To Basilides this Being is the “non-existent God” (ibid., 21.1), for he
is beyond existence; a distinction, incidentally, one also finds articu-
lated in A Course in Miracles.9
The neo-Valentinian “Tripartite Tractate” describes God the Father as
without beginning and without end; for not only is he without
end—he is immortal for this reason, that he is unbegotten—but he
is also invariable in his eternal existence … . Not one of the names
which are conceived, spoken, seen, or grasped, not one of them,
applies to him, even if they are exceedingly glorious, great, and
honored. … it is impossible for mind to conceive him, nor can any
work express him, nor can any eye see him, nor can any body
grasp him, because of his inscrutable greatness, and his incompre-
hensible depth, and his immeasurable height, and his illimitable
will. … he possesses this constitution, without having a face or a
form, things which are understood through perception, which the
incomprehensible one transcends. If he is incomprehensible, then it
follows that he is unknowable … . namely, the inconceivable, inef-
fable, the incomprehensible, unchanging one (Tri. Tract. I.52.6-11;
54.2-35; 55.13-14, in NHL, pp. 55-57).
“Allogenes,” a Neoplatonic Gnostic document possibly dating
from the third century, speaks thus of “the ineffable and Unknown
God”:
… if one should know [him] completely one would be ignorant of
him … . “He is endowed with blessedness and perfection and si-
lence—not the blessedness nor the perfection—and stillness.
Rather it (this triad) is a reification of him that exists, which one
cannot know, and which is at rest. Rather they are all unknown

9. “All it [the ego] can offer is a sense of temporary existence. … Against this … spirit
offers you the knowledge of permanence and unshakable being. … Existence … is spe-
cific in how, what and with whom communication is judged to be worth undertaking.
Being is completely without these distinctions. It is a state in which the mind is in com-
munication with everything that is real” (T-4.III.3:4,6; T-4.VII.4:2-4).

130
 Non-Duality: God

reifications of him. … he is unknown, he is an airless place of the

limitlessness” (Allog. XI.61.17; 63.33–64.3; 66.23-25, in NHL, pp.
449-51).
Near the end of the first edition of The Gnostic Religion, Jonas in-
cludes two Gnostic hymns, of which we quote the second, by Gregorius
the Theologian:
O thou beyond all things
what else can it be meet to call thee?
How can speech praise thee? 
for thou art not expressible by any speech.
How can reason gather thee?
or thou art not comprehensible by any mind.
Thou that art alone ineffable
while thou engenderest all that is open to speech.
Thou that alone art unknowable
while thou engenderest all that is open to thought.
.........................................
End of all things art thou 
and one and all and none,
Not being one nor all, claiming all names
how shall I call thee?
(In Jonas, p. 289)
By way of concluding his discussion Jonas writes of the Gnostics’
“Unknown God,”
whose acosmic essence negates all object-determinations as they
derive from the mundane realm; whose transcendence transcends
any sublimity posited by extension from the here, invalidates all
symbols of him thus devised; who, in brief, strictly defies
description … . The knowledge of him itself is the knowledge of
his unknowability; the predication upon him as thus known is by
negations: thus arises the via negationis, the negative theology,
whose melody, here first sounded as a way of confessing what
cannot be described, hence swells to a mighty chorus in Western
piety (Jonas, p. 288).
Thus, in all these Gnostic descriptions we can see the attempts to
anthropomorphize God and the process of creation, attempting to put
into words what their own theory teaches is totally ineffable.

131
Chapter 4 THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN

Before concluding this section, let us consider some Platonic no-

tions of God. Plato, of course, was not a strict non-dualist; however,
the Pythagorean influence on his thought certainly lay the seeds for the
non-dualism we find later in Gnosticism.
We have already seen that Plato never truly defined the Good, the
highest Idea, yet he did describe it as
the end of all endeavor, the object on which every heart is set,
whose existence it divines, though it finds it difficult to grasp just
what it is … (Rep. VI 505e).
Plato uses the metaphor of the sun to describe the Good: Just as the sun
is the source of light in the visible world, making possible perception
of the things of this world, giving the power of sight to the eye, so is
the Good the source of reality and truth, which renders intelligible
these Ideas, and gives the mind the power to know their perfection. We
shall return to this metaphor when we consider the Allegory of the
Cave in Chapter 8. However, we can comment briefly on the relation
between the Good and the other Ideas, such as knowledge and truth, as
Plato discussed them in the Republic:
Then what gives the objects of knowledge their truth and the
knower’s mind the power of knowing is the form [Idea] of the
good. It is the cause of knowledge and truth, and you will be right
to think of it as being itself known, and yet as being something
other than, and even more splendid than, knowledge and truth,
splendid as they are. And just as it was right to think of light and
sight as being like the sun, but wrong to think of them as being the
sun itself, so here again it is right to think of knowledge and truth
as being like the good, but wrong to think of either of them as be-
ing the good, whose position must still be ranked higher. … The
good therefore may be said to be the source not only of the intelli-
gibility of the objects of knowledge, but also of their being and re-
ality; yet it is not itself that reality, but is beyond it, and superior to
it in dignity and power (Rep. VI 508e–509b).
We have already seen Origen’s insistence on the immateriality of
God, to which we can add His absolute Oneness:
Having then refuted … every interpretation which suggests that
we should attribute to God any material characteristics, we assert
that in truth he is incomprehensible and immeasurable. … he is far
and away better than our thoughts about him. … And among all …

132
 Non-Duality: God

incorporeal things, what is there so universally surpassing, so

unspeakably and immeasurably excelling, as God, whose nature
certainly the vision of the human mind, however pure or clear to
the very utmost that mind may be, cannot gaze at or behold? …
God therefore … is Unity … Oneness throughout, and the mind and
fount from which originates all intellectual existence or mind
(First Princ. I.1.5,6).
We turn now to Plotinus. In him we find almost classic statements
of apophaticism in describing that which totally transcends the limited
experience of this phenomenal world:
Whenever we say “the One” and whenever we say “the Good,” we
must think that the nature we are speaking of is the same nature,
and call it “one” not as predicating anything of it but as making it
clear to ourselves as far as we can (Enn. II.9.1).
For when you think of him as Intellect or God, he is more; and when
you unify him in your thought, here also the degree of unity by
which he transcends your thought is more than you imagined it to
be; for he is by himself without any incidental attributes. But some-
one could also think of his oneness in terms of self-sufficiency. For
since he is the most sufficient and independent of all things, he must
also be the most without need (Enn. VI.9.6).
Therefore, when you have said “The Good” do not add anything to
it in your mind, for if you add anything, you will make it deficient
by whatever you have added. Therefore you must not even add
thinking, in order that you may not add something other than it and
make two, intellect and good (Enn. III.8.11).
But this “what it is like” must indicate that it is “not like”: for there
is no “being like” in what is not a “something.” But we in our tra-
vail do not know what we ought to say, and are speaking of what
cannot be spoken, and give it a name because we want to indicate
it to ourselves as best we can. But perhaps this name “One” con-
tains (only) a denial of multiplicity. … But if the One—name and
reality expressed—was to be taken positively it would be less clear
than if we did not give it a name at all: for perhaps this name (One)
was given it in order that the seeker, beginning from this which is
completely indicative of simplicity, may finally negate this as well,
because, though it was given as well as possible by its giver, not
even this is worthy to manifest that nature; since that cannot be
heard, nor may it be understood by one who hears, but, if at all, by

133
Chapter 4 THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN

one who sees. But if the seer tries to look at a form, he will not
know even that (Enn. V.5.6).
The Platonic St. Augustine echoes his master in The Nature of the
Good:
The highest good, than which there is no higher, is God, and con-
sequently He is unchangeable good, hence truly eternal and truly
immortal. All other good things are only from Him, not of Him. For
what is of Him, is Himself (in Bourke, p. 48).

Non-Duality: The Pleroma

The next stage in the “story” of God is His extension of Himself; in

A Course in Miracles this extension of God includes Christ and the
creations of Christ. It must be emphasized, as was discussed earlier,
that this process occurs on a plane that transcends time and space. Thus
we can never truly explain what cannot be understood on the phenom-
enal level. Indeed, according to the Course, creation exists before the
separation and the birth of the rational and logical mind that was de-
veloped specifically to preclude the experience of a non-rational and
alogical awareness. The problem that the Gnostics had to address at
this point was the procession from the perfect unity of God to the im-
perfect multiplicity of the phenomenal world. The Gnostics attempted
to resolve this problem by mythologically introducing many aeons or
divine beings, almost as a psychologically unconscious way of putting
distance between the good God and the subsequent evil world, for it is
the last of the aeons that is the responsible agent for the fall.
The totality of God’s extension is called Heaven, what in the Gnostic
lexicon is known as the Pleroma, etymologically derived from the
Greek word meaning fullness. Thus we are discussing the fullness of
God, as manifest in the extension of His being or spirit. There are many
divergences in Gnostic writings about the nature of the Pleroma and the
process by which it came into being, but the differences among the var-
ious Gnostic schools are not as important for our purposes as what they
share in common. The Pleroma is frequently referred to as “aeons”; in
Neoplatonic thought these were called emanations. Some of the char-
acteristics of the Pleroma are what it shares with its Creator: an undi-
vided and eternal unity, and a nature of pure spirit.

134
 Non-Duality: The Pleroma

We begin with the Valentinian school, the most advanced and

highly developed of the Gnostic systems. Irenaeus wrote of this
school:
Let us now consider the inconsistent teaching of these men, for
although there are only two or three of them they do not speak with
one voice on the same points, but with reference to the subject-
matter and the names put forward opposing views (Adv. haer.
I.11.1, in F I, p. 194).
To be sure, there seems to be enough documentation to support Irenaeus’
contention, for the nature of the Pleroma—the sequence of the emana-
tions, their number and composition, etc.—appeared to be a major
source of conflict within the Valentinian circle. However, the finer dis-
tinctions that these Gnostics drew in their intramural controversies—
was God solitary or not?—need not concern us here since such contro-
versy does not bear on our central theme. Besides, as we observed before
about the teachings of A Course in Miracles, “No one on earth can grasp
what Heaven is, or what its one Creator really means” (M-23.6:1).
“The Gospel of Truth,” a Nag Hammadi tractate formerly consid-
ered by some scholars to be the work of Valentinus himself, is one of
the most important Valentinian documents in our possession.10 In it we
read:
Now the name of the Father is the Son. It is he who first gave a
name to the one who came forth from him, who was himself, and he
begot him as a son. He gave him his name which belonged to him;
he is the one to whom belongs all that exists around him … . Since
the Father is unengendered, he alone is the one who begot a name
for himself before he brought forth the aeons in order that the name
of the Father should be over their head as lord, that is, the name in
truth (GT I.38.7–39.1, in NHL, p. 47).
And of the extensions of the Son:
… all the emanations of the Father are pleromas and the root of all
his emanations is in the one [i.e., Christ] who made them all grow
up in himself (ibid., 41.15-19, p. 48).
One is reminded of Lesson 183 in the Course: “I call upon God’s Name
and on my own,” which recalls to us our Identity in Him:

10. The entire text of this valuable document can be found in the Appendix.

135
Chapter 4 THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN

God’s Name is holy, but no holier than yours. To call upon His
Name is but to call upon your own. … Your Father’s Name re-
minds you who you are, even within a world that does not know;
even though you have not remembered it . … Repeat the Name of
God, and call upon your Self, Whose Name is His (W-pI.183.
1:1-2,5; 5:1).
Incidentally, one reads an almost identical statement in the third-century
Valentinian “Gospel of Philip”:
One single name is not uttered in the world, the name which the
Father gave to the Son, the name above all things: the name of the
Father. For the Son would not become Father unless he wears the
name of the Father (GPh II.54.5-10, in NHL, p. 133).
Irenaeus summarizes the position of Ptolemaeus, one of the leading
Valentinian disciples, yet one who deviated from his teacher in certain
theological issues:
Along with him [God] there existed also Ennoia (Thought), whom
they also name Grace and Silence (Sige). Once upon a time Bythos
[the Primal Cause or God] determined to produce from himself the
beginning of all things and, like a seed, he deposited this production
which he had resolved to bring forth, as in a womb, in that Sige who
was with him . … [This process continues on until it] makes up the
first and original Pythagorean Tetrad, which they also call the root
of all things: Primal Cause and Silence, then Nous and Truth.
When the Only-begotten [Nous] perceived for what purpose he
had been produced he himself brought forth Logos and Life … .
From the union of Logos and Life there was produced another
pair, Man and Church. This constitutes the primordial Ogdoad, the
root and substance of all things … . These aeons, brought forth for
the glory of the Father, themselves desired to praise the Father by
their own efforts, and they produced emanations by means of unit-
ing. Logos and Life, after having brought forth Man and Church,
produced ten other aeons … . Man with the Church also produced
twelve aeons … . These are the thirty aeons … concerning whom
silence prevails and consequently they are not known. This is the
invisible and spiritual Pleroma which is divided into three,
namely, an Ogdoad, a Decad, and a Duodecad (Adv. haer. I.1-3,
in F I, pp. 127-28).
The Valentinian system recorded in Bishop Hippolytus shares the
same basic spirit we find in the earlier account by Irenaeus, but with

136
 Non-Duality: The Pleroma

certain discrepancies. The process of emanations or creations does not

begin with the Dyad—Primal Cause and Silence—but from the
Monad, the Father. Moreover, God is not included in the counting of the
aeons, and thus we end up with twenty-eight, as opposed to the thirty
that are usually found in the Valentinian excerpts. Briefly, Hippolytus
sees the process this way:
He [the unbegotten Father] was alone, solitary … and reposing in
isolation within himself. But since he was productive, he decided
once to generate and bring forth the fairest and most perfect that he
had in himself, for he was not fond of solitariness. Indeed, he was
all love, but love is not love if there is nothing which is beloved.
Thus the Father himself, since he was alone, brought forth and pro-
duced Nous and Truth, that is, a Dyad, which was mistress, begin-
ning and mother of all the aeons which they number within the
Pleroma (Ref. VI.29.5-6, in F I, p. 186).
The process continues along lines similar to what we saw in Irenaeus,
and concludes:
These are, according to Valentinus, the primary roots of the aeons:
Nous and Truth, Logos and Life, Man and Church; ten from Nous
and Truth, twelve from Logos and Life, and twenty-eight in all
(ibid., 30.3, p. 187).
The system of Basilides presents a different process from the
Valentinians, and ends with 365 aeons. “A Valentinian Exposition,”
probably attributable to Heracleon, another Valentinian disciple, speaks
of 360 aeons. In the world of myth, as in dreams, what is essential is the
“latent content” or meaning, not the “manifest content” or form. All
such descriptions of the Pleroma are symbolic attempts to render the in-
expressible: the “actuality” of the non-corporeal God and His creation.
In “Zostrianos,” one of the examples of a non-Christian Gnostic text
from the Nag Hammadi Library, we read of the one who is saved from
the world of matter. This text is of interest because of its discussion of
the “glories,” who seem to occupy a position in salvation similar to the
Course’s “creations,” discussed below in Chapter 11:
Therefore, powers are appointed over the salvation of them, and
these same powers exist in the world. Within the Hidden Ones cor-
responding to each of the aeons stand glories, in order that he who
is in the world might be safe beside them. The glories are perfect
thoughts living with the powers; they do not perish because they are

137
Chapter 4 THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN

models of salvation by which each one is saved when he receives

them . … In that world are all living beings existing individually, yet
joined together. The knowledge of the knowledge is there … (Zostr.
VIII.46.15-27; 117.1-5, in NHL, pp. 380-81, 389).
The “glories” also appear in the Sethian, late-second-century “Trimor-
phic Protennoia,” which shares the Barbeloite (a pre-Valentinian
Gnosticism where the figure of Barbelo is the first aeon of the Father)
expression of “The Apocryphon of John” (the occasional Christian ter-
minology found here seems secondary to what was probably originally
a non-Christian text). The heavenly redeemer Protennoia states at the
close of the tractate:
I hid myself within them all until I revealed myself among my
members [Sons of the Light], which are mine, and I taught them
about the ineffable ordinances, and about the brethren. … These are
the glories that are higher than every glory, that is, the Five Seals
complete by virtue of Intellect. He who possesses the Five Seals of
these particular names has stripped off the garments of ignorance
and put on a shining Light. And nothing will appear to him that be-
longs to the Powers of the Archons [the evil rulers of the world]
(Tri. Prot. XIII.49.20-34, in NHL, p. 470).
We look briefly now at the theory of emanation belonging to
Plotinus, the great third-century Neoplatonist, to return to it in sub-
sequent chapters. The Divine Mind proceeds from the One, and does
not affect its Source nor change it in any way:
For this which we call primary being proceeded, so to speak, a little
way from the One, but did not wish to go still further, but turned in-
wards and took its stand there, and became substance and hearth of
all things. … He does not need the things which have come into be-
ing from him, but leaves what has come into being altogether
alone, because he needs nothing of it, but is the same as he was be-
fore he brought it into being. He would not have cared if it had not
come into being; and if anything else could have been derived
from him he would not have grudged it existence; but as it is, it is
not possible for anything else to come into being: all things have
come into being and there is nothing left (Enn. V.5.5,12).
This process of emanation is ongoing and eternal, and in this sense is
necessary since it cannot be conceived that it would not happen, for it
is inevitable and inherent in the very being of the One. However, what

138
 Non-Duality: The Pleroma

is produced (or created) must be somewhat inferior to what created it,

and we shall return to this idea in the next chapter. The One and Mind
of Plotinus are parallel to the Gnostic God and His emanations (the
Pleroma).
Central to Plotinus’ system is the “reversal” of the emanation,
wherein what has emanated returns to its Source through contempla-
tion. Thus Plotinus posits a two-movement view of the cosmos: an em-
anation or descent—“the automatic creativity of the higher which
generates the lower as a necessary reflex action of its own contempla-
tion” (Armstrong, p. 178)—and a return or ascent, which is the
reuniting of the Soul with the Mind—the very heart of the spiritual life.
We shall explore this process in the chapters to come. For now it should
be pointed out that the mind contains Ideas—“living intelligences,”—
and each Idea is part of all the Ideas: “Each Form [Idea]-Intelligence
thinks the whole World of Forms [Ideas] and so becomes it; so that
There the part is the whole and the whole is in every part, and there is
no separation or division” (Armstrong, p. 188). As Plotinus wrote:
But certainly when the true Intellect thinks itself in its thoughts
and its object of thought is not outside but it is itself also its ob-
ject of thought, it necessarily in its thinking possesses itself and
sees itself: and when it sees itself it does so not as without intelli-
gence but as thinking. … we must lay down that there is one intel-
lect, unchangeably the same, without any sort of decline, imitating
the Father as far as is possible to it … (Enn. II.9.1,2).
So we must not go after other first principles but put this first, and
then after it Intellect, that which primally thinks, and then Soul af-
ter Intellect (for this is the order which corresponds to the nature of
things): and we must not posit more principles than these in the in-
telligible world, or fewer (Enn. II.9.1).
In terms of the problem stated at the beginning of this section of
proceeding from the perfect One to the imperfect world of multiplicity,
and the Gnostic introduction of multiple aeons between God and the
world, we find a similar attempt made by the Neoplatonists who fol-
lowed Plotinus. Plotinus himself, as we have seen, kept his system rel-
atively free from such intermediaries, positing just the One and the
emanation of the Divine Mind. However, the fifth-century Syrianus
and his disciple Proclus spoke of the Divine Henads, which come from
the One and form, as it were, the bridge to the multiplicity of the world.

139
Chapter 4 THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN

They are the rough counterpart to the pantheon of gods found in the
ancient Greeks, though philosophically far more abstract than the very
human gods. The attempt, however, hits up against the same problem,
for it cannot really explain how these Henads proceed from the strict
undifferentiated unity of the One.
Summarizing once again the material in this chapter, we may under-
stand the pre-separation state in two ways: duality vs. non-duality. The
former position holds a coexisting light and darkness, good and evil,
while the latter monistically speaks only of the one principle of light,
good, or God. To the former category belongs ancient Zoroastrianism,
reformulated by Mandeanism and Manicheism; while in the latter are
found the majority of the Gnostic systems and Neoplatonists. It has
also been observed that the monistic if not apophatic position was very
similar to that of the traditional Christian mystics. We shall see in the
next chapter, however, that what appears in Christianity on one level to
be a strictly monistic view of God and Heaven is really closer to the
dualistic systems we have considered. This dualism emerges when we
enter the next stage of our story: the fall or separation from God.

140
 Chapter 5

THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

We now build upon the respective theologies of the two meta-

physical categories—duality and non-duality—we introduced in the
preceding chapter, considering how they explain the separation or fall.
No aspect of our story is more problematic nor paradoxical, nor
more demanding of the ingenuity of its theorists—especially the
non-dualists—than attempting to explain how a separated and imper-
fect material world could have come from the oneness of Heaven, the
perfect unity of Creator and created. The theologies or theories that
have been constructed to account for this phenomenon are more than
idle philosophical speculations. The very nature of these speculations
has determined, however intricate or even convoluted their lines of de-
velopment have been, the specific ways of living and behaving in this
post-separation world, not to mention the codes of morality that have
arisen to govern such behavior. Thus we must pay careful attention to
how our four approaches—Platonism, Gnosticism, Christianity, and
A Course in Miracles—have handled this problem, for these ap-
proaches are based on premises upon which an entire thought system
and morality rest. Moreover, as indicated earlier, the theological myths
that account for the separation are expressing the inner conflict be-
tween God and the ego that is common to all separated minds, regard-
less of their particular religious or philosophical persuasion.
By far the simplest of Gnostic explanations for the separation be-
longs to the dualistic schools. Since their view presupposes a duality of
light and darkness, it presented no philosophical difficulty for them to
account for the fall from Light or God, since it arose from an external
influence, the pre-existent Darkness. Its adherents, then, simply had to
confine themselves to describing how the light became trapped in the
darkness. The non-dualistic view, however, most thoroughly developed
by the Valentinian school, begins with monism, or one system. Thus,
the fall occurred within the Godhead itself, and is thus purely an inter-
nal process. Consequently the separation here demands a more intellec-
tualized if not ingenious explanation. As Jonas summarizes:

141
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

The really important difference [between these two approaches]

rests, not so much in the pre-existence or otherwise of a realm of
Darkness independent of God, but in whether the tragedy of the di-
vine is forced upon it from outside or is motivated from within it-
self (Jonas, p. 130).

Duality

As in Chapter 4, we begin with the dualistic speculation, and we

shall discover that the basic structure of its myth is similar to the pro-
cess we will observe later in the story of Adam and Eve. The myth has
several modes of expression, all of which reflect this essential dualism
of pre-existing forces of good and evil, light and darkness. We shall ex-
amine different representatives of this group here, including “The
Hymn of the Pearl,” the Poimandres of “Hermes Trismegistus,” the
Sethian corpus, and finally its most important and influential exposi-
tion in the work of Mani.
The so-called “Hymn of the Pearl” (its name was given by modern
commentators) is part of the larger “Acts of Thomas,” an apocryphal
and Gnostic writing from the second (or possibly early third) century. It
was originally written in Syriac and, though definitely pre-Manichean,
the “Acts” was subsequently used by Mani and his followers. The
Hymn does not seek to explain nor even describe the fall; it begins with
the premise that it has already occurred, and then proceeds from there.
Its primary symbol is the Pearl, which can be likened to the soul or self
that is trapped in the world and must be redeemed. It is the task of the
King’s son, the narrator, to retrieve it:
When I was a little child and dwelt in my kingdom, the house of
my father … from the East, our homeland, my parents provisioned
and sent me … . And they made with me a covenant and wrote it in
my heart, that I might not forget: “ … go down to Egypt and bring
the one pearl which is in the midst of the sea, in the abode of the
loud-breathing serpent … ” (ATh 108, in NTA II, pp. 498-99).
The triadic symbol of Egypt, sea, and serpent in Gnostic literature rep-
resent respectively the world of ignorance and matter, the world of
darkness, and the principle of evil that rules the world. This, then, is
the darkness of materiality into which the spiritual Pearl has fallen.

142
 Duality

Even though the author does not concern himself with how the
Pearl was trapped, we can use the Hymn as an example to contrast our
two schools of Gnostic thought. A Valentinian, for example, would
have had the challenge of explaining how the Pearl fell through its own
devices and, indeed, this school would have seen that the Darkness—
Egypt, sea, and serpent—was a direct outgrowth of its error. A dualist,
however, would begin by positing the dual existence of both the Pearl
and the Darkness, and would have described how the serpent stole the
Pearl. “The Hymn of the Pearl,” as we have seen, falls into this latter
category, even though its author does not involve himself in the details
of the theft. He begins rather with the pearl having already been stolen,
and then concerns himself with the process of its being regained by the
Prince.
The Poimandres is perhaps the best-known part of the Hermetic lit-
erature, the Hellenistic body of writings dating from the second to the
fourth centuries A.D., and which centers about the revealer figure of
Hermes Trismegistus (“Thrice Great Hermes”), reminiscent of the
Egyptian God Thoth. This tradition is pagan, unlike the bulk of the
Gnostic literature, and contains no Judaic or Christian references.
However, some familiarity with the Bible is reflected, especially, as we
shall see, when these writings consider creation. Although these
Hermetic writings do not express a purely Gnostic viewpoint, enough
Gnostic ideas are found, especially in the Poimandres, to warrant in-
clusion here.
The text consists of a revelation from the figure of Poimandres, “the
Nous [Mind] of the Absolute Power.” The visionary requests of Poi-
mandres “to learn what is, and to understand its nature, and to know
God.” Poimandres’ response constitutes the virtual entirety of the text.
It begins with an experience of total Light:
I saw an immeasurable view, everything is light, a light serene and
gay, and I loved the sight. Shortly after there was a darkness, tend-
ing downwards, following in its turn, frightful and horrible, wound
in a coil; it appeared to me like a snake. Then the darkness changed
into something moist, unspeakably confused, giving off smoke as
from a fire, and uttering an inexpressibly doleful sound. Then an
inarticulate cry issued from it, such that I supposed it came from
the fire. And from the light a holy Logos (Word) came upon the
Nature, and pure fire shot up from the moist Nature to the height.
For it was light … and the air, being light, followed the spirit, as it

143
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

ascended from earth and water up to the fire … . But earth and wa-
ter remained mixed together by themselves, so that I did not see
the earth for water. But they were stirred through the spiritual Lo-
gos which stirred upon them, so that it became audible (Corp.
Herm. I.3; 4-5, in F I, p. 329).
Poimandres explains the vision:
That light … is I, the Nous, your God, who was there before the
moisture which appeared from the darkness. The luminous Logos
which came forth from the Nous is the Son of God. … “Whence
then,” said I, “did the elements of Nature come into existence?”
To this he again replied: “From the will of God … ” (ibid. I.6,8,
pp. 329-30).
What concerns us here is the temporal and causal relationship be-
tween the Light and the Darkness, the two primeval principles. Inter-
estingly, we discover here a mixture of both types of speculations we
have been considering. Clearly, before the “fall” of the Light into the
Darkness, the existence of the Darkness is presupposed—the dualistic
view—although the Darkness comes after the Light. And where does
the Darkness originate? Poimandres’ answer is “from the will of
God,” reflecting our non-dualistic view of which the Valentinian is the
chief representative. We also find the strong influence of the Judaeo-
Christian (biblical) dualism that sees that the Will of God (Logos)
“stirred upon” the elements, bringing order out of chaos. Still later in
our discussion we shall see the practical importance of these appar-
ently abstract and erudite distinctions.
The Nag Hammadi Library provides a few examples of this
school, and one of the clearest statements for this position is found in
“The Paraphrase of Shem,” which we considered in the previous
chapter as an example of the Three Root school. The context again is
the revelation to Shem by Derdekeas, the son of the Light, and we
pick up the narrative where we had left it, with the coexistence of
Light and Darkness, and Spirit in between. What we observe is simi-
lar to the Manichean view, in that the Darkness begins the crisis in the
Light by attacking the Spirit, in whose superiority it sees its own in-
herent inferiority. It does not know of the Light until it later perceives
it in the Spirit.
But the Light, since he possessed a great power, knew the abase-
ment of the Darkness and his disorder, namely that the root was not

144
 Duality

straight. But the crookedness of the Darkness was lack of percep-

tion, namely the illusion that there is no one above him. … And
when he stirred, the light of the Spirit appeared to him. When he
saw it he was astonished. He did not know that another Power was
above him. And when he saw that his likeness was dark compared
with the Spirit, he felt hurt. And in his pain he lifted up to the
height of the members of Darkness his mind which was outside the
bitterness of evil. He caused his mind to take shape in a member of
the regions of the Spirit, thinking that, by staring down at his evil,
he would be able to equal the Spirit. But he was not able. For he
wanted to do an impossible thing (Para. Shem VII.2.10-17,36-37;
3.1-17, in NHL, pp. 309-10).
In Hippolytus’ version, the same dynamic is expressed this way:
But the darkness is a dreadful water, into which the light, together
with the spirit, is drawn down and transferred into this element.
Now the darkness is not without intelligence, but cunning in all re-
spects, and it knows that if the light is taken away from the dark-
ness, the darkness remains deserted, dark, without light, without
power, inert, and feeble. So it exerts itself with all its cunning and
intelligence to keep in its possession the brilliance and the spark of
light with the fragrance of the spirit. … the light and the spirit seek
to possess their own power; and they hasten to remove and recover
for themselves their own powers that have been mingled with the
dark and dreadful water that lies beneath (Ref. V.19.5-7, in F I,
pp. 300-301).
We consider now the Manichean system, the most elaborate of the
dualisms. We begin the narrative at the point in the preceding chapter
which described the coexistent state of the Light and the Darkness. It
is here, more than in any other aspect of Gnosticism, that we see the
important distinction between the two schools. To introduce the dis-
cussion, we again quote from the “Epistula Fundamenti”:
You have turned to me, my dearest brother Patticius, to inform
me that you wish to know in what manner Adam and Eve came into
existence, whether they were brought forth through the Word or
were begotten from a body. To this you shall receive an appropriate
reply. … The true situation in this matter is therefore misunderstood
by almost all peoples and by all who have discussed the subject at
length and in detail. … In order to penetrate to the heart of this mys-
tery however, beyond any ambiguity, one must of necessity set forth

145
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

other facts in addition. In the first place, therefore, if you will,

hearken to what was before the world came into existence, and how
the struggle was conducted, so that you may be able to distinguish
the nature of the Light and the Darkness (in Haardt, pp. 296-97).
The Light is content to remain as it is, and there is no conflict or tur-
bulence within its realm. The problem enters from without: in the
Darkness below. The continual unrest within the limits of the Darkness
pushes itself upwards until it finally perceives the Light, which in its
jealous coveting, it begins to attack. In Psalm CCXX, we read of
the obscure abyss wherein there was creeping the Darkness with its
five … . The Original One of Sin, the enemy of God, do thou make
him less … . They arose, they that belong to Matter, the children of
Error, desiring to uproot thy [Jesus] unshakable tree and plant it in
their land; they strove at the matter, they did not succeed, those
creatures of shame (in Allberry, pp. 3-4).
Drawing from several sources, almost all of which were unfortunately
unavailable to me, Jonas has formed a composite narrative of the
Darkness’ attack. I quote from this summary when other references are
lacking.
The Darkness was divided against itself … . Strife and bitterness
belong to the nature of its parts … and each destroys what is close
to him.
Yet it was their very tumult which gave them the occasion to
rise up to the worlds of Light. … Thus aroused and mutually in-
cited they fought and devoured one another, and they did not cease
to press each other hard, until at last they caught sight of the
Light. For in the course of the war they came, some pursued and
some pursuing, to the boundaries of the Light, and when they be-
held the Light—a sight wondrous and glorious, by far superior to
their own—it pleased them and they marveled at it; and they as-
sembled—all the Matter of Darkness—and conferred how they
could mingle with the Light. … they cast a mad glance upon it
from lust for the spectacle of these blessed worlds, and they
thought it could become theirs. And carried away by the passion
within them, they now wished with all their might to fight against
it in order to bring it into their power and to mix with the Light
their own Darkness. They united the whole dark pernicious Hyle
and with their innumerable forces rose all together, and in desire
for the better opened the attack (Jonas, pp. 213-14).

146
 Duality

As Jonas points out, the model for Mani’s account traces back to ancient
Zoroastrianism, but it was Mani’s unique contribution to describe the
fierce intra-mural warfare that eventually led to perceiving the Light,
which in turn united the fratricidal forces of the Darkness. In looking
beneath the mythological form of Mani’s description, interestingly
enough, one can note similarities on the level of content to A Course in
Miracles’ descriptions of the ego’s vicious conflict within itself.
The attack now stirs the Light into action, yet it is basically unable
to respond in kind:
God had nothing evil with which to chastise Matter, for in the
house of God there is nothing evil. He had neither consuming fire
with which to hurl thunder and lightning, nor suffocating water
with which to send a deluge, nor cutting iron nor any other
weapon; but all with him is Light and noble substance, and he
could not injure the Evil One (Jonas, pp. 215-16).
In this statement, incidentally, we find Mani’s rejection of the vengeful
God of the Old Testament, in true Gnostic style, not to mention his
rejection of the gods of other civilizations. We also find a very inter-
esting parallel to the basic principle of forgiveness found in A Course
in Miracles: defenseless non-opposition in the face of seeming attack.
The parallel ends with the Deity, however, for the narrative continues
with the “Father of Greatness” then saying, as quoted by the eighth-
century heresiologist Theodore bar Konai:
I shall not send any of these five dwelling-places, which are my
Aeons, into battle, for I created them for quiet and for peace, rather
shall I myself go and fight (Konai, in Haardt, p. 290).
“Rather shall I myself go and fight” means that He will create a Son to
represent Him, and this in fact leads to the creation of several divine
figures. The scene is depicted thus in Manichean Psalm CCXXIII:
Now as they were making war with one another they dared to
make an attempt upon the Land of Light, thinking that they would
be able to conquer it. But they know not that which they have
thought to do they will bring down upon their own heads. But there
was a multitude of angels in the Land of the Light, having the
power to go forth to subdue the enemy of the Father, whom it
pleased that by his Word that he would send, he should subdue the
rebels who desired to exalt themselves above that which was more
exalted than they (in Allberry, p. 9).

147
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

At this point we are on familiar territory, for we are dealing with the
Gnostic emanations we saw in Chapter 4, the counterpart to Christ and
His creations spoken of in A Course in Miracles. The important differ-
ence, however, is that in Manicheism the creation comes in reaction to
the external situation, while in the other Gnostic systems creation is
the natural process of the Pleroma, occurring without necessity.
This Son is called Primal Man (we are still in a pre-physical
dimension) or Ormuzd, who in Manicheism is no longer identified, as
in Zoroastrianism, with the God of Light Himself, but is rather His first
lieutenant, as it were. Armed with his five Sons (or Light emanations;
also called Living Soul), he descends to the world of Darkness to do
battle with the Arch-devil and his five Sons. (It is left to the reader’s
imagination, incidentally, from where these five Sons of Light and
Darkness have indeed come, although they appear to have had their or-
igins in each of the five attributes of the Gods of Light and Darkness.)
Eventually, Man is overcome, a process narrated again by bar Konai:
Thereupon the Primal Man with his five sons gave himself to the
five sons of darkness, as food, just as a man who has an enemy,
mixes a deadly poison in a kitchen and gives it to him. And he
says: When they (the sons of darkness) had consumed them (the
sons of Primal Man) the five light-gods lost their reason. Through
the poison of the sons of darkness they became like unto a man
who has been bitten by a mad dog or snake (Konai, in Haardt,
p. 290).
The five parts of Light now become mixed with, and held captive
by, the five parts of Darkness, and by the “evil mother of all demons,”
who from the
impurity of the he-demons and from the filth of the she-demons …
formed this body, and she herself entered into it. Then from the
five Light-elements, Ormuzd’s armor, she formed the good Soul
and fettered it in the body. She made it as if blind and deaf, uncon-
scious and confused, so that at first it might not know its origin and
kinship (Konai, in Jonas, p. 341).
Thus is the soul—the spiritual nature of humanity—the innocent
and passive victim of the force of evil, darkness, and matter: trapped
in a world it did not seek, from which it needs to be saved. The first
Manichean Psalm of Thomas contains a moving portrait of these
events, albeit somewhat different in content, which we now excerpt:

148
 Duality

Where did the Son of Evil see them [the Aeons]?—the poor one
who has nothing, no riches in his treasure, no Eternity in his
possession … . He rose up saying, May I be one like them. He
caught the hand of his seven companions and his twelve
helpers … . he looked to them … in order that, if any should fall and
come down, he might go and be one like them. The Great Father
therefore took the first step, he strengthened all his Angels, saying
“Assemble, all of you, and guard yourselves from the eye of the
Evil one which has looked up.” One of the Sons of Light looked
from on high and saw him: he said to his rich brethren: “O my
brethren, the Sons of Light, in whom there is no waning or diminu-
tion: I looked down to the abyss, I saw the Evil one, the Son of
Evil … desiring to wage war. … I saw the poor wretches … thinking
to wage war . … I saw them reclining, drinking stolen wine, eating
plundered flesh.” The Little one … stepped forth, he armed himself
and girt his loins, the son of the Brightnesses and the Richnesses
armed himself and girt his loins, he leapt and sped down into the
abyss … he came into their midst that he might make war with
them, he humbled the Son of Evil and his seven companions and
his twelve ministers, he uprooted their tent and threw it down, he
put out their burning fire, he fettered the poor wretches that were at
hand … he rolled up his wealth, he took it, he took it up to the Land
of Rest (in Allberry, pp. 203-205).
The next stanza repeats the same story, this time from the perspective
of the trapped soul:
The wretches that belong not to the house of my Father rose, they
took arms against me … fighting for my holy robe, for my en-
lightening Light, that it might lighten their Darkness, for my
sweet Fragrance, that it might sweeten their foulness … . A part
therefore went forth from my robe, it went, it lightened their
Darkness … . They did not stir from warring with me until they
had made a wall against me … the wretches thinking in their heart
that I was a man for whom none would seek. I therefore was
looking towards my Father, that he might send aid, looking to-
wards my brethren, the sons of Light, that they might come,
tracking me. My Father therefore sent the aid to me, my brethren
arose, they became one with me. Through a cry only which my
brethren uttered, their wall tottered and fell … . the demons ran to
the Darkness, trembling seized their Archon [Ruler] entirely (in
Allberry, pp. 205-206).

149
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

We shift now to the traditional Judaeo-Christian understanding of

the separation (more usually called the “fall”), since the Gnostic ideas
—especially the non-dualistic variety—developed in large measure as
a response to this theocentric and essentially dualistic view. The cos-
mic drama begins with the decision to listen to the non-divine voice—
the temptation of the serpent—and unfolds from that point. This aspect
of the Judaeo-Christian myth is found in the beginning of the third
chapter of Genesis, and we quote it now:
The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh
God had made. It asked the woman, “Did God really say you were
not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” The woman an-
swered the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees in the gar-
den. But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God
said, ‘You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death.’” Then
the serpent said to the woman, “No! You will not die! God knows
in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you
will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” The woman saw that
the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and that it was de-
sirable for the knowledge that it could give. So she took some of its
fruit and ate it. She gave some also to her husband who was with
her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and
they realized that they were naked (Gn 3:1-7a).
Key to the Western understanding of creation is the notion that God
created us with free will. Sometimes this idea is explained as an ex-
pression of God’s love, in that He imbued His children with the free-
dom to choose against Him. Thus, they would love Him freely, without
coercion. The “fall,” therefore, is the result of the free choice of Adam
and Eve (the prototypes for all of us) to think and act independently of
God. A third protagonist in this cosmic drama is the devil (symbolized
by the serpent), conceived as an external force of evil, real and present,
coexistent with God. We are speaking here, therefore, of a dualistic
system in which good and evil, God and the devil, end up for all prac-
tical purposes occupying positions of equal power.
Christian theology does teach that in the beginning there was only
God and His host, which was good. However, for reasons that have
been the object of theological speculation for millennia, one of God’s
angels, Lucifer, turned against Him and was cast out of Heaven. Thus,
even though we might say, following Jonas’ non-dualistic framework,
that the fall occurs within the Godhead (i.e., is not due to any external

150
 Duality

intervention, as was the case in Mani’s system, for example), Lucifer’s

rebellion, as with Adam’s choice, is really theologically understood as
occurring outside of God. Furthermore, once the fall occurs, evil is ac-
corded the same ontological reality as its coexistent, good. God and the
devil become antagonists, continually vying for the affections and loy-
alty of humanity, as we see for example in the late mythic story of Job.
In fact, throughout the Old Testament, God is continually portrayed as
reacting to His people’s sins, and thus on one level is always the
“victim” of the power of evil as mediated through His sinful children.
As we see, therefore, the creation story as understood by Judaeo-
Christian theology does not go into the origins of the devil or evil at
all; he is accepted as already being in existence. Adam, the First Man,
has before him therefore the possibility of choosing one or the other,
as both potentials coexist in his mind. As with the rebellion of Lucifer,
no explanation is ever truly offered as to why Adam chose to trust the
offering of the serpent as opposed to that of God, other than describing
in mythological terms that it did happen. Different means of descrip-
tion have been variously set forth to “explain” the fall, as for example
the traditional view of human pride, or the Augustinian notion of con-
cupiscence (sexuality). None of these “explanations,” however, goes
beyond post-hoc descriptions for something that has already hap-
pened, without explanation.
For all intents and purposes, therefore, good and evil are ontological,
coexisting realities, personified in the persons of God and the serpent-
devil. Adam and Eve “inherit” both realities and can freely choose to
identify with one or the other. Clearly, from the Judaeo-Christian view,
Adam and Eve chose “wrongly” for, as is taught, sin entered the world
through their disobedience. With sin, in the classical Pauline formula-
tion, death also entered into the world (Rm 5:12; 6:23). Adam and Eve’s
specific sin was to eat of the fruit of the tree that grants knowledge of
good and evil. For God had commanded: “You may eat indeed of all the
trees in the garden. Nevertheless of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most
surely die” (Gn 2:16-17). Yet the serpent counseled: “No! You will not
die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be
opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil” (Gn 3:4-5).
It can thus even be said that God established the dualism—the tree of

151
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

the knowledge of good and evil—which posits an already inherent

dualism of good and evil within His Mind.
To the orthodox Church, Adam committed the sin of pride and
was deceived; to some Gnostics, however, who delighted in turning
the Old Testament upside down, Adam’s “sin” was his salvation. In
the Gnostic “Testimony of Truth,” for example, we find the follow-
ing “midrash” (commentary) on the story of the fall:
But of what sort is this God [the Old Testament Creator God]?
First he envied Adam that he should eat from the tree of knowl-
edge. And secondly he said, “Adam, where are you?” And God
does not have foreknowledge, that is, since he did not know this
from the beginning. And afterwards he said, “Let us cast him out
of this place, lest he eat of the tree of life and live for ever.” Surely
he has shown himself to be a malicious envier. And what kind of a
God is this? For great is the blindness of those who read, and they
did not know it. And he said, “I am the jealous God; I will bring
the sins of the fathers upon the children until three and four genera-
tions.” And he said, “I will make their heart thick, and I will cause
their mind to become blind, that they might not know nor compre-
hend the things that are said.” But these things he has said to those
who believe in him and serve him!
And in one place Moses writes, “He made the devil a serpent for
those whom he has in his generation.” In the other book which is
called “Exodus,” it is written thus (cf. 7:8-12): “He contended
against magicians, when the place was full of serpents according to
their wickedness; and the rod which was in the hand of Moses be-
came a serpent, and it swallowed the serpents of the magicians.”
Again it is written (Numbers 21:9), “He made a serpent of
bronze and hung it upon a pole … which … for the one who will
gaze upon this bronze serpent, none will destroy him, and the one
who will believe in this bronze serpent will be saved.”
For this is Christ; those who believed in him have received
life. Those who did not believe will die (Test. Tr. IX.47.14–49.10,
in NHL, p. 412).
In characteristic Gnostic fashion, this author has reversed the tale so
that the creator God is seen as the evil agent, while the serpent is rep-
resentative of Jesus, the great Gnostic Redeemer who is sent into the
world to bring the saving gnosis. It is this false god who would keep
Adam and Eve from attaining this knowledge (eating the fruit of the
tree of knowledge) that Jesus is offering to them, and successfully so.

152
 Duality

The apocryphal “Kerygmata Petrou” (“Proclamations of Peter”),

written about A.D. 200, also contains a telling passage that expresses
the Gnostic horror at considering the Old Testament God as the real
Creator. We find here a long enumeration of the very human traits (the
italicized words are all biblical) that the Old Testament gives as be-
longing to God. The author basically asks throughout: If these are the
characteristics of the good God, to whom then can we go, for what
kind of God is this?
On this account be it far from us to believe that the Lord of all,
who has made heaven and earth and all that is in them, shares his
authority with others or that he lies (for if he lies, who then is
truthful?) or that he puts to the test as if he was ignorant (for who
then has foreknowledge?). If he is grieved or repents, who then is
perfect and of immutable mind? If he is jealous, who then is satis-
fied with himself ? If he hardens hearts, who then makes wise? If
he makes blind and deaf, who then has given sight and hearing? If
he counsels robberies, who then requires that justice be done? If he
mocks, who then is without deceit? If he is powerless, who then is
omnipotent? If he acts unjustly, who then is just? If he makes what
is wicked, who then will work what is good? If he longs for a fer-
tile hill, to whom then do all things belong? If he lies, who then is
truthful? If he dwells in a tabernacle, who then is incomprehen-
sible? If he craves after the steam of fat, sacrifices, offerings,
sprinklings, who then is without need, holy, pure and perfect? If he
takes delight in lamps and candlesticks, who then set in order the
luminaries in the firmament? If he dwells in shadow, darkness,
storm and smoke, who then is light and lightens the infinite spaces
of the world? If he draws near with flourish of trumpets, war-cries,
missiles and arrows, who then is the rest that all long for? If he
loves war, who then desires peace? If he makes what is wicked,
who then brings forth what is good? If he is cruel, who then is
kind? If he does not make good his promises, who then will be
trusted? If he loves the unjust, adulterers and murderers, who then
is a just judge? (Ker. Pet. H II.43.1–44.12, in NTA II, pp. 120-21)
The great Gnostic teacher Marcion, from basically the same texts,
likewise sees the Old Testament God as, paraphrasing Nigg, merciless,
stern, cruel, full of passion, fanatic, wrathful, partisan, petty, formalis-
tically just, self-contradictory, vacillating, morally questionable, an
instigator of wars, breaker of promises, and a master of malice (Nigg,

153
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

p. 63). We shall return to this important Gnostic theme of denigrating

the God of the Old Testament when we consider the creation of the
world in the next chapter.
Returning to the traditional Christian understanding of the fall, or
what has been called “original sin,” we see that we are presented with
a psychological reality. While only an ardent fundamentalist would
hold that the Genesis story of creation and fall is literally true, contem-
porary Christianity has maintained that its mythological treatment re-
flected this ontological truth of sin and the need for redemption.
Parallel to this, we note that after impressively presenting the evidence
for not taking the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke as literally
true—showing how and why the Matthean and Lucan churches pre-
sented the birth of Jesus as they did, and often contradictorily so—
Raymond Brown in The Birth of the Messiah concludes that while not
historically true, these infancy narratives nonetheless remain theolog-
ically true. He does not think it
possible to maintain intelligently that the two infancy narratives as
they now stand are totally historical. … as belonging to the literary
genre of factual history. … Be this as it may, I do not think that the
approach to the infancy narratives [previously described] … imperils
either the fundamental message of the infancy narratives (that Je-
sus was God’s Son from his conception) or the insight that God
guided the composition of Scripture for the instruction of His
people … . there are ways other than history by which a people can
be instructed (Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, p. 562).
Therefore, the traditional churches teach that we have indeed fallen
from God: our sin against our Creator is real. Moreover, our sinfulness
has caused a life of pain, suffering, and death. God created the body
and the physical world, but our sin has introduced death into it. The
Gnostic view is quite the opposite and, as we shall see, its totally dif-
ferent set of premises should have led to totally different behavioral
conclusions. That it did not will be the subject of a later chapter.

154
 Non-Duality

Non-Duality

1. Valentinus
We turn now to the form of Gnostic speculation that in many re-
spects was the stimulus for this entire book. The greatest of the Gnostic
teachers, Valentinus, seemed indeed to have been the recipient of a
genuine gnosis, as he claimed. As reported by Hippolytus, Valentinus
stated that
he saw a small child, newly born, and asked him who he was, and
he answered that he was the Logos (Ref. VI.42.2, in F I, p. 243).
Valentinus’ metaphysical explanations for the separation seem to have
no antecedents—philosophical or religious—and more than any other
system of thought—from antiquity through the modern era—seems to
have reflected the same metaphysical-psychological explanation we
find in A Course in Miracles. It should be mentioned that while we will
continue to speak of Valentinus’ specific contribution, citing many dif-
ferent sources—primary as well as heresiological—it is impossible to
know exactly how what Valentinus himself taught differs from his stu-
dents’ teachings. Very, very little actually remains of Valentinus’ orig-
inal work. However, there is sufficient Valentinian literature to furnish
a reasonably accurate portrait of the basic tenets of Valentinianism
which, we may assume, ultimately can be traced to the one acknowl-
edged as its founding teacher. In the end, however, as with the problem
of Shakespeare’s identity, it is the work that is important, not the iden-
tity of the specific source.
What remains unique in Valentinus’ work is the transfer of the
problem from an external or moral source, such as the devil or an
ontological tendency towards evil, to a purely internal or psycho-
logical state. It is not that the divine Light has become trapped in the
Darkness that had an existence independent of the Light, as an almost
natural phenomenon; rather the fall from perfection is an event that an
aspect of the Light willed, from within its own mind. Everything that
follows from this “fall,” therefore, i.e., matter and the phenomenal uni-
verse, must also share in its ultimate nature of being a psychological
aberration, with no true reality outside of this mind. The world, then, is
considered to be a basic epiphenomenon of this fundamental psycho-
logical mistake (or misthought). Jonas writes:

155
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

In this way, matter would appear to be a function rather than a sub-

stance on its own, a state or “affection” of the absolute being, and
the solidified external expression of that state: its stable externality
is in truth nothing but the residual by-product of a deteriorating
movement of inwardness, representing and as it were fixating the
lowest reach of its defection from itself (Jonas, p. 174).
By placing the fall or separation squarely within the mind of the Pleroma
(specifically the aeon Sophia), having no ontological reality outside it as
we shall see, Valentinus allows for the solution also to be within this
mind, although not without some intervening variables. Redemption
thus consists in correcting this mistake in the mind, correspondingly
correcting the problem of the world. We may summarize the Valentinian
position therefore as being that the basic problem of the world is the psy-
chological state of ignorance (or forgetfulness) of our origin, while the
principle of salvation is the knowledge that undoes the underlying igno-
rance. Jonas, again:
It [ignorance] is thus a derivative state, therefore revocable, and so is
its external manifestation … : materiality (Jonas, p. 175).
Bianchi has likewise written of the purely internal nature of the
Valentinian understanding of the problem, as opposed to the clearly
dualistic Platonic view:
This Valentinian pleroma is a novelty and a complication, if com-
pared to the dualistic schema of the Platonic ontology, in the sense
that the Platonic opposition between an inferior realm (of mutabil-
ity, sensation, and genesis) and a superior realm (that of eternity
and stability) is shifted up by Valentinus into the very interior of
the pleroma, whose periphery, as expressed by the hypostasis So-
phia, is open to crisis and alienation—with the consequence that
the Valentinian cosmos is only an epiphenomenon where those
intra-pleromatic tensions are so to speak finally discharged (“Re-
ligio-Historical Observations on Valentinianism,” in Layton, pp.
104-105).
We shall return to the salvation aspect of Valentinianism in Chapter 8,
as we await the following chapter for an elaboration of the origin and
nature of the world of matter. It is sufficient for now, however, to re-
state that the two principal themes of Valentinianism that concern us in
this and the chapters to come are how the Sophia principle fell, and

156
 Non-Duality

how the material world logically and inevitably followed from this
mental aberration.

2. Platonism – Plotinus
The foregoing remarks having been made, it is nonetheless the case
that the general outline of the Valentinian system can be seen as falling
within a tradition of antecedent systems, however unelaborated they
are, that share the same general theme of the fall coming from within
the Godhead. It was Valentinus’ inspired genius to highlight this intra-
divine fall, focusing on its specific psychological characteristics yet
within a mythological framework, laying the foundation for a process
of correcting or reversing this error under the same psychological prin-
ciple. The parallels with A Course in Miracles are striking indeed, and
will be the focus of discussion later in the book. We have already dis-
cussed the strong Platonic elements in Valentinian Gnosticism, and will
begin this section by examining this influence in more detail. Our treat-
ment of this Platonic tradition is chronological, even though Valentinus
falls in the middle of this development.
What we have called the Platonic paradox, the problem of imper-
fection proceeding from perfection, is our emphasis here. In general,
Platonists considered that any deviation from the purity of the divine
and non-material Ideas in the direction of multiplicity was a descent
into impurity. It is interesting to note that Plato’s nephew and his suc-
cessor as head of the Academy, Speusippus, differed from his uncle in
seeing multiplicity as expressive of a second divine principle, and thus
as ontologically good, as would be the material derivatives of such a
principle. We shall see just below his influence on later Platonism.
Plato was ambivalent about the nature of matter and its connection
with evil. Found throughout the dialogues are references to an inher-
ent disorder in matter, implying that matter is intrinsically evil. In the
Theaetetus, for example, Socrates states:
Evils … can never be done away with, for the good must always
have its contrary; nor have they any place in the divine world, but
they must needs haunt this region of our mortal nature. That is why
we should make all speed to take flight from this world to the other,
and that means becoming like the divine [i.e., non-corporeal] so far
as we can (Theaet. 176a).

157
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

In the Statesman, Plato, speaking through the voice of the Stranger, in-
structs on the chaos of the cosmogony—“its clamors and
confusion … great upheaval … utter chaos of disorder”—and relates it
to “the bodily element in its constitution.” It is thus the corporeal that
interferes with the will of God, who is the world’s “maker and father”:
The bodily factor belonged to it [the world] in its most primeval
condition, for before it came into its present order as a universe it
was an utter chaos of disorder. It is from God’s act when he set it in
its order that it has received all the virtues it possesses, while it is
from its primal chaotic condition that all the wrongs and evils arise
in it—evils which it engenders in turn in the living creatures within
it (States. 273a,b).
And finally in the Timaeus, which we shall examine in more detail in
the next chapter, Plato reflects this ambivalence in the world’s origins.
God, the Craftsman, is only able to wish “all things to be as like him-
self as possible … . wishing that all things should be good, and so far as
possible nothing be imperfect …” (Tim. 29e; 30a). The phrase “in the
best way possible” recurs a third time later in the dialogue as well. A
struggle between “reason and necessity” (necessity being equated with
matter) is the ultimate cause of the creation of the world:
For this world came into being from a mixture and combination of
necessity and intelligence. Intelligence controlled necessity by per-
suading it for the most part to bring about the best result, and it
was by this subordination of necessity to reasonable persuasion
that the universe was originally constituted as it is (Tim. 48a).
The whole problem of evil, here almost tangentially considered by
Plato, becomes more crucial in the later centuries with the Gnostic
teachings, and was also picked up by Plotinus in the third century: Is
evil superimposed on the world by sin, or is it inherent in matter and
thus the world? In other words, is evil a moral problem, or is it a prob-
lem inevitable in the very existence of matter and the world. For the
Gnostics it was of course the latter, for the absolute existence of the
world is identical to the origin and existence of evil. As the nineteenth-
century Mansel, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, commented:
Contemplated from this point of view, evil is no longer a moral
but a natural phenomenon; it becomes identical with the imper-
fect, the relative, the finite; all nature being governed by the same

158
 Non-Duality

law and developed from the same principle, no one portion of its
phenomena can itself be more evil, more contrary to the law, than
another; all alike are evil only so far as they are imperfect; all
alike are imperfect, so far as they are a falling off from the perfec-
tion of the absolute. Thus contemplated, the problem of the origin
of evil is identified with that of the origin of finite and relative ex-
istence; the question how can the good give birth to the evil, is
only another mode of asking how can the absolute give birth to the
relative; the two great inquiries of philosophy are merged into one,
and religion and morality become nothing more than curious ques-
tions of metaphysics (Mansel, p. 13).
Mansel has thus put his finger on one of the fundamental issues the or-
thodox Church raised against the Gnostics: the absence of morality.
We return to that issue in Chapters 10 and 17.
In his paper, “The Descent of the Soul in Middle Platonic and
Gnostic Theory,” the previously quoted American scholar John Dillon
has commented on the Gnostic-Platonic solution of introducing a fe-
male principle that has arisen from the male supreme being: “This is a
principle of negativity, boundlessness and lack, and provokes the gen-
eration of the multiplicity of creation” (in Layton, p. 357). Whether
such process is a degeneration or merely the natural outgrowth—
positive and benevolent—of the laws of spirit is a moot point among
the Platonists, although it does seem to reflect the prevailing denigra-
tion of women in many Platonic and Gnostic circles.
Thus, we see two essential ways that the Platonists viewed the
“separation”: one positive, the other negative. The first is an exten-
sion of the divine will, however differently that will is conceived; the
second a willful choice on the part of the soul, the product of some
form of sin, what Origen termed sloth and negligence. Dillon con-
cludes his discussion with the following summary:
There does … seem … to be in Gnostic theory, as in Platonism—
represented most clearly by Plotinus—a tension between two
views of the soul’s lot, a conviction that a conscious transgression
of some sort has taken place, and an equally strong conviction that
somehow God willed all this, and that thus it is all, if not for the
best, at least an inevitable consequence of there being a universe at
all (in Layton, p. 364).

159
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

Let us briefly consider a positive view. The Syrian Iamblichus, one

of the leading post-Plotinian Neoplatonists, writing around A.D. 300,
gives two explanations for the descent of the soul from its state of
perfection:
The Platonists of the school of Taurus … say that souls are sent
down by the Gods to earth—some of them, following the Timaeus,
declaring it to be for the completion of the universe, so that there
should be as many living things in the cosmos as there are in the
noetic realm, others describing the purpose of the descent as being
the manifestation of divine life. For this, they say, is the will of the
Gods, to make their divinity manifest through the medium of
souls; for the gods advance to a visible state and reveal them-
selves through the pure and uncontaminated life of souls (quoted
by Dillon in Layton, p. 359).
An opposite point of view is advanced by the second-century
Middle Platonist Albinus, whose views are much closer to the denigra-
tion of the soul’s descent we have already seen in the Gnostics. As
quoted by Dillon, Albinus, cited by Iamblichus, attributes the soul’s
“derangement” to “the mistaken judgment of a free will” (in Layton,
p. 360). From this, of course, the resultant material world is also seen
in a negative light. These Middle Platonists also had a notion of the al-
ternatives open to the soul once it had become incarnate, and this
looked back to Philo. We shall examine these in Chapter 7.
We come now to Plotinus’ view of the descent. As the process of
emanation proceeds from the One, there is a corresponding loss of
purity. The Divine Mind, the first emanation from the One, still retains
the unity of its Source, yet it has already within it a plurality of unity, as
it were: the world of Ideas or archetypes. Furthermore, the emanation
of the higher Soul becomes a further descent from the One into the
world of multiplicity, reaching the “bottom” which is matter and, as we
shall see presently, the home of evil. The higher Soul is yet part of the
divine world of Ideas, yet it is also the link between these spiritual Ideas
and the material expressions that constitute the visible world. Here, the
Soul’s function is similar to that of the Holy Spirit, as set forth by
A Course in Miracles: It both is part of the Divine Mind (Christ Mind),
at the same time being involved in the world of materiality (the sepa-
rated ego mind), where it rules and orders it. We shall return to the func-
tion of the Soul in Chapter 6, when we more specifically consider the
origins of the phenomenal world. For now, we shall quote Plotinus:

160
 Non-Duality

And that one part of our soul is always directed to the intelligible
realities, one to the things of this world, and one is in the middle
between these; for since the soul is one nature in many powers,
sometimes the whole of it is carried along with the best of itself
and of real being, sometimes the worse part is dragged down and
drags the middle with it; for it is not lawful for it to drag down the
whole. … It is probably not worth enquiring into the reason for this
self-caused turning towards the worse; for a deviation which is
slight to begin with, as it goes on in this way continually makes the
fault wider and graver; and the body is there too, and, necessarily,
its lust. And the first beginning, the sudden impulse, if it is over-
looked and not immediately corrected, even produces a settled
choice of that into which one has fallen (Enn. II.9.2; III.2.4).
Plotinus’ understanding of evil is a conflicting one. On the one hand
he treats evil as a reality, housed in matter. On the other hand he sees that
evil cannot exist in itself, but rather is a half-existence; being the final
effort and end-product of the emanations of the Good, the point when
the Good no longer exists or has basically petered out. MacKenna, the
early-twentieth-century English translator of the Enneads, has provided
an interesting summary of the Plotinian view:
If this seems too violent a paradox to be even mentioned among us,
we must remember that it is to some degree merely metaphorical,
like so much in Plotinus: it is the almost desperate effort to ex-
press a combined idea that seems to be instinctive in the mind of
man, the idea that Good is all-reaching and yet that it has degrees,
that an infinitely powerful Wisdom exists and operates and casts an
infinite splendor on all its works while we ourselves can see, or
think we see, its failures or the last and feeblest rays of its light
(MacKenna, pp. xxix-xxx).
Plotinus himself states:
If, then, these [all that is of the Good or the One] are what really
exists and what is beyond existence, then evil cannot be included in
what really exists or in what is beyond existence; for these are good.
So it remains that if evil exists, it must be among non-existent
things, as a sort of form of non-existence, and pertain to one of the
things that are mingled with non-being or somehow share in non-
being. Non-being here does not mean absolute non-being but only
something other than being … like an image of being or something
still more non-existent (Enn. I.8.3).

161
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

But how then is it necessary that if the Good exists, so should

evil? Is it because there must be matter in the All? This All must
certainly be composed of contrary principles; it would not exist at
all if matter did not exist. “For the generation of this universe was
a mixed result of the combination of intellect and necessity” [from
Plato’s Timaeus]. What comes into it from God is good; the evil
comes from the “ancient nature” (Plato means the underlying mat-
ter, not yet set in order by some god). … One can grasp the neces-
sity of evil in this way too. Since not only the Good exists, there
must be the last end to the process of going out past it … and this
last, after which nothing else can come into being, is evil. Now it is
necessary that what comes after the First should exist, and there-
fore that the Last should exist; and this is matter, which possesses
nothing at all of the Good. And in this way too evil is necessary. …
For matter masters what is imaged in it and corrupts and destroys it
by applying its own nature which is contrary to form … its shape-
lessness to the shape and its excess and defect to that which is
measured, till it has made the form belong to matter and no longer
to itself … . If then the body is the cause of evils, matter would be
in this way too the cause of evils (Enn. I.8.7,8).
Thus, one cannot have good without evil, according to Plotinus,
since the good must emanate to evil, and it is inherent in the process
of emanation that the lesser follow what has been before. To wish
to remove evil must then also be the wish to remove the good
(“providence”):
But how did he [man] originally become worse, and how did he
fall? It has often been said that all things are not of the first rank
but all things which are second and third class have a lesser nature
than those before them … . And because there are better things,
there must be worse as well. Or how could there be anything worse
in a multiform thing if there was not something better, and how
could there be anything better if there was not something worse?
So one should not blame the worse when one finds it in the better
but approve the better because it has given something of itself to
the worse. And altogether, those who make the demand to abolish
evil in the All are abolishing providence itself (Enn. III.3.4,7).
However, the evil nonetheless ends up imprisoning the soul, which
has false opinions because it has come to be outside absolute
truth … . This misfortune befalls it because it does not remain in the

162
 Non-Duality

noblest, where the soul remains which is not a part … (Enn. I.8.15;
II.9.2).
Plotinus then asks how this evil has come about, and answers in
words that prefigure A Course in Miracles’ emphasis on the ego’s na-
ture to be on its own and other than God: self-created rather than
God-created:
The beginning of evil for them [the souls] was audacity and com-
ing to birth and the first otherness and the wishing to belong to
themselves. Since they were clearly delighted with their own
independence, and made great use of self-movement, running the
opposite course and getting as far away as possible, they were ig-
norant even that they themselves came from that world [God’s
“higher world”] (Enn. V.1.1).
How the soul remembers its origin in the “higher world” remains for a
later chapter.

3. Pre-Valentinianism
We continue now with some pre-Valentinian Gnostic representa-
tives. As mentioned earlier, Bishop Irenaeus stated that the first Gnostic
was Simon Magus (“from whom all the heresies take their origin”
[Adv. haer. I.23.2, in F I, p. 30]), the magician who is mentioned in the
canonical Acts of the Apostles as having been converted by Philip and
denounced by Peter for his spiritual greed (Ac 8:9-24). His system,
what we know of it, is prototypic of the general school of non-dualism,
wherein the eventual duality originates within the ontologically uni-
tary divinity. Thus, it begins with
one Power [i.e., God], divided into upper and lower, begetting it-
self, increasing itself, seeking itself, finding itself, being its own
mother, its own father … , its own daughter, its own son … , One,
root of the All (Hippolytus Ref. VI.17.1, in Jonas, p. 104).
This Power, also called Silence, becomes Mind, from which emanates
Thought (Ennoia or Epinoia). It is Ennoia that eventually creates the
angels and the world, loses control over what she created and falls. In
the words of Irenaeus:
This Ennoia, leaping forth from him [the Power] and knowing
what her father willed, descended to the lower regions and gave

163
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

birth to angels and powers, by whom … this world was made. But
after she had given birth to them, she was detained by them out of
envy, because they did not wish to be considered the progeny of
any other. … Ennoia … suffered every contumely from them, that
she might not return again to her father, even to the point that she
was shut up in a human body and through the centuries, as from
one vessel to another, migrated into ever different female bodies
(Adv. haer. I.23.2, in F I, p. 30).
The remainder of Simon’s system need not concern us here, except
to note that Simon, according to the heresiologists, proclaimed himself
as God, coming to earth to free his Ennoia and offer redemption to the
world. He was said to have kept as his constant companion the
“whore” Helena, whom he claimed to be the fallen Ennoia. If nothing
else, taking the Church Fathers at their word, Simon was not only the
first but among the most original and daring of all the Gnostics.
It is not until Basilides that we encounter the extensive genealogies
of the emanations that place increasing distance between the supreme
God and the material world. We can understand these to be, as men-
tioned above, the psychological means of dissociating the goodness
and purity of the spiritual Godhead from what the Gnostics considered
to be the evil filth of the body. These descending ladders were de-
scribed by Jonas as “a kind of metaphysical ‘devolution’ ending in the
decadence that is this world” (Jonas, p. 133). As we saw in the preced-
ing chapter, Basilides deduced no less than 365 emanations. The final
one is inhabited by the angels who made the physical world:
But those angels who possess the last heaven, which is the one
seen by us, set up everything in the world, and divided between
them the earth and the nations upon it. Their chief is the one
known as the God of the Jews [called “Abraxas” in another
report] … ” (Adv. haer. I.24.3, in F I, p. 60).
We shall return to the Old Testament God in the next chapter. Suffice
it for now to comment that it is this god who imprisons the fallen spirit.
Our final pre-Valentinian example comes from perhaps the most
well-known and best-documented Gnostic text, “The Apocryphon of
John.” This dates from approximately the middle of the second century
and has been available in four extant copies: two long and two short.
The Apocryphon is an example of what is termed Barbelognosis, of
which according to Irenaeus there were many adherents: “… there has

164
 Non-Duality

arisen a multitude of Barbelognostics, appearing like mushrooms out

of the ground” (Adv. haer. I.29.1, in F I, p. 104). Their name is taken
from the character Barbelo who, as we have seen, is the first aeon or
Pronoia of the Father. From Barbelo there emanate the now familiar
series of aeons which completes the Pleroma, concluding with Sophia.
We now quote directly from this ancient text, as found in the
Nag Hammadi Library:
And the Sophia of the Epinoia, being an aeon, conceived a
thought from herself with the reflection of the invisible Spirit and
foreknowledge. She wanted to bring forth a likeness out of herself
without the consent of the Spirit—he had not approved—and with-
out her consort and without his consideration. … And because of
the invincible power which is in her, her thought did not remain
idle and a thing came out of her which was imperfect and different
from her appearance, because she had created it without her con-
sort. And it was dissimilar to the likeness of its mother for it has
another form.
And when she saw (the consequence of) her desire, it had
changed into a form of a lion-faced serpent. And its eyes were like
lightning fires which flash. She cast it away from her, outside that
place, that no one of the immortal ones might see it, for she had
created it in ignorance. And she surrounded it with a luminous
cloud and she placed a throne in the middle of the cloud that no
one might see it except the holy Spirit who is called the mother of
the living. And she called his name Yaltabaoth [Ialdabaoth—the
Old Testament God] (ApocryJohn II.9.26-31; 10.1-19, in NHL,
pp. 103-104).
Thus, Sophia’s fall comes from the wish to create like her Father (in
this text referred to as Spirit), yet separate from Him. As has been
stated, Sophia is part of the Pleroma, the Heavenly host, and so the
error occurs within part of the Godhead.

4. Valentinianism: The Fall of Sophia

We turn now to the Valentinian system, which elaborates on the
cosmogony of the Apocryphon, yet brings to it a more sophisticated
understanding that is the pinnacle of Gnostic thought.
The lengthy report in Irenaeus, from which part of this summary is
taken, is based on the teachings of Ptolemaeus who lived in the latter
half of the second century, roughly Irenaeus’ contemporary. Another

165
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

major source we shall draw upon is the presentation of Hippolytus,

which differs in some areas, yet retains the similar principles underlying
the fall of Sophia. Finally, we shall quote from some of the newly dis-
covered Valentinian manuscripts in the Nag Hammadi Library.
The Pleroma develops along the lines we have already seen, culmi-
nating in the creation of Sophia. In the Valentinian system the Pleroma
is not composed of equal members. There is God the Source, called
Fore-Father, who is known only by His only-begotten Nous. As Irenaeus
writes:
This Forefather of theirs … was known only to the Only-begotten
who came into existence from him, that is, to Nous, while to all
others he was invisible and incomprehensible. And Nous alone
took pleasure in beholding the Father and rejoiced in perceiving his
immeasurable greatness (Adv. haer. I.2.1, in F I, p. 128).
Nous was stopped by Silence—the Father’s consort or Ennoia—
because of the Father’s Will who wanted the other aeons to desire Him
without knowing Him. Thus,
the rest of the aeons quietly wished to see the one who had pro-
duced their seed and to acquire knowledge of the root which had
no beginning (ibid. pp. 128-29).
At this point, according to Hippolytus, the story takes a dramatic turn:
Now when the … youngest of all the twenty-eight aeons, a fe-
male, Sophia (Wisdom) by name, observed the quantity and power
of the aeons brought into being, she hastened back into the depth
of the Father and perceived that all the other aeons, being begot-
ten, were procreating in pairs, but that the Father alone was procre-
ating without a partner. She wished to emulate the Father and to
produce offspring of herself alone, without a partner, in order that
she might achieve a work which would not be in any way inferior
to that of the Father. She did not know that he, being uncreated, the
beginning of all things … is capable of procreating alone, but that
Sophia, being begotten and born only after many others, cannot
have the power of the unbegotten one. In the unbegotten … all
things exist simultaneously, but in the begotten the female brings
forth the substance, while the male gives form to the substance
brought forth by the female. So Sophia brought forth that of which
she was capable, an unformed and incomplete substance [what is
later called an abortion] (Ref. VI.29.6-8, in F I, p. 187).

166
 Non-Duality

Irenaeus’ narrative adds that Sophia’s passion

is said to be the search after the Father, for she wished … to com-
prehend his greatness. Since she was unable to do this, because she
had undertaken an impossible task, she was in very deep distress,
because of the greatness of the depth and the inscrutability of the
Father, and because of her love for him (Adv. haer. I.2.2, in F I,
p. 129).
Sophia began to grieve, and “wept and bewailed greatly over the
abortion which had been produced by her.” Her terror, anguish, torment,
and especially the pangs of her agony were compared by the
Valentinians to Jesus’ on Calvary. God took pity on her, as well as lis-
tening to the anguished cries of the other aeons over what had occurred
and might as yet occur as a result. Through the aeons of Nous and Truth,
Christ and the Holy Spirit were created
for the sake of the formation and the separation of the abortion,
and for the consolation of Sophia and her release from her groan-
ing (Ref. VI.31.2, in F I, p. 188).
And so, to prevent any further extension of Sophia’s folly as well
as to end the torment, the Cross (or Horos or the Limit) is created:
In order that the formlessness of the abortion may not at all be
manifest to the perfect aeons, the Father produces again a further
aeon, the Cross … . He is called Horos (Limit) because he sepa-
rates from the Pleroma the deficiency [the abortion] outside … but
Cross because he is fixed unwaveringly and immovably, with the
result that nothing of the deficiency can come near the aeons
within the Pleroma (Ref. VI.31.5-6, in F I, pp. 152-53).
Thus, according to Irenaeus, Sophia’s perfection as an aeon is re-
stored by
the power which supports all things and keeps them outside the
unutterable greatness. … So she laid aside her original purpose, to-
gether with the passion which had arisen from that stupefied
wonder. … [Thus she] was purified, established, and restored to
her partner. For when the desire had been separated from her,
along with the supervening passion, she herself remained within
the Pleroma, but her desire, with the passion, was separated from
her by Horos, fenced off, and left outside it (the Pleroma). It was
indeed a spiritual substance, since it was the natural instinct of an

167
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

aeon, but it was without shape and form, because it understood

nothing. Therefore they call it a frail and female fruit (Adv. haer.
I.2.2,4, in F I, p. 129).
The account of the Valentinian system given by Hippolytus decades
later differs from Irenaeus’ in some of the details concerning the de-
velopment of the Pleroma, especially whether the emanations begin
from a single Father, or a pair. In fact, it appeared that this—whether
the original Cause was solitary or dyadic—was a source of great con-
tention among the Valentinians, as already mentioned. This issue,
however, is beyond our concern, which is the fate of Sophia; and here
Hippolytus is in basic agreement with his predecessor.
The Barbeloites distinguished between the upper and lower Sophia,
which is a distinction we may find helpful in summarizing the essential
aspects of the Valentinian system. The former is the restored Sophia,
perfect once again, as is the integrity of the Pleroma; while the latter is
the Sophia now placed outside the Pleroma, the product of the aborted
attempt to create and to be like the Father. Thus, it cannot be undone,
for the thought (or what Jonas terms her Intention) is already in exis-
tence, and therefore has effects. This separation of “upper” from
“lower” is the means for expressing this dynamic, which becomes im-
portant in the ultimate undoing of the error. The part of Sophia that is
in error—passion, thought, Intention—now becomes, in Jonas’ term,
a “hypostasized spiritual substance,” still without form. This is the
“abortion” spoken of above, and in the literature is usually referred to
as Sophia. In some accounts, however, the name Achamoth (derived
from the Hebrew word “chochma,” meaning wisdom) is used.
Crucial to this system is the role of the Limit, which has a dual func-
tion. Within the Pleroma he is called the Cross, and essentially his task
is to protect the aeons from any effects of Sophia’s fall, as well as to be
the boundary between themselves and the Father. Outside the Pleroma
he is called Limit, for he serves to protect the aeons from any entry of
the now split-off passion of Sophia. The necessity of the Cross-Limit is
the result of “Sophia’s folly,” which has brought about the crisis in the
Pleroma. It is the function of the Cross to restore peace and rest which,
of course, was not needed prior to the separation. As Jonas summarizes:
Thus the Limit was not planned in the original constitution of the
Fullness [Pleroma], i.e., of the free and adequate self-expression
of the godhead, but was necessitated by the crisis as a principle of

168
 Non-Duality

consolidation and protective separation. The appearance of the

figure itself is therefore a symbol of the beginning dualism as it
dialectically arises out of original Being itself (Jonas, p. 184).
We find here the interesting notion that Sophia became split into two
—the upper and lower Sophia—illustrative of the ambivalence felt in
Valentinian circles. Sophia could not be perceived as totally evil, nor,
by the way, as totally good. Both qualities have become incorporated
by way of this division. In the aforementioned “Kerygmata Petrou” we
find this variation of the Sophia myth, which portrays the fallen aeon in
the worst possible light:
… she [Sophia] steals the seed of the male, envelops them with her
own seed of the flesh and lets them … come forth as her own
creations. … She not only ventures to speak and hear of many
gods, but also believes that she herself will be deified; and be-
cause she hopes to become something that contradicts her nature,
she destroys what she has. Pretending to make sacrifice, she stains
herself with blood at the time of her menses and thus pollutes those
who touch her (Ker. Pet. H III.23.3; 24.1, in NTA II, p. 117).
The narrative continues with Sophia giving birth to Cain who was “a
murderer and a liar and did not wish to cease to sin once he had begun
to do so” (ibid. 25.1, p. 118). From his descendants come adulterers
and warriors.
There is a parallel to the Valentinian understanding of the Cross-
Limit in the “Acts of John,” a text we have already discussed. This
again highlights the strong connection between this document and the
Valentinian brand of Gnosticism. The passage comes immediately
after the “Hymn of Jesus,” which we shall consider in Chapter 9. While
Jesus is being crucified he appears to John on the Mount of Olives:
… he showed me a Cross of Light firmly fixed … . And I saw the
Lord himself above the Cross, having no shape but only a kind of
voice … one that was sweet and gentle and truly the voice of God,
which said to me, “ … This Cross of Light is … . the distinction of
all things, and the strong uplifting of what is firmly fixed out of
what is unstable, and the harmony of wisdom … . But there are
places on the right and on the left, powers … authorities …
demons … Satan and the inferior root from which the nature of
transient things proceeded.

169
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

This Cross then is that which has united all things by the word
and which has separated off what is transitory and inferior, which
has also compacted all things into one” (AJ 98-99, in NTA II,
pp. 232-33).
Interestingly enough, as we have noted, the documents unearthed
at Nag Hammadi substantiate much of what we have read in the
Church Fathers, despite their evident biases and at times gross distor-
tions. In the third-century “Hypostasis of the Archons,” we read:
“Within limitless realms dwells Incorruptibility. Sophia, who is called
Pistis [Faith], wanted to create something, alone without her consort;
and her product was a celestial thing” (Hypos. Arch. II.94.4-8, in NHL,
p. 157).
In a parallel document to the “Hypostasis,” “On the Origin of the
World,” we find first a polemic reference to those Gnostics of what
Jonas called the Iranian school. Since this is probably dated in the late
third century at the earliest, it can be surmised that the Manicheans are
meant:
Since everyone—the gods of the world and men—says that
nothing has existed prior to Chaos, I shall demonstrate that they all
erred, since they do not know the structure of Chaos and its root.
Here is the demonstration: If it is agreed by all men concerning
Chaos that it is a darkness, then it is something derived from a
shadow. It was called darkness. But the shadow is something de-
rived from a work existing from the beginning. So it is obvious
that it (the first work) existed before Chaos came into being, which
followed after the first work. Now let us enter into the truth, but
also into the first work, from whence Chaos came; and in this way
the demonstration of truth will appear (Orig. Wld. II.97.24–98.10,
in NHL, p. 162).
Thus we see our author categorically denying the pre-existence of the
Darkness of Chaos, claiming that it must have arisen from “the first
work,” which is the Pleroma. The narrative continues then with the ac-
count of Sophia:
After the nature of the immortals was completed out of the
boundless one, then a likeness called “Sophia” flowed out of Pistis.
She wished that a work should come into being which is like the
light which first existed, and immediately her wish appeared as a
heavenly likeness, which possessed an incomprehensible greatness,

170
 Non-Duality

which is in the middle between the immortals and those who came
into being after them, like what is above, which is a veil which sep-
arates men and those belonging to the sphere above.
Now the aeon of truth has no shadow within it because the im-
measurable light is everywhere within it. Its outside, however, is a
shadow. It was called “darkness” (ibid. 98.11-27, p. 162).
The initial action of Sophia is thus seen positively; however, it sets up
a situation of opposites, which ultimately leads to the Darkness and, as
we shall see in the following chapter, to the creation of this world.
The late-second-century or early-third-century Gnostic dialogue,
“The Letter of Peter to Philip,” has Valentinian overtones as we see in
this excerpt:
First of all concerning the deficiency of the Aeons, this is the de-
ficiency. And when the disobedience and the foolishness of the
mother Sophia, in our other versions appeared without the com-
mandment of the majesty of the Father, she wanted to raise up
aeons. And when she spoke, the Authades (Arrogance) followed.
And when she left behind a part, the Authades laid hold of it, and it
became a deficiency (Pt Ph VIII.135.8-20, in NHL, p. 396).
“A Valentinian Exposition” is perhaps the only original account of
the Sophia myth that we have from the Valentinian school, although
it appears that it is not from the Master himself, nor Ptolemaeus (the
account given in Irenaeus). Rather it is from Heracleon’s school that
is presented in Hippolytus, the evidence being the statement that the
Father is alone, rather than creating with a consort, and that Sophia’s
error was in attempting to create alone, like her Father. Unfortunately
the manuscript is a mutilated one and so one must speculate on some
of what was contained there. Too much is missing to reconstruct the
actual fall, but immediately after her folly it is said of Sophia:
… and she repented and she besought the Father of the truth, say-
ing, “Granted that I have left my consort. Therefore I am beyond
confirmation as well. I deserve the things (passions) I suffer. I used
to dwell in the Pleroma putting forth the Aeons and bearing fruit
with my consort.” And she knew what she was and what had be-
come of her (Val. Expo. XI.34.23-34, in NHL, pp. 438-39).
Finally, in “The Tripartite Tractate”—so named because it is written
in three parts—we find an interesting Valentinian text that nonetheless
differs markedly from the central teaching of the school. Here the

171
Chapter 5 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

author holds that it is the divine Logos (not Sophia!) who devolutes and
eventually creates the world, but all in accord and in the fulfillment of
the Father’s will. It is speculated by the editors that this possibly came
in response to negative reactions of the Church. The text reads like this:
It came to one of the aeons that it should attempt to grasp the
incomprehensibility. … Since he is a Logos of the unity, he is one,
though he is not from the Father of the Totalities [i.e., the
aeons] … . The intent of the Logos was something good. When he
had come forth, he gave glory to the Father, although he had
attempted an act beyond his power, wishing to bring forth one who
is perfect, from a harmony in which he had not been, and without
having a command. … he acted magnanimously, from an abundant
love, and set out for the one who is within perfect glory, for it was
not without the will of the Father that the Logos was produced,
which is to say, not without him (the Father) does he (the Logos)
go forth. But the Father himself had brought him forth for those of
whom he knew that it was fitting that they should come into being
(Tri. Tract. I.75.17-24; 76.2-30, in NHL, pp. 67-68).
Once the Logos acted in this way the Limit comes into existence:
The Father and the Totalities drew away from him, so that the
limit, which the Father had set, might be established—for it is not
from the attainment of incomprehensibility but by the will of the
Father—and furthermore, they withdrew so that the things which
have come to be might become a system which would be bitter if it
did not come into being by the revelation of the Pleroma. There-
fore it is not fitting to criticize the movement which is the Logos,
but it is fitting that we should say about the movement of the Lo-
gos, that it is a cause of a system, which has been destined to come
about (ibid. 76.30–77.11, p. 68).
This “destiny” foreshadows (or is reminiscent of) Plotinus’ theory of
emanations.
The rest of the system proceeds along familiar lines and we need
not concern ourselves with it any further. One final point: With all of
Plotinus’ negativity towards the Gnostics, he nonetheless demon-
strates a penetrating insight into the heart of the Valentinian teaching
—the origin and source of the darkness from within the Godhead.
Therefore, the responsibility goes back to the first principles. Plotinus
writes:

172
 Non-Duality

For the soul which declined saw, they say, and illuminated the
darkness already in existence. Where, then, did the darkness come
from? If they are going to say that the soul made it when it de-
clined, there was obviously nowhere for it to decline to, and the
darkness itself was not responsible for the decline, but the soul’s
own nature. But this is the same as attributing the responsibility to
pre-existing necessities; so the responsibility goes back to the first
principles [i.e., belonging to the “higher world”] (Enn. II.9.12).

173
 Chapter 6

THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

Platonism

In their views of the origin and nature of the world we find one of
the crucial areas of difference between the Gnostics and, not only the
Christian orthodoxy, but the world of late antiquity as well. (The nature
of the world, of course, remains the principal area of agreement be-
tween the Gnostics and A Course in Miracles.) Bultmann has written:
In Greek Gnosticism, it is true, the outward form of the Greek
view of the universe is retained. It is still thought of as a harmoni-
ous structure, as unity of law and order. But it is just the cosmos so
conceived which undergoes a radical depreciation. Its very law
and order are now the source of its terror. This harmony is a
prison. The stars, whose brilliant lustre and orderly movement
were once contemplated as symbols of the divine nature, now be-
come satanic powers, in whose prisons the sparks of light are
bound. The separation between God and the world has become
complete. God’s transcendence is conceived in radical terms, and
therefore eludes all definition. His transcendence is purely nega-
tive. He is not the world (the world being deprived of all divinity)
(Bultmann, Primitive Christianity, p. 167).
Since it is in the ambivalent view of the world that the Platonic tra-
dition provides both the greatest influence on Gnostic thought as well
as the greatest divergence, we begin this chapter by a full scale discus-
sion of this tradition, beginning with Plato. We place special emphasis
on Plotinus, whose passionate rage was ignited by the Gnostic teach-
ings that “threatened” his students. Moreover, we shall find, surpris-
ingly, that this Platonic influence was felt not only in the non-dualistic
thinking, where one would expect to find it, but also in the dualism of
Manicheism, which psychologically mirrors the Platonic ambivalence
towards the world.

175
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

1. Plato
We begin with Plato’s clear distinction between what is real and
what is not (at least what is “never fully real”), the intelligible world
of Ideas versus the shadowy world of materiality. (All quotes, unless
otherwise noted, are from the Timaeus.)
We must in my opinion begin by distinguishing between that
which always is and never becomes from that which is always be-
coming but never is. The one is apprehensible by intelligence with
the aid of reasoning, being eternally the same, the other is the ob-
ject of opinion and irrational sensation, coming to be and ceasing
to be, but never fully real (27d-28a).
But if not “fully real,” where did the phenomenal world come from,
and how and by whom was it made?
To discover the maker and father of this universe is indeed a hard
task, and having found him it would be impossible to tell everyone
about him. Let us … ask to which pattern did its constructor
work … ? If the world is beautiful and its maker good, clearly he
had his eye on the eternal … . for the world is the fairest of all
things that have come into being and he is the best of causes. That
being so, it must have been constructed on the pattern of what is
apprehensible by reason and understanding and eternally unchang-
ing; from which again it follows that the world is a likeness of
something else (28c-29b).
In other words, the world we perceive is a reflection of the immaterial
world we cannot perceive through our senses. We find this Platonic
idea influencing the Hermetic-Gnostic text “Asclepius”: “And the
good world is an image of the Good One” (Ascl. VI.74.31-32, in NHL,
p. 305). As to why the Demiurge (“the maker and father of the uni-
verse”) would create such a likeness, Plato, like the Judaeo-Christian
theologians, can provide no real reason other than adverting to the
omni-benevolence of the deity:
Let us therefore state the reason why the framer of this universe
of change framed it at all. He was good, and what is good has no
particle of envy in it; being therefore without envy he wished all
things to be as like himself as possible. This is as valid a principle
for the origin of the world of change as we shall discover from the
wisdom of men, and we should accept it. God therefore, wishing
that all things should be good, and so far as possible nothing be

176
 Platonism

imperfect, and finding the visible universe in a state not of rest but
of inharmonious and disorderly motion, reduced it to order from
disorder, as he judged that order was in every way better. It is im-
possible for the best to produce anything but the highest (29e-30a).
Plato now challenges himself to account for the origin of the disor-
der, but for this challenge he has no real answer either, other than to
describe the nature of the chaos and how evil and imperfection
emerged from it. Plato introduces the word “necessity,” which is basi-
cally equivalent to substanceless matter, having the unstable qualities
of fire, water, earth, and air. Necessity was always there, and its origins
cannot really be accounted for:
It is not for us to describe the original principle or principles (call
them what you will) of the universe, for the simple reason that it
would be difficult to explain our views in the context of this dis-
cussion (48c).
Plato had already discussed how Intelligence (the Demiurge) appre-
hended necessity, controlling it
by persuading it for the most part to bring about the best result, and
it was by this subordination of necessity to reasonable persuasion
that the universe was originally constituted as it is (48a).
Thus, from this state of disorganization was brought about a state of
“the greatest possible perfection” (53a).
Plato introduces the creative role of the soul. Created by the
Demiurge, the soul is a subordinate group of gods who take over the
task of creation. We see here, incidentally, the seeds for the teachings
of the later Middle Platonists:
He [the Demiurge] made the divine with his own hands, but he or-
dered his own children [the subordinate gods] to make the genera-
tion of mortals. They took over from him an immortal principle of
soul, and, imitating him, encased it in a mortal physical globe, with
the body as a whole for vehicle (69c).
The phenomenal world is thus seen by Plato as a living god:
And so the most likely account must say that this world came to be
in very truth, through god’s providence, a living being with soul
and intelligence. … For god’s purpose was to use as his model the
highest and most completely perfect of intelligible things, and so
he created a single visible living being, containing within itself all

177
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

living beings of the same natural order. … His creation … was a

blessed god. … a visible god, supreme in greatness and excel-
lence, beauty and perfection, a single, uniquely created heaven
(30b; 30d; 34b; 92c).
Plato continues the cosmogony by discussing the creation of time
in an evocative passage which, we shall see later, the Gnostics paro-
died, seeing time as but another of the Demiurge’s (or the archons’)
tricks for trapping us in the physical world. Here, as is quite obvious,
Plato’s view differs markedly:
When the father who had begotten it perceived that the universe
was alive and in motion, a shrine for the eternal gods, he was glad,
and in his delight planned to make it still more like its pattern; and
as this pattern is an eternal Living Being [i.e., the Ideas], he set out
to make the universe resemble it in this way too as far as was pos-
sible. The nature of the Living Being was eternal, and it was not
possible to bestow this attribute fully on the created universe; but
he determined to make a moving image of eternity, and so when he
ordered the heavens he made in that which we call time an eternal
moving image of the eternity which remains for ever at one. For
before the heavens came into being there were no days or nights or
months or years, but he devised and brought them into being at the
same time that the heavens were put together; for they are all parts
of time, just as past and future are also forms of it … . As a result of
this plan and purpose of god for the birth of time, the sun and moon
and the five planets … came into being to define and preserve the
measures of time. … In this way and for this purpose the stars
[elsewhere called “living beings divine and eternal” (40b)] which
turn back in their course through the heavens were made, so that
this world should in its imitation of the eternal nature resemble as
closely as possible the perfect intelligible Living Creature (37c-e;
38c; 39d-e).
Plato, incidentally, was displeased with the etymological meaning of
“planet,” which is “wanderer,” as it suggested an irrational and dis-
ordered movement, clearly antithetical to the divine order Plato appre-
hended as he gazed upwards at the heavens. In the Epinomis he writes:
For mankind it should have been proof that the stars and their
whole procession have intelligence, that they act with unbroken
uniformity, because their action carries out a plan resolved on from
untold ages; they do not change their purpose confusedly, acting

178
 Platonism

now thus, and again thus, and wandering from one orbit to an-
other. Yet most of us have imagined the very opposite; because
they act with uniformity and regularity, we fancy them to have no
souls. Hence the mass has followed the leading of fools; it imag-
ines that man is intelligent and alive because he is so mutable, but
deity, because it keeps to the same orbits, is unintelligent. Yet man
might have chosen the fairer, better, more welcome interpretation;
he might have understood that that which eternally does the same
acts, in uniform way and for the same reasons, is for that very rea-
son to be deemed intelligent, and that this is the case with the stars.
They are the fairest of all sights to the eye, and as they move
through the figures of the fairest and most glorious of dances they
accomplish their duty to all living creatures (Epin. 982d,e).
Plato also gives great detail on “how body and soul were created
part by part by the agency and providence of the gods” (44c). We shall
largely skip over these accounts now except to mention the gods’ be-
stowal of the senses, that we may model ourselves after the ordered
movement of the heavenly spheres, bringing our own disorder into
harmony accordingly:
… the cause and purpose of god’s invention and gift to us of sight
was that we should see the revolutions of intelligence in the heav-
ens and use their untroubled course to guide the troubled revolu-
tions in our own understanding, which are akin to them, and so, by
learning what they are and how to calculate them accurately ac-
cording to their nature, correct the disorder of our own revolutions
by the standard of the invariability of those of god. The same ap-
plies again to sound and hearing, which were given by the gods for
the same end and purpose. Speech was directed to just this
end … and all audible musical sound is given us for the sake of
harmony … (47b,c).
Incidentally, Clement of Alexandria echoed Plato’s benevolent
understanding of the body’s creation:
Those who censure the creation and speak evil of the body, speak
without reason, for they do not consider that the structure of man is
erect, and fitted for the contemplation of heaven, and that the or-
gans of sensation contribute to the acquisition of knowledge, and
that the members are formed for that which is good, not for plea-
sure. Hence the body becomes the habitation of the soul, which is
most precious to God, and is thought worthy of the Holy Spirit by

179
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

the sanctification of the soul and body, being perfected by the per-
fection of the Savior (in Mansel, p. 268).
In Part III, we shall contrast this benevolent view of the body with
that of A Course in Miracles, where the body is also seen as fulfilling
its maker’s (i.e., the ego’s) purpose: the hiding of reality.

2. Philo
As we have seen in Part I, Philo reconciled his Platonic philosoph-
ical background with his biblical heritage by imputing the cosmogonic
principle to the Logos, which he described as God’s “shadow”:
… but God’s shadow is His Word [i.e., Logos], which he made use
of like an instrument, and so made the world. But this shadow, and
what we may describe as the representation, is the archetype for
further creations. For just as God is the Pattern of the Image, to
which the title of Shadow has just been given, even so the Image
becomes the pattern of other beings, as the prophet [Moses] made
clear at the very outset of the Law-giving by saying, “And God
made the man after the Image of God” [Gn 1:27], implying that the
Image had been made such as representing God, but that the man
was made after the Image when it had acquired the force of a pat-
tern (Alleg. Interp. III.96).
Thus we see the Platonic idea that the visible world was created
based upon the pattern of the world of Ideas (the Logos), as Philo
says elsewhere: creation “is a copy of the Divine image” (On the
Creation 25). In explaining the Genesis account of God’s creating
the Ideas of heaven, earth, air, voice, water, mind, and light on the
first day, followed on the succeeding days by the creation of the sen-
sible world, Philo emphasizes that there were not six literal days.
Creation was in reality instantaneous and outside of time: “For time
there was not before there was a world” (ibid. 26). Moreover, the bib-
lical passage is “quite foolish” if taken literally, for days are mea-
sured by the passage of the sun, which had not as yet been created.
Thus it would be more correct
to say that the world was not made in time, but that time was
formed by means of the world … (Alleg. Interp. I.2).
In another passage, from On Providence (1.7), Philo describes the
timeless nature of creation:

180
 Platonism

God is continuously ordering matter by his thought. His thinking

was not anterior to his creating and there never was a time when he
did not create, the ideas themselves having been with him from the
beginning. For God’s will is not posterior to him, but is always
with him, for natural motions never give out. Thus ever thinking he
creates, and furnishes to sensible things the principle of their exis-
tence, so that both should exist together: the ever-creating Divine
Mind and the sense-perceptible things to which beginning of being
is given (quoted in Winston, Philo of Alexandria, p.15).
Obviously horrified at the implication of the biblical statement that
God saw that what He created was good, Philo makes it clear that it is
not matter itself which is good:
Now God praised not the material which He had used for His
work, material soul-less, discordant and dissoluble, and indeed in
itself perishable, irregular, unequal, but He praised the works of
His own art, which were consummated through a single exercise of
power equal and uniform, and through knowledge ever one and the
same (Who is the Heir? 160).
It is indeed explicitly stated by Philo that God created the world out of
a pre-existent matter, but it is exceedingly unclear whether that matter
was itself, in Philo’s view, a product of God’s creative act. His descrip-
tions of pre-existent matter appear to be almost deliberately vague.
Clearly he was confronted by the same problem as was Plato, who also
ambiguously explained how the copies of the eternal Ideas came into
being. Moreover, the Athenian’s promise to “follow this up some other
time” (Tim. 50c), if fulfilled, is not extant. Regardless, the general
tenor of the Platonic tradition is that the material world is only the
shadow-image of what truly exists, and that “shadowy existence is a
constant embarrassment that needs to be glossed over as inconspicu-
ously as possible” (Winston, Philo of Alexandria, p. 11).
Winston has cogently summarized the Platonic dilemma as it con-
fronted Philo:
Furthermore, to attribute to Philo the view that God created pre-
existent matter would be incongruous with his whole language of
creation. First, if God created the copies of the four elements accord-
ing to the pattern of the divine Forms, why should they be disor-
dered? Second, how could God who, according to Philo, is never the
source of evil, and is always introducing harmony and order, be the

181
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

source of a preexistent matter that is “contentious,” “disordered,”

“dead,” “chaotic,” and “out of tune”? Moreover, the argument that
God created the cosmos because he did not begrudge a share in his
own excellence to an existence that in itself had nothing fair or
lovely would completely miss its mark if this “unlovely existence”
was itself created by God. Philo’s assertion that God did not confer
benefits on preexistent matter in proportion to his own bounties,
but rather in proportion to the capacities of the recipients (Op.23),
implies an inherent limitation in the nature of this matter. Why,
then, should God have created copies of the Forms [Ideas] in the
first place? If, as we have just seen, the copies are inherently disor-
dered and disharmonious and can be rendered ordered and harmo-
nious only up to a point, what reason could there be for the all-
beneficient Deity to initiate the production of such limited phan-
toms, a “faulted reality” from a faultless one? … Logically, of
course, God is, for Philo, indirectly the source of pre-existent mat-
ter, but Philo would have recoiled from ascribing it to the creative
activity of God, just as he recoiled from ascribing even the shap-
ing of matter directly to God (Winston, Philo of Alexandria,
pp. 11-12).
It is thus obvious that Philo’s purpose was to free God from any in-
volvement and implication in creating the material world, which clearly
was seen to be an inferior dimension of reality. Rather, the creative or
demiurgic function was given to a lesser principle. This idea finds clear
statement in the words of the Middle Platonist Albinus, speaking of
Plato’s statement that the material world has been generated:
… we must take this to mean not that there was a time when the
world did not exist, but that the world is always becoming and re-
veals a more fundamental cause of its existence. And the Soul of
the world, existing always, is not made by God, but ordered by
him. And God is said to make in this sense … that he awakens and
turns the mind of the World-Soul to him … so that she [the World-
Soul] will contemplate his thoughts [the Forms-Ideas] and receive
the Forms (quoted by O’Meara, “Gnosticism and the Making of
the World,” in Layton, p. 368).
Thus the world is fashioned by the World-Soul, not the highest God.
We shall see presently how Plotinus extended this idea by hypothesiz-
ing the dynamic of emanation that originates with the ultimate One,
and evolves downward through the Mind and Soul, giving rise ulti-
mately to the material world.

182
 Platonism

3. Origen
Unlike Plotinus, whose thought in many ways he shares, and his
fellow Christian Platonists, Origen sees the creation of the material
world as serving a purely functional purpose, deliberately undertaken
by God. For Plotinus, as we shall see, the phenomenal world was the
inevitable (if not unfortunate) effect of the emanationist dynamic of
the One and the Soul. For Augustine, whom we shall examine after
Plotinus, the world was the creation of the good God. Origen, however,
understands the world as created by the good God only as a necessary
creation to help remedy the fall.
Once the soul “fell” it was immediately placed in a body, which
mirrored the extent and character of the fall. The body, therefore, sym-
bolizes the state of the fallen soul; the greater the fall from God, the
“lower” the corporeal frame around the soul. This hierarchy ranges
from the angels at the top, through human beings, animals, down to the
demons. Consequently, every rational being was placed in a physical
body that corresponded to the level of its own choice relative to its fall
from God. The celestial bodies or angelic beings, for example, reflect
those souls who did not fall far, while the “lower” animals encase those
souls who fell quite a distance (all quotes in this section are from
On First Principles):
These beings, disturbed and drawn away from that state of good-
ness, and then tossed about by the diverse motions and desires of
their souls, have exchanged the one undivided goodness of their
original nature for minds that vary in quality according to their dif-
ferent tendencies (II.1.1).
Origen thus does not see this hierarchy as fixed, but rather that the
souls can move through the hierarchy, as a student progresses from
grade to grade, until the journey back to God is completed. The body,
therefore, is God’s gift—although in the form of a punishment—to the
soul, enabling it to make its journey of return. On the cosmic scale,
then, the stars, sun, and planets become the setting in which such
movement can occur. The body will last as long as the necessity for it
remains.
Like his Middle Platonic predecessors, Origen does not see God the
Father as creator. This function is reserved for the second person in the
Trinity, the Johannine Word or Logos. The Word thus is the mediator
between the spiritual and material worlds, in which latter the fallen

183
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

souls can undo their fall. Christ the Word contains within Himself,
therefore, the perfection of God as well as the souls striving to return
to Him. The Word, insofar as it is the creative principle of the Godhead,
can be equated with Plato’s Demiurge and Plotinus’ Mind; in its func-
tion as mediator with the fallen souls (the “rational beings”) it is anal-
ogous to Plato’s World Soul or Plotinus’ Soul. We shall discuss the
relationship between Christ the Word and Jesus in Chapter 9.
Origen’s cosmogony thus contains both positive and negative ele-
ments. It begins with the separation; the “loss, or fall, of those who live
negligently” (I.4.1). These are the rational beings (minds or souls),
created in God’s image and likeness, “equal and alike” (II.9.6), and yet
possessing free will “either to make progress through the imitation of
God or to deteriorate through negligence” (ibid.):
For the Creator granted to the minds created by him the power of
free and voluntary movement, in order that the good that was in
them might become their own, since it was preserved by their own
free will; but sloth and weariness of taking trouble to preserve the
good, coupled with disregard and neglect of better things, began
the process of withdrawal from the good. Now to withdraw from
the good is nothing else than to be immersed in evil; for it is cer-
tain that to be evil means to be lacking in good. … From this
source … the Creator of all things obtained certain seeds and causes
of variety and diversity, in order that, according to the diversity
of … rational beings … he might create a world that was various and
diverse (II.9.2).
St. Jerome has preserved Origen’s teaching even more forcefully:
I think we must believe that there is in the regions above a more
divine dwelling-place and a true rest, where rational creatures used
to live before they descended to these lower regions and travelled
from invisible to visible surroundings, and where, before they
were cast down to the earth and forced to wear gross bodies, they
enjoyed a primeval blessedness. And, so, God the Creator made
for them bodies appropriate to their lowly stations, and fashioned
this visible world, and sent into it ministers to work for the correc-
tion and salvation of those who had fallen (St. Jerome, quoted in
On First Principles, p. 240n.3).
These ministers include the planetary bodies, and so we can see that, by
the world, Origen means the entire cosmos, and he describes in detail

184
 Platonism

the ultimate variety of our physical world and all the creatures in it, the
“earthly” and “supercelestial.” This variety of course is due to the re-
spective levels of declension of the fallen souls, and is not God’s doing.
Nonetheless, despite this variety, God “gathered the diversities of
minds into the harmony of a single world” (II.9.6). In a passage influ-
enced by Plato’s theory of the World-Soul, Origen writes that similar to
St. Paul’s “one body” composed of “many members” and held together
by one soul, so too we should
accept the opinion that the universe is … an immense, monstrous
animal, held together by the power and reason of God as by one
soul (II.1.3).
In commenting on John 17:24—“you loved me before the foundation
of the world”—Origen states that the Greek word katabole for
“foundation” was mistranslated. The Greek carries with it the conno-
tation of “to cast downwards” (III.5.4), and Origen sees this as scrip-
tural evidence for the descent from the perfect Heaven resulting in the
imperfect physical world.
Again, the end product of this descent is the placing of souls into
bodies. The mechanics of this process involve the mingling of these
mental qualities with the God-created matter, which “is clearly seen to
have an existence in its own right apart from these qualities” (II.1.4).
Thus for Origen, similar to Plato and Philo, matter is simply there:
abstract and amorphous, freely adapting to the qualities that have come
to it. This mingling produces the diversity in bodies. Thus Origen
forcefully argues the point, obviously with the Gnostics in mind, that
God did create the physical world, although it would not have been
needed had it not been for the fall of the rational beings. However,
given the fall, the need for the world was present, and so God’s cre-
ation was designed to help these souls return to their natural state by
providing a classroom in which they could learn and ascend the scale
of being. In fact, Origen explores the possibility of additional world-
classrooms after this one, providing
a process of instruction and rational training through which those
who in this present life have devoted themselves to these pursuits
and, being made purer in mind, have attained here and now to a ca-
pacity for divine wisdom, may advance to a richer understanding
of truth … (II.3.1).

185
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

Even hell is given a positive meaning, wherein its fires serve as a puri-
fying agent. Origen’s own words were censored by a benevolent trans-
lator seeking to preserve his already shaky Church status, but his
original teaching is preserved by St. Jerome:
As for the fire of Gehenna and the torments, with which holy scrip-
ture threatens sinners, Origen does not make them consist in pun-
ishments, but in the conscience of sinners, when by the goodness
and power of God the … . entire crop of our sins … and every
shameful and impious act that we have done is represented in an
image before our eyes, so that the mind, beholding its former acts of
self-indulgence is punished by a burning conscience and stung by
the pricks of remorse (St. Jerome, quoted in On First Principles,
p. 142n.3).
Likewise, all painful events in our lives are seen as God’s means for
purifying our mistakes, washing “away the ills of the soul” and help-
ing us to return to Him. The various ills that befall us are not God’s
punishment—because His love is just and equal—but are the product
of our own decisions. The world thus is generally seen by Origen to be
positive, despite his personal abhorrence of the body to which we shall
return in Chapter 7.

4. Plotinus
In discussing Plotinus we find perhaps the clearest expression of the
paradox: the world as good and evil. Let us begin Plotinus’ cosmogony
by briefly reviewing the three hypostases we discussed in Part I. The
One is the ultimate source, undifferentiated and unknowable, from
which proceeds the Mind (sometimes translated as “Intelligence”—
some of the great Plotinian scholars have been French, and there is no
French word for “mind”). It is within the Mind that the productive or
creative ability rests, although the One is the source of it. Within the
Mind is found all being (cf. Plato’s Ideas), distinct yet totally unified.
From the Mind comes the Soul, wherein distinct being is no longer
unified. Through the process of emanation, being is ultimately dis-
persed into unformed matter, resulting in the material or sensible world.
Each Idea in the Mind has its reflection in the physical realm: “And
in each and every thing there is some one to which you will trace it
back,” and beyond each one is Intellect, “the most beautiful of all;
… this beautiful universe of ours is a shadow and image of it, … and it

186
 Platonism

lives a blessed life.” Beyond this is an even greater Being, the Absolute
One (all quotations are from the Enneads unless otherwise noted):
As certainly, one who looks up to the sky and sees the light of the
stars thinks of their maker and seeks him, so the man who has
contemplated the intelligible world and observed it closely and
wondered at it must seek its maker, too, and enquire who it is who
has brought into being something like this, and how, he who pro-
duced a son like Intellect, a beautiful boy filled full from himself
(III.8.10-11).
Unable to find help in his revered Plato, whose “explanation” as we
have seen is far from rational, Plotinus resorted to descriptions him-
self, images that also conceal the reality behind their material referents
and do not provide any more rationality as to why. Plotinus writes:
Think of a spring which has no other origin, but gives the whole of
itself to rivers, and is not used up by the rivers but remains itself at
rest, but the rivers that rise from it, before each of them flows in a
different direction, remain for a while all together, though each of
them knows, in a way, the direction in which it is going to let its
stream flow (III.8.10).
The spring represents the underlying, unmoving Principle.
And individual things proceed from this principle while it remains
within; they come from it as from a single root which remains static
in itself, but they flower out into a divided multiplicity, each one
bearing an image of that higher reality, but when they reach this
lower world one comes to be in one place and one in another, and
some are close to the root and others advance farther and split up to
the point of becoming, so to speak, branches and twigs and fruits
and leaves … . in the same way there must not be just souls alone
either, without the manifestation of the things produced through
them, if this is in every nature, to produce what comes after it and to
unfold itself as a seed does, from a partless beginning which pro-
ceeds to the final stage perceived by the senses, with what comes
before abiding for ever in its own proper dwelling-place, but, in a
way, bringing to birth what comes after it from a power unspeak-
ably great, all the power which was in those higher beings, which
could not stand still as if it had drawn a line round itself in selfish
jealousy, but had to go on for ever, until all things have reached the
ultimate possible limit (impelled) by the power itself, which sends

187
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

them out and cannot leave anything without a share of itself (III.3.7;
IV.8.6).
All that Plotinus could do, again, was confine his soaring vision to
descriptions that in turn bound him to the paradox we have already
observed of having the gross material world ultimately be derived
from the perfect undifferentiated One. The process is a continuously
devolving one wherein the pure spirituality of the One is inexorably
diluted and dissipated in its downward emanation, its spiritual power
weakening until the dynamic reaches its bottom: effete matter. The
process is non-reflective on the part of the One and Mind, unlike
Plato’s Demiurge-Craftsman who is depicted in the Timaeus as con-
sciously deciding to form the material world, much as an Athenian ar-
tisan fashions his work. In summary, then, the intelligible world at
best is the reflection of the divine beings found within the Mind; at
worst, it is the corruption of the spirituality of these beings. It is this
“best” and “worst” that we turn to now, highlighting again the para-
dox inherent in Plotinus’ thought, as in fact in all Platonism.
The paradox is seen in the dual function that is assigned to the Soul,
what Bréhier has termed “the organizing force of bodies” and “the seat
of destiny.” The first is part of the normal emanation proceeding from
the One, abstract and neutral. The second is the Soul’s fall by attaching
itself through attraction and desire to the body. This unnatural state can
only be corrected through escaping from the prison that is the body.
Plotinus’ challenge was to reconcile the natural process of emanation
with the soul’s prideful tendency towards evil that causes it to hurtle
itself into the gross materiality (Homer’s “what the gods hate,” cited
by Plotinus [V.1.2]), the cause of all misery.
It somehow appears that the Soul has done more than it was sup-
posed to. If we look at the process sequentially, we can ascertain three
aspects to the Soul: the soul’s loftier third remains in its source, the
Mind; the lower third is “reflected” in the matter, the end-product of the
natural and inevitable emanation; and the middle third remains between
the two. This middle is the crucial “seat of destiny,” wherein the choice
to “descend” into matter occurs as the soul is attracted, like Narcissus,
to its image that is reflected in the material. As Bréhier emphasizes, it
is our attitude towards this reflection that has become the problem, i.e.,
the part of the Soul with which we identify: either the true Self that re-
mains with the Mind, or the image that is reflected in the material.

188
 Platonism

This then gives rise to the paradoxical attitude Plotinus has for the
material world. Plotinus reveres, in the words of Bréhier,
the beauty of the world, of Providence and to such an extent that
one wonders how his praise, which seems to be made without any
reservation, is compatible with his description of the world as the
land of exile and the habitation of evil (Bréhier, p. 170).
Plotinus’ reverence for the beauty of the cosmos comes from the beauty
of the Ideas of the Mind that he perceives within it. His despising the
world comes from his apperception of the faulty manner in which these
Ideas were received by matter, not to mention the veils of obscurity in
which this beauty is cloaked. Thus on the one hand his vision of light re-
turns him to the world of light, while on the other his experience of dark-
ness cuts him off from his origin—the source of the emanation of the
Ideas—and he feels trapped in the prison-world of matter, as is the light
in the darkness. This ambivalence is seen in the following passages:
[The universe] exists of necessity and not as the result of any pro-
cess of reasoning, but of a better nature naturally producing a like-
ness of itself … for it produced a whole, all beautiful and self-
sufficient and friends with itself and with its parts, both the more
important and the lesser, which are all equally well adapted to it. So
he who blamed the whole because of the parts would be quite un-
reasonable in his blame; one must consider the parts in relation to
the whole, to see if they are harmonious and in concord with it; and
when one considers the whole one must not look at a few little
parts. … Since, then, what has come into being is the whole uni-
verse, if you contemplate this, you might hear it say, “A god made
me, and I came from him perfect above all living things, and com-
plete in myself and self-sufficient, lacking nothing, because all
things are in me, plants and animals and the nature of all things that
have come into being, and many gods, and populations of spirits,
and good souls and men who are happy in their virtue. … but up
there [heaven] are all good souls, giving life to the stars and to the
well-ordered everlasting circuit of the heaven, which in imitation of
Intellect wisely circles round the same centre for ever; for it seeks
nothing outside itself ” (III.2.3).
Plotinus writes from direct personal experience:
Often I have woken up out of the body to my self and have en-
tered into myself, going out from all other things; I have seen a

189
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

beauty wonderfully great and felt assurance that then most of all I
belonged to the better part; I have actually lived the best life and
come to identity with the divine; … after that rest in the divine,
when I have come down from Intellect to discursive reasoning, I
am puzzled how I ever came down, and how my soul has come to
be in the body when it is what it has shown itself to be by itself,
even when it is in the body (IV.8.1).
In ruminating on his experience, Plotinus consults his “illustrious
Plato,”
who said many fine things about the soul and about its coming
(into this world) in his writings, so that we hope we can get some-
thing clear from him. What, then, does this philosopher say? He is
obviously not saying the same thing everywhere, so that one can
easily know what his intention is; but he everywhere speaks with
contempt of the whole world of sense and disapproves of the
soul’s fellowship with body and says that soul is fettered and bur-
ied in it, and that “the esoteric saying is a great one,” which as-
serts that the soul is “in custody;” … . And in the Phaedrus he
makes “moulting” the cause of coming here … . And, though in all
these passages he disapproves of the soul’s coming to body, in the
Timaeus when speaking about this All he praises the universe and
calls it a blessed god, and says that the soul was given by the
goodness of the Craftsman, so that this All might be intelligent,
because it had to be intelligent, and this could not be without soul.
The Soul of the All, then, was sent into it for this reason by the
god, and the soul of each one of us was sent that the All might be
perfect: since it was necessary that all the very same kinds of liv-
ing things which were in the intelligible world should also exist in
the world perceived by the senses (IV.8.1).
We now consider more specifically the nature of the creating Mind
or Soul, Plato’s Demiurge, and its relationship to matter. The emana-
tion or radiation of the spiritual power has an existence almost inde-
pendent of its source, the Soul, from which it proceeds. In other words,
the Mind supplies the model to the Soul, which image the Soul extends
into the matter. Thus matter, or the body, receives only an image or
imitation of the reality—Plato’s Idea—which remains in the Mind. As
Plotinus wrote:
The divine matter when it receives that which defines it has a de-
fined and intelligent life, but the matter of this world becomes

190
 Platonism

something defined, but not alive or thinking, a decorated corpse.

Shape here is only an image; so that which underlies it is also only
an image. But There the shape is true shape, and what underlies it
is true too (II.4.5).
The things which Intellect [Mind] gives to the soul are near to
truth; but those which body receives are already images and imita-
tions (V.9.3).
Thus, the Idea radiates to matter as a reflection on a mirror, but leaves
no real trace in the matter itself, which,
is as if cast out and utterly separated, and unable to change itself,
but always in the state it was from the beginning—and it was non-
existent. It was not anything actually from the beginning, since it
stood apart from all realities, and it did not become anything … . it
is only left for it to be potentially a sort of weak and dim phantasm
unable to receive a shape. So it is actually a falsity … (II.5.5).
Matter thus is totally unchanged in its essence, immaterial and without
substance, and one finds in Plotinus a consistent abhorrence to even
the faintest suggestion that there is some solidity or reality to the
material world, apart from the Soul’s reflection of the divine Idea.
Matter remains merely “a shadow, and upon what is itself a shadow, a
picture and a seeming” (VI.3.8):
Its product is a living being, but a very imperfect one, and one
which finds its own life disgusting since it is the worst of living
things, ill-conditioned and savage, made of inferior matter, a sort
of sediment of the prior realities, bitter and embittering (II.3.17).
We are not far here, as we shall see in Chapter 7, from the Gnostic
hatred and disgust of the body.
However, more than being a passive shadow, there are passages
where Plotinus speaks of matter as the “Primal Evil” (I.8.14), and that
it is the cause of evil for having seduced the Soul. Thus, while at times
Plotinus writes of evil as being the inevitable and even natural end-
product of the emanation of the spiritual power, what Bréhier termed
the “inevitable accompaniment of the cosmic harmony” (Bréhier,
p. 179), there are passages where matter appears almost as an absolute
evil that is forever in opposition to the good:
When we understand the cause of the fall of the soul more clearly,
and as it ought to be understood, what we are looking for, the

191
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

soul’s weakness, will be obvious. … matter is there, and begs it

and, we may say, bothers it and wants to come right inside. … Mat-
ter darkens the illumination, the light from that source, by mixture
with itself, and weakens it … . This is the fall of the soul, to come
in this way to matter and to become weak, because all its powers
do not come into action; matter hinders them from coming by oc-
cupying the place which soul holds and producing a kind of
cramped condition, and making evil what it has got hold of by a
sort of theft—until soul manages to escape back to its higher state.
So matter is the cause of the soul’s weakness and vice: it is then it-
self evil before soul and is primary evil (I.8.14).
We thus almost seem to find ourselves in the Persian dualism that in
the next century appeared as Manicheism.
We write “almost” Persian dualism, for Plotinus is equally em-
phatic in stating that in no way can the reality of the One be rendered
impure by the darkness, in sharp distinction from the Manichean doc-
trine. In fact, as we have seen, it was Plotinus’ uncompromising teach-
ing of the impossible adulteration of the One that converted the young
Augustine, trapped in the Manichean dualism of light and darkness by
the sin and guilt in his own mind. There can be no conflict between the
divine light and the darkness because only the light is real. We have
already examined this notion of the non-beingness of evil in Chapter 5
(pp. 161-62), where we saw that Plotinus does not really mean that evil
does not exist, but rather that it is “something other than being,” a
realm of existence almost infinitely remote from Mind, which is none-
theless evil’s ultimate source. Matter thus, as we have seen above, is
spoken of as non-being, a phantasm, shadow, and a falsity.
The problem is that the soul, pure within itself, has mistaken image
with reality, form for content. It has identified itself with the image
held within the matter, forgetting its true identity with the reality that
is still within the Mind. This constitutes the soul’s defect or weakness,
having been seduced by the false reality and withdrawing itself from
the ground of its own reality. As the soul becomes entrapped in the
materialistic world of the body it becomes increasingly separated from
the Mind, whole and complete within itself. Thus, according to the
British philosopher and classicist Armstrong:
The root sin of the soul is self-isolation, by which it is imprisoned
in body and cut off from its high destiny [i.e., contemplation of and
return to the Universal Soul]. But the mere fact of being in

192
 Platonism

body … does not imply imprisonment in body. That only comes if

the soul surrenders to the body; it is the inward attitude which
makes the difference (Armstrong, p. 192).
Still, Plotinus also shares the other side of the conflict, wherein
matter can be seen positively as the means whereby the illumination
of the Soul (and the One) is seen and remembered. Thus we see again
the paradoxical dynamic of the soul having wandered from its Source,
becoming trapped in matter, also returning to its Source through
remembering its home: the faulty procession downward is almost
simultaneously corrected by the return upward. This paradox within
Plotinus’ mind became expressed in a similar ambivalence in his phi-
losophy, and so he somehow had to rationalize his appreciation of the
wondrous nature of the cosmic world with his otherwise repugnant
attitude toward the material body: Though the world is not perfect, who
would want it so and lose creation’s “intellectual variety”? His attempts
seem a step more sophisticated than Plato’s:
No, but the rational forming principle makes all these things as
their sovereign … and makes the things which are called bad ac-
cording to reason, because it does not wish that all should be good,
just like a craftsman who does not make everything eyes in his pic-
ture; in the same way the formative principle did not make every-
thing gods but some gods, some spirits (a nature of the second
rank), then men and animals after them in order, not out of grudg-
ing meanness but by a reason containing all the rich variety of the
intelligible world. But we are like people who know nothing about
the art of painting and criticize the painter because the colours are
not beautiful everywhere, though he has really distributed the ap-
propriate colours to every place; … or we are like someone who
censures a play because all the characters in it are not heroes but
there is a servant and a yokel who speaks in a vulgar way; but the
play is not a good one if one expels the inferior characters, be-
cause they too help to complete it (III.2.11).
Even though we have yet to consider them in this chapter, we turn
now to Plotinus’ specific attack on the Gnostics, the only group he iso-
lated with such criticism. On one level his anger seems to have been
motivated by some members of his school adhering to the “arbitrary,
tyrannical assertion” of this particular Gnostic school. On this issue
Porphyry wrote:

193
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

There were in his time many Christians and others, and sectarians
who had abandoned the old philosophy, men of the schools of
Adelphius and Aculinus, who … produced revelations by Zoroaster
and Zostrianus and Nicotheus and Allogenes and Messus and other
people of the kind [readers of the Nag Hammadi Library will rec-
ognize most of these names], deceived themselves and deceiving
many, alleging that Plato had not penetrated to the depths of intel-
ligible reality. Plotinus hence often attacked their position in his
lectures, and wrote the treatise to which we have given the title
“Against the Gnostics”; he left it to us to assess what he passed
over. Amelius went to forty volumes in writing against the book of
Zostrianus. I, Porphyry, wrote a considerable number of refutations
of the book of Zoroaster, which I showed to be entirely spurious
and modern, made up by the sectarians to convey the impression
that the doctrines which they had chosen to hold in honour were
those of the ancient Zoroaster (Porphyry, in Plotinus, Vol. I, p. 45).
Plotinus states that he is tempering his remarks out of
regard for some of our friends who happened upon this way of
thinking before they became our friends, and, though I do not
know how they manage it, continue in it. Yet they themselves do
not shrink from saying what they say … . But we have addressed
what we have said so far to our own intimate pupils, not to the
Gnostics (for we could make no further progress towards convinc-
ing them), so that they may not be troubled by these latter, who do
not bring forward proofs—how could they?—but make arbitrary,
arrogant assertions. Another style of writing would be appropriate
to repel those who have the insolence to pull to pieces what god-
like men of antiquity have said nobly and in accordance with the
truth (II.9.10).
The rest of their teachings I leave to you to investigate by reading
their books, and to observe throughout that the kind of philosophy
which we pursue, besides all its other excellences, displays sim-
plicity and straightforwardness of character along with clear think-
ing, and aims at dignity, not rash arrogance, and combines its
confident boldness with reason and much safeguarding and caution
and a great deal of circumspection: you are to use philosophy of
this kind as a standard of comparison for the rest. But the system of
the others (the Gnostics) is in every part constructed on entirely op-
posed principles—for I would not like to say more; this is the way
in which it would be suitable for us to speak about them (II.9.14).

194
 Platonism

While it is unclear exactly against what Gnostic sect Plotinus is

pointing his remarks, the following passage indicates at least that it
was of Valentinian origin:
One point must be mentioned which surpasses all the rest of their
doctrine in absurdity—if absurdity is what one ought to call it. For
they say that Soul declined to what was below it, and with it some
sort of “Wisdom,” … and then they tell us that the other souls came
down too, and as members of Wisdom put on bodies … . But again
they say that very being for the sake of which these souls came
down did not come down itself, did not decline, so to put it, but
only illumined the darkness, and so an image from it came into ex-
istence in matter. Then they form an image of the image some-
where here below … and produce what they call the Maker, and
make him revolt from his mother and drag the universe which pro-
ceeds from him down to the ultimate limit of images. The man
who wrote this just meant to be blasphemous! (II.9.10)
Plotinus’ criticism of the Gnostics is basically on two points: their
rejection of the divine nature of the cosmos, and their total absence of
a belief in virtue. Here we shall discuss the metaphysics, leaving the
ethical criticisms for Chapter 10. Plotinus finds it impossible to believe
that any rational person could fail to perceive the inherent divinity of
the cosmos, and finds this failure on the part of the Gnostics the most
abhorrent trait of all. Though Plotinus himself was ambivalent about
the base material result of the process of emanation, as we have seen,
he nonetheless remained staunchly pro-cosmic and opposed to the dis-
tinctly anti-cosmic position of the Gnostics. He is especially con-
cerned about protecting the integrity of his beloved Plato, as is seen in
the following passage:
These are the terms of people inventing a new jargon to recom-
mend their own school: they contrive this meretricious language as
if they had no connection with the ancient Hellenic school, though
the Hellenes knew all this and knew it clearly, and spoke without
delusive pomposity of ascents from the cave and advancing gradu-
ally closer and closer to a truer vision. Generally speaking, some of
these peoples’ doctrines have been taken from Plato, but others, all
the new ideas they have brought in to establish a philosophy of
their own, are things they have found outside the truth. … And in
general they falsify Plato’s account of the manner of the making,
and a great deal else, and degrade the great man’s teachings as if

195
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

they had understood the intelligible nature, but he and the other
blessed philosophers had not. … If they wish to disagree on these
points, there is no unfair hostility in saying to them that they
should not recommend their own opinions to their audience by rid-
iculing and insulting the Greeks but that they should show the cor-
rectness on their own merits of all the points of doctrine which are
peculiar to them and differ from the views of the Greeks, stating
their real opinions courteously, as befits philosophers, and fairly on
the points where they are opposed, looking to the truth and not
hunting fame by censuring men who have been judged good from
ancient times by men of worth and saying that they themselves are
better than the Greeks (II.9.6).
One sees how the Gnostics
introduce all sorts of comings into being and passings away, and
disapprove of this universe, and blame the soul for its association
with the body, and censure the director of this universe, and iden-
tify its maker with the soul, and attribute to this universal soul the
same affections as those which the souls in parts of the universe
have. … For if it has come into life in such a way that its life is not a
disjointed one—like the smaller things in it which in its fullness of
life it produces continually night and day—but coherent and clear
and great and everywhere life, manifesting infinite wisdom, how
should one not call it a clear and noble image of the intelligible
gods? If, being an image, it is not that intelligible world, this is pre-
cisely what is natural to it; if it was the intelligible world, it would
not be an image of it. But it is false to say that the image is unlike
the original; for nothing has been left out which it was possible for a
fine natural image to have. … Now certainly the whole earth is full
of living creatures and immortal beings, and everything up to the
sky is full of them: why, then are not the stars, both those in the
lower spheres and those in the highest, gods moving in order, cir-
cling in well-arranged beauty? Why should they not possess virtue?
What hindrance prevents them from acquiring it? The causes are
not present there which make people bad here below, and there is no
badness of body, disturbed and disturbing (II.9.6,8).
Plotinus derides the Gnostic attempts to denigrate the cosmos, and
speaks of their arrogance in believing that they are wiser than the di-
vine cosmos:
For who of those who are so mindlessly high-minded in looking
down on it is as well ordered or has as intelligent a mind as the All?

196
 Platonism

The comparison is ridiculous and very much out of place; anyone

who made it except for the sake of argument would not be able to
avoid impiety. It is not the part of an intelligent man even to en-
quire about this but of someone who is blind, utterly without per-
ception or intelligence, and far from seeing the intelligible universe,
since he does not even see this one here. For how could there be a
musician who sees the melody in the intelligible world and will not
be stirred when he hears the melody in sensible sounds? Or how
could there be anyone skilled in geometry and numbers who will
not be pleased when he sees right relation, proportion and order
with his eyes? … will anyone be so sluggish in mind and so immov-
able that, when he sees all the beauties in the world of sense, all its
good proportion and the mighty excellence of its order, and the
splendour of form which is manifested in the stars, for all their re-
moteness, he will not thereupon think, seized with reverence, “What
wonders, and from what a source?” (II.9.16)
Plotinus, of course, could not argue with the Platonic influence,
since he himself shared it. Yet, as discussed above, he does not include
the “higher” visible world—the cosmos—in this category of being a
hindrance to the Soul’s ascent. He thus urges his Gnostic opponents to
make the same distinction:
Even if it occurred to them to hate the nature of body because
they have heard Plato often reproaching the body for the kind of
hindrances it puts in the way of the soul—and he said that all
bodily nature was inferior—they should have stripped off this
bodily nature in their thought and seen what remained … . For the
beauties here exist because of the first beauties. If, then, these
here do not exist, neither do those; so these are beautiful in their
order after those. … Then one should be aware that there is not
the same beauty in part and whole and in all individual things and
the All: and then that there are such beauties in things perceived
by the senses and in partial things (the beauties of spirits, for in-
stance) that one admires their maker, and believes that they come
from the higher world, and, judging from them, says that the
beauty there is overwhelming … . But what was there to hinder the
All, which is beautiful, from being also beautiful within? … While
we have bodies we must stay in our houses, which have been built
for us by a good sister soul which has great power to work with-
out any toil or trouble (II.9.17,18).

197
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

Yet, again, Plotinus is actually guilty of the same “sins” of which

he accuses the Gnostics. On the one hand, Plotinus emphasizes that
creation is timeless: the process of emanation or radiation is eternal.
And so he is quite denigrating of the Gnostic denigrations of Plato’s
account of the soul’s descent from eternity into the world of matter and
time, as can be seen in this passage:
But if they [the Gnostics] are going to assert that the soul made
the world when it had, so to speak, “shed its wings,” [from Plato]
this does not happen to the Soul of the All; but if they are going to
say that it made the world as the result of a moral failure, let them
tell us the cause of the failure. But when did it fail? If it was from
eternity, it abides in a state of failure according to their own ac-
count. If it began to fail, why did it not begin before? But we say
that the making act of the soul is not a declination but rather a non-
declination (II.9.4, my italics).
On the other hand Plotinus finds himself speaking of the cosmogonic
event in temporal terms, and negative ones at that. Thus he ends up
using the same type of mythological explanations he accuses the
Gnostics of using, and cannot avoid seeing the soul’s declination as a
fall, a negative event that is an aberration from the eternal Divine:
[Time] was at rest with eternity in real being; it was not yet time,
but itself, too, kept quiet in that. But since there was a restlessly ac-
tive nature which wanted to control itself and be on its own, and
chose to seek for more than its present state, this moved, and time
moved with it … and constructed time as an image of eternity. For
because soul had an unquiet power, which wanted to keep on trans-
ferring what it saw there to something else, it did not want the
whole to be present to it all together; and, as from a quiet seed the
formative principle, unfolding itself, advances, as it thinks, to
largeness, but does away with the largeness by division and, in-
stead of keeping its unity in itself, squanders it outside itself and so
goes forward to a weaker extension; in the same way Soul, mak-
ing the world of sense in imitation of that other world, moving
with a motion which is not that which exists There, but like it, and
intending to be an image of it, first of all put itself into time, which
it made instead of eternity … (III.7.11, my italics).
We are thus a far cry in Plotinus—not only in the Gnostics!—from
Plato’s account in the Timaeus of time being a moving image of eternity.

198
 Platonism

5. Traditional Christianity – St. Augustine

The traditional Christian view can be succinctly summed up in this
passage from the Book of Revelation:
You are our Lord and our God, you are worthy of glory and honor
and power, because you made all the universe and it was only by
your will that everything was made and exists (Rv 4:11).
Irenaeus, in the Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, wrote the following,
obviously one of the foundations of the later Apostles’ Creed:
God is the eternal being, above all created things; all is set be-
neath him, and it is God who has created all. Of necessity the
things created here below draw from some cause the principle of
their existence, and the principle of all things is God. For he him-
self has been created by no one, but by him all has been created.
So this is how the Christian teaching should be expressed: one
God, the uncreated father, creator of the universe, above whom
there is no other God, and beside whom there is no other God. One
God, creator of the universe: this is the very first article of our
faith (in Tresmontant, p. 42).
A century later, Clement of Alexandria wrote this criticism of the
Greek philosophers for divinizing the cosmos. Thus, Clement was ex-
pressing the strict dualism that separated the creator God from His
creation:
Some have somehow gone so far wrong as to worship, not God,
but a divine work, the sun, the moon, the whole choir of the stars:
against all reason they think of them as gods (Protrepticus 4.6.3, in
Tresmontant, p. 42).
Indeed, humanity was created to contemplate in wonder the splendor
of the cosmos, but to worship it as a living god was a serious error:
Let no one of you worship the sun, but let him turn his desire to-
wards the sun’s maker: let him not regard the world as divine, but
seek the creator of the world (ibid.).
This core belief of the orthodox Church was clearly articulated in the
thirteenth century by St. Thomas Aquinas, who extended the classical
Greek formulations in a Trinitarian framework:
… creation is God’s action by reason of his existence, which is his
very nature … . God is the cause of things through his mind and

199
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

will, like an artist of works of art. An artist works through an idea

conceived in his mind and through love in his will bent on some-
thing. In like manner God the Father wrought the creature
through his Word, the Son, and through his Love, the Holy Ghost
(Sum. Theol. 1a.45.6).
We may remark here that for the Platonists the Logos was of course
impersonal, as were all the divine powers. To the Christian, however,
the Logos was a specific person, a Divine Person, through whom not
only was the world made, but without whom no one could attain God.
Returning to our own “cast of characters,” we see that Augustine al-
lows no purpose for the creation of the world other than it being the
product of the omni-benevolent God. He writes in the Enchiridion:
By the Trinity, thus supremely and equally and unchangeably
good, all things were created; and these are not supremely and
equally and unchangeably good, but yet they are good, even taken
separately. Taken as a whole, however, they are very good, be-
cause their ensemble constitutes the universe in all its wonderful
order and beauty (Ench. 10, in Bourke, p. 65).
As Plato before him, Augustine sees the world of time representing the
movement of eternity. From the Literal Commentary on Genesis:
Living, then, in immutable eternity, He has created all things to-
gether, and from them periods of time flow, places are filled, and the
centuries unroll in the temporal and local motions of real things.
Among these things, He has established some as spiritual and others
as corporeal, giving form to the matter that He Himself created with-
out form but capable of being formed-matter which was made by no
other being but which did have a Maker. This matter preceded its
formation, not in time but its origin. … With these points estab-
lished, (it is evident that) God, the omnipotent and all-supporting,
Who is unmoved in time or place and ever the same in the immuta-
bility of eternity, truth, and will, moves spiritual creation in the
course of time, and also moves corporeal creation through both time
and place (Lit. Com. Gen. VIII.20.39; 26.48, in Bourke, pp. 63-65).
In almost ecstatic terms, and in language reminiscent of his beloved
Plotinus, Augustine cries out in awe-filled joy to the Creator of the
world, whose wonders he sees as reflecting the wonder of Heaven
(though previously quoted, the relevance of this passage warrants its
repetition):

200
 Platonism

Some people read books in order to find God. Yet there is a great
book, the very appearance of created things. Look above you; look
below you! Note it; read it! God, whom you wish to find, never
wrote that book with ink. Instead, He set before your eyes the
things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?
Why, heaven and earth cry out to you: “God made me!” (Sermon,
quoted in Bourke, p. 123).
Whence and in what manner was it, if it was not from you, from
whom are all things, in so far as they are? But so much more dis-
tant is anything from you, in so far as it is more unlike you, and this
distance is not of place. Therefore, Lord … . you created some-
thing, and that something out of nothing. You made heaven and
earth, not out of yourself, for then they would have been equal to
your Only-begotten, and through this equal also to you. But in no
way was it just that anything which was not of you should be equal
to you. There was nothing beyond you from which you might make
them, O God, one Trinity and trinal Unity. Therefore, you created
heaven and earth out of nothing, a great thing and a little thing. For
you are almighty and good, to make all things good, the great
heaven and the little earth. You were, and there was naught else out
of which you made heaven and earth: two beings, one near to you,
the other near to nothingness, one to which you alone would be su-
perior, the other to which nothing would be inferior (Conf. 12.7.7).
Yet Augustine could not deny the obvious imperfections in the world,
and we shall return to his horror of the body in Chapter 7. However,
some attention need be given here to his explanation for evil in the
world of matter. Here we do not find any expression of disgust, but
rather the glib dismissal of the problem by his famous formulation of
evil being merely the absence of good:
And in the universe, even that which is called evil, when it is
regulated and put in its own place, only enhances our admiration of
the good; for we enjoy and value the good more when we compare
it with the evil. For the Almighty God, who, as even the heathen
acknowledge, has supreme power over all things, being Himself
supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil
among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He
can bring good even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil
but the absence of good? … what are called vices in the soul are
nothing but privations of natural good. And when they are not

201
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul,

they cannot exist anywhere else.
All things that exist, therefore, seeing that the Creator of them
all is supremely good, are themselves good. But because they are
not, like their Creator, supremely and unchangeably good, their
good may be diminished and increased. But for good to be dimin-
ished is an evil, although, however much it may be diminished, it
is necessary, if the being is to continue, that some good should re-
main to constitute the being. For however small or of whatever
kind the being may be, the good which makes it a being cannot be
destroyed without destroying the being itself (Enchir. 11,12,
in Bourke, pp. 65-66).

Duality

As in the previous chapters, we begin the presentation of the Gnostics

by exploring the dualistic view. We first look at the Manichean cosmog-
ony which paradoxically, given our preceding comments, is one of the
very few Gnostic systems that places a positive value on the creation of
the world, though not without great ambivalence. For this reason many
scholars do not consider Manicheism to be a genuine Gnostic system.
The cosmic world, albeit not its inhabitants, is seen as the work of God
and therefore, as we shall see presently, the very structure of the world
becomes part of the cosmic plan of redemption. Nonetheless, the soul
is trapped in this alien world that is not its home. Fragments from a
Manichean poem and psalm will serve as examples of the exiled state
we shall explore more fully in Chapter 7.
Born of light and of the gods
I am in exile and cut off from them. 
The enemies who have covered me
Have carried me off among the dead.
May he be blessed and find deliverance
Who will deliver my soul from anguish!
I am a god, and born of gods,
Shining, sparkling, luminous,
Radiant, perfumed and beautiful,
But henceforth reduced to suffering.
(In Guitton, p. 65)

202
 Duality

O soul, whence art thou? Thou art from on high. Thou art a stranger
to the world … . I looked forth in the whole world … I found no har-
bor save thy [the Lord’s] harbor (in Allberry, pp. 181,184).
We pick up the thread of the Manichean myth at the point where the
light is trapped in the darkness, setting the stage for the liberation or
separation of the light from the darkness. To achieve this end the phys-
ical world is created. There are in fact two levels of redemptive activity,
with the world’s creation being a necessary part of the second. At first,
when the Primal Man realizes that he has been made captive to the pow-
ers of Darkness he cries out for help. The King of Light responds by cre-
ating the Friend of Lights, who in turn brings forth the Great Architect,
who then brings forth the Living Spirit (the analog to the Persian Mi-
thras). This Spirit has five Sons and they all descend together to the
abyss of darkness. The Living Spirit calls to Primal Man who re-
sponds, and in their joining—Call and Answer—the entrapped light
is liberated and ascends to the realm of Light. However, his soul is left
behind—Primal Man’s power, as it were—for these particles of light
had become too commingled with the darkness to be extricated and
redeemed.
Thus is the stage set for the second phase of redemption, the liber-
ation of these particles of light. For this purpose the world was created.
We shall return to this first stage of redemption in Chapter 8, when we
consider this theme in its entirety. It was necessary to introduce it here
in order to set the stage for the creation of the world, to which we now
turn.
The first cosmogonic step has the Living Spirit separate out the light
from the Darkness, which then necessitates the deliverance (literally)
of the particles of light to the Great Light. It is accomplished in this
way: The initial separation of the light from the Darkness weakens the
archons (i.e., rulers and guardians) of Darkness sufficiently to allow the
Spirit to use their “carcasses”—flesh and bones—to form the heaven
and the earth, while the particles of liberated light become the sun,
moon, and stars. As one of the Bema Psalms describes it:
When the First Man had finished his war, the Father sent his sec-
ond son. He came and helped his brother out of the abyss; he estab-
lished this whole world out of the mixture that took place of the
Light and the Darkness. He spread out all the powers of the abyss
to ten heavens and eight earths, he shut them up into this world

203
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

once, he made it a prison too for all the powers of Darkness, it is

also a place of purification for the soul that was swallowed in
them. The sun and moon he founded, he set them on high, to purify
the Soul. Daily they take up the refined part to the height, but the
dregs however they erase … . they convey it above and below
(in Allberry, pp. 10-11).
Theodore bar Konai summarizes the same situation:
The Mother of Life spread out the heavens from their skins; she
made ten heavens, and she cast their bodies into the Land of
Darkness. And they made eight earths and each of the five sons of
the Living Spirit completed his work: It was the Adornment of the
Light who seized the five Light Gods by their haunches, and the
heavens were spread out beneath their haunches. It was the
“Bearer” who down on one knee held up the earths. When the
heavens and the earths had been created, the great King of Honor
sat down in the center of the sky and watched over them all. There-
upon the Living Spirit disclosed to the sons of darkness his shapes,
and from the light which had been swallowed up by them (i.e., the
Demons), he purified the light, and made out of it the sun and
moon and over a thousand stars. And he formed the spheres which
are there: wind, water and fire (Konai 11, in Haardt, p. 292).
Thus, the cosmos is fashioned from both light and darkness. The
power of Darkness still remains, however, and has not lost its demonic
attributes for, in the words of Jonas, “all the parts of nature that sur-
round us come from the impure cadavers of the power of evil” (Jonas,
p. 224); and in a quote from a Manichean source: “the world is an em-
bodiment of the Arch-Ahriman [the God of Darkness]” (in Jonas,
p. 224). This world, incidentally, also includes the planets, which re-
main under the rule of the archons.
Now enters another figure who is responsible for setting the cosmos
into motion and delivering the light particles still “imprisoned,
oppressed, sullied” (Jonas, p. 225):
Thereupon the Mother of Life, Primal Man, and the Living Spirit
raised their prayers and pleaded with the Father of Greatness. And
the Father of Greatness heard them and in a third summons called
forth the messenger. The messenger called forth the twelve Virgins
in their garments, crowns and attributes [the twelve signs of the
Zodiac]. … When the emissary came to these vessels (i.e., the sun
and moon), he ordered the three servants to set the vessels in

204
 Duality

motion. He commanded the Great Architect to construct the New

Earth and the three Spheres to raise themselves up (Konai, in
Haardt, pp. 292-93).
This is the reason why the Cosmos came into existence and the
sun and moon in it, which by their waxing and waning are forever
separating the Divine Power from Hyle [Matter] and leading it up
to God. … During the periods when the moon is waxing, it re-
ceives the power separated from Hyle and throughout the period
becomes filled with it, but when it is full, it sends it up to the sun
during its period of waning. The sun in turn sends it to God. When
this has happened, it again receives an increase in Soul, which
passes to it from the next full moon, takes it up, permits it in simi-
lar fashion to reach God, automatically, and consistently carries on
this activity (Alexander of Lycopolis, in Haardt, p. 338).
This ingenious machinery of the Zodiac, portrayed as a cosmic fer-
ris wheel, is now set into motion by the Messenger. The lower portion
of the wheel descends to earth where it scoops up the particles of lib-
erated light, bearing them aloft along the Milky Way until the wheel’s
circular motion reaches the moon, where the particles of light are de-
posited. The cycle takes twenty-eight days and the fullness of the
moon signifies the completion of the cycle. The particles of light are
then emptied from the moon to the sun, and eventually returned to the
Great Light. The New Moon reflects the total emptying of the particles
and the cycle resumes.
In order to hasten the liberation process of the light from the
Darkness, the Messenger
revealed his forms, the male and the female, and became visible to
all the Archons, the children of the Darkness, the male and the fe-
male. And at the sight of the Messenger, who was beautiful in his
forms, all the Archons became excited with lust for him, the male
ones for his female appearance and the female ones for his male
appearance. And in their concupiscence they began to release the
Light of the Five Luminous Gods which they had devoured (Ko-
nai, in Jonas, pp. 225-26).
The released light is quickly carried away by the wheel and eventu-
ally returned home. However, the Messenger’s tactic is not without its
negative consequences, for particles of darkness also escape and try to
board the cosmic carriers. These particles consist of semen or aborted
embryos, stimulated by the nakedness of the Messenger. Thwarted in

205
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

their plan to remain with the light, these substances fall to the ground.
As Rudolph states in his summary:
The semen falls … on dry land and brings forth the world of
plants … . The aborted embryos, too, fall upon the earth, become
demons and devour the fruit of the plants, i.e. the seed of darkness
mixed with light, fertilize themselves and thus produce the animal
kingdom (Rudolph, p. 338).
Thus, as Jonas quotes from an ancient source: All plants,
grain, herbs and all roots and trees [to which we can also add the
animals] are creatures of the Darkness, not of God, and in these
forms and kinds of things the Godhead [particles of light] is fet-
tered (Jonas, p. 226).
There is a final strategy on the part of the Darkness to counter the plan
of the Messenger: the creation of Adam and Eve. We defer discussion
of this ploy until the following chapter.
In summary, then, in content somewhat parallel to Platonism, the
Manicheans understood the greater cosmos to be divine, while the
forms of life within the world were seen as the ugly products of sin,
most specifically sexuality. We shall return to this aspect of the system
in Chapter 10, when we consider its morality and guides for behavior.
Another example of this benign cosmogonic view is found in the
Poimandres, which we have already considered. We quoted this text as
stating that the elements of nature had arisen from the Will of God
(here seen as feminine, incidentally). It is this Will who
having received into herself the Word [Logos] and beheld the
beautiful (archetypal) Cosmos, imitated it, fashioning herself into a
cosmos … according to her own elements and her progeny, i.e., the
souls. But the divine Nous [the Mind of God], being androgynous,
existing as Life and Light, brought forth by a word another Nous,
the Demiurge, who as god over the fire and the breath fashioned
seven Governors, who encompass with their circles the sensible
world, and their government is called Heimarmene (Destiny) (in
Jonas, pp. 149-50).
Thus we see, in contradistinction from most of our other Gnostic
sources, that there is no inference of evil to these Governors. To the
contrary, as in Manicheism, the creation of the cosmos—patterned after
an already existent (archetypal) cosmic principle—is accomplished for

206
 Duality

the purpose of liberating the divine principle that had fallen prisoner to
the lower realms of a pre-cosmic Darkness.
The same doctrine is seen in “The Paraphrase of Shem,” the Nag
Hammadi text we considered in Chapters 4 and 5. The act of creation
by Derdekeas is couched in strong sexual overtones, most of which we
omit in this rendering, to be returned to in Chapter 7. Derdekeas’ ac-
tions are necessitated by the entrapment of the light of spirit by the evil
Darkness:
I went down to chaos to save the whole light from it. … I put on the
beast [the body], and laid before her [Nature] a great request that
heaven and earth might come into being, in order that the whole
light might rise up. For in no other way could the power of the
Spirit be saved from bondage except that I appear to her in animal
form. Therefore she was gracious to me as if I were her son.
And on account of my request, Nature arose since she possesses
of the power of the Spirit and the Darkness and the fire. For she had
taken off her forms. When she had cast it off, she blew upon the
water. The heaven was created. And from the foam of the heaven
the earth came into being. And at my wish it brought forth all kinds
of food in accordance with the number of the beasts. And it brought
forth dew from the winds on account of you (pl.) and those who
will be begotten the second time upon the earth. For the earth pos-
sessed a power of chaotic fire. Therefore it brought forth every seed
(Para. Shem VII.18.12-14; 19.26–20.20, in NHL, pp. 316-17).
This view as we have seen, is a minority one within the Gnostic liter-
ature, where almost always the physical universe is seen right from the
beginning as the product of an inferior (or fallen) principle, frequently
identified with the Platonic Demiurge.
Finally, we consider the Mandean literature which combines dif-
fering aspects of cosmogony, reflecting an underlying ambivalence
towards the world and its creator. As we have seen, the Mandeans
posit coexistent states of light and darkness, and before there is a com-
mingling of light and darkness, the world is created by Ptahil, the
fourth and final emanation of light. In some of the Mandean accounts,
Ptahil’s act is actually prefaced by a gradual deflection from the King
of Light. Thus we read the words of the third emanation, known as
Abathur or B’haq-Ziwa:

207
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

“I am the father of the uthras [divine beings] … . I shall call forth a

world.” … He called Ptahil-Uthra, embraced him, and kissed him
like a mighty one. He bestowed names on him … . called him, gave
command, and spoke to him: “Arise, go, descend to the place
where there are no skinas or worlds. Call forth and create a world
for yourself, just like the sons of perfection, whom you saw. Set up
and establish a world, establish a world for yourself and make uth-
ras in it” (GR III.p.93, in F II, p. 171).
Nothing was said to Ptahil about the powers of Darkness, who
were going about their own creation process. In one of the Mandean
versions, Ruha, a fallen spirit of light, issues forth the Lord of Darkness,
a monster dragon, who in turn creates his own world. He then is invited
by Ruha into an incestuous union:
“Arise, sleep with your mother, and you will be released from the
chain which binds you … .” He slept with Ruha, and she conceived
seven forms by the one act. … [She] brought forth the despicable
ones. She gave birth to the Seven Planets … (ibid., p.94, in F II,
p. 172).
Ptahil then, without the authorization of the King of Light, merges
with Ruha, prepares a “solidification,” which then becomes estab-
lished as the earthly world, called “Tibil”:
By my (Ptahil’s) first cry I solidified the earth and spanned out the
firmament in perfection. By my second cry I dispersed jordans and
canals in it. By my third cry I called forth the fish of the sea and
feathered birds of every type and variety. … By my fifth cry evil
reptiles came into being. By my sixth cry the whole structure of
darkness came into being. … When Ptahil said this, his house was
taken away from him. … and he was put in grievous bonds. … He
was fastened by a chain until the disappearance of Tibil. Because
he altered the pronouncement of his father … (GR XV.13,in F II,
p. 179).

Non-Duality

1. Non-Valentinian
There are several important Gnostic documents that reflect the non-
dualistic view of the world. We have already touched upon this basic

208
 Non-Duality

Gnostic stance, but we can now elaborate on its essential characteris-

tics. As we have seen, what distinguishes a Gnostic position from any
other is its distinctly anti-world view. Such feeling directly follows
from the almost universal Gnostic belief that the physical world was
not the creation of the one true God, but rather the result of an inferior
principle. The themes we will consider here are the logical outgrowth
of the original theory of separation from God that we considered in the
preceding chapter. The culmination of this thought process is the
Valentinian gnosis, which we shall consider after presenting other for-
mulations that are similar to, but lack the uniqueness of, Valentinus’
genius.
In general the Gnostics were most inventive in their attempts to ex-
plain the fall from the perfect unity of the Godhead. However, they
hardly were able to explain it in any rational manner. Yet, they did rec-
ognize the impossibility of anything real or good existing outside the
heavenly Pleroma. To Irenaeus and his fellow orthodox Christians this
idea was anathema, for how else explain the “reality” of the physical
world except for the creative efforts of God, “the Father of All”? As
the Church Father writes in Against the Heretics:
It is proper, then, that I should begin with the first and most im-
portant head, that is, God the Creator, who made the heaven and
the earth, and all things that are therein … and to demonstrate that
there is nothing either above Him or after Him; nor that, moved by
any one else, but of His own free will, He created all things, since
He is the only God, the only Lord, the only Creator, the only Fa-
ther, alone containing all things, and far surpassing all things that
they might exist (Adv. haer. II.1.1, in Layton, p. 156).
We begin with the parallel texts in the Nag Hammadi Library that
we examined in the preceding chapter: “The Hypostasis of the
Archons” and “On the Origin of the World.” They date from the late-
third or early-fourth centuries A.D., and are illustrative of a relatively
late summary of Gnostic ideas. They show a strong Valentinian influ-
ence, yet without the sophistication we find in the original Valentinian
teachings.
In “The Hypostasis of the Archons” we read of the Power that
opposes and that separated from the Father of Truth. This Power
exclaimed: “It is I who am God; there is none (apart from me)”
(Hypos. Arch. II.86.30-31, in NHL, p. 153). These blasphemous

209
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

thoughts became expelled and went to Chaos and the Abyss, his
mother. She in turn
established each of his offspring in conformity with its power—
after the pattern of the realms that are above, for by starting from
the invisible world the visible world was invented (ibid., 87.8-11).
Later in the text we find a more explicit rendering of the creation
myth.
A veil exists between the World Above and the realms that are
below; and Shadow came into being beneath the veil; and that
Shadow became Matter; and that Shadow was projected apart. And
what she had created became a product in the Matter, like an
aborted fetus. And it assumed a plastic form molded out of
Shadow, and became an arrogant beast resembling a lion. It was
androgynous, as I have already said, because it was from Matter
that it derived (ibid., 94.9-19, p. 158).
The beast is variously known as Samael, Sakla, and Yaldabaoth.
The narrative is expanded in the companion text “On the Origin of
the World.” We have already seen that the fall of Sophia led to the cre-
ation of the Darkness of Chaos. From within the darkness
a power appeared as ruler over the darkness. … Then the shadow
perceived that there was one stronger than it. It was jealous, and
when it became self-impregnated, it immediately bore envy. Since
that day the origin of envy has appeared in all of the aeons and
their worlds. But that envy was found to be a miscarriage without
any spirit in it. It became like the shadows in a great watery sub-
stance. Then the bitter wrath which came into being from the
shadow was cast into a region of Chaos. Since that day a watery
substance has appeared … . Just as all the useless afterbirth of one
who bears a little child falls, likewise the matter which came into
being from the shadow was cast aside. … And when Pistis [So-
phia] saw what came into being from her deficiency, she was dis-
turbed. And the disturbance appeared as a fearful work (Orig. Wld.
II.98.28-29; 99.2-32, in NHL, pp. 162-63).
Thus we see again the Gnostic idea that matter arises from a nega-
tive activity, the “folly of Sophia,” as it is known in Valentinianism.
And the cosmos, the object of great veneration by the world of antiq-
uity, is reduced to nothing more than a “useless afterbirth,” the product
of the shadow and a parody of the world of light. Rudolph has pointed

210
 Non-Duality

out the influence of the classical notion of creation occurring through

the “shadow of God,” a positive activity (see Philo), although here that
notion, as is typical of Gnostic thought, is given a negative connotation.
We find a similar phenomenon in the next stage of creation, the
emergence of the figure of world creator, frequently called the
Demiurge, the name taken from the Platonic figure in the Timaeus
who fashions the divine being of the universe. As we saw earlier, this
figure is almost always denigrated by the Gnostics as the creator God
of the Old Testament who has sought to imprison the true creations of
light in his world of darkness. We continue the narrative from “On the
Origin of the World”:
… a ruler first appeared out of the waters, lion-like in appearance,
and androgynous, and having a great authority within himself, but
not knowing whence he came into being. … When the ruler saw
his greatness—and he saw only himself; he did not see another
one except water and darkness—then he thought that he alone ex-
isted. His thought was made complete by means of the word, and
it appeared as a spirit moving to and fro over the waters (ibid.,
100.5-10; 100.29-101.2, p. 163).
The narrative proceeds with the creation of the world, paralleling
the creation myth in Genesis. Influences of Greek mythology are also
seen when the rulers or archons who are created by Yaldabaoth begin
to fight among themselves, reminiscent of the clash of the titans. The
conflict is never truly resolved, for it gives rise to all manner of de-
mons which pollute the world:
But these (demons) taught men many errors with magic and po-
tions and idolatry, and shedding of blood, and altars, and temples,
and sacrifices, and libations to all the demons of the earth, having
as their co-worker Fate who came into being according to the
agreement by the gods of injustice and justice. And thus when the
world came to be in distraction, it wandered astray throughout all
time. … [in] an ignorance and a stupor (ibid., 123.8-22, pp. 176-77).
Thus we see in this parody of the Genesis creation myth and the result-
ing Judaeo-Christian religions a clear depiction of the Gnostic devalu-
ation of this world.
Our final excerpt from this text completes the Gnostic denigration
of creation in its “exposure” of the arrogance of the creator God of the
Old Testament:

211
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

But after the heavens and their powers and all of their government
set themselves aright, the First Father [the Demiurge, Yaldabaoth]
exalted himself, and was glorified by the whole army of angels.
And all the gods and their angels gave him praise and glory. And
he rejoiced in his heart, and he boasted continually, saying to them,
“I do not need anything.” He said, “I am god and no other one ex-
ists except me.” But when he said these things, he sinned against
all of the immortal imperishable ones, and they protected him.
Moreover, when Pistis saw the impiety of the chief ruler, she was
angry. Without being seen, she said, “You err, Samael,” i.e. “the
blind god” (ibid., 103.2-18, p. 165).
We move next to “The Apocryphon of John.” We saw in the previ-
ous chapter how Sophia failed in her desire to create like God, and her
actions resulted in the creation of Yaltabaoth. He is called the first
archon, and it is stated that he derived his power from his mother (i.e.,
Sophia), which he then sought to deny:
And he removed himself from her and moved away from the
places in which he was born [i.e., in the mind of Sophia]. He be-
came strong and created for himself other aeons with a flame of lu-
minous fire which still exists now. And he joined with his madness
which is in him and begot authorities for himself. … [The creation
of the twelve authorities or archons is then described.]
And when the light had mixed with the darkness, it caused the
darkness to shine. And when the darkness had mixed with the
light, it darkened the light and it became neither light nor dark, but
it became weak.
Now the archon who is weak has three names. The first name is
Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas [meaning “fool”], and the third is
Samael. And he is impious in his madness which is in him. For he
said, “I am God and there is no other God beside me,” for he is ig-
norant of his strength, the place from which he had come. … And
when he saw the creation which surrounds him and the multitude
of the angels around him which had come forth from him, he said
to them, “I am a jealous God and there is no other God beside me.”
But by announcing this he indicated to the angels who attended to
him that there exists another God, for if there were no other one, of
whom would he be jealous? Then the mother [Sophia] began to
move to and fro. She became aware of the deficiency when the
brightness of her light diminished. And she became dark because
her consort had not agreed with her (ApocryJohn II.10.21-28;
11.10-22; 13.5-17, in NHL, pp. 104-106).

212
 Non-Duality

The remainder of the narrative will be discussed in the chapters to

follow, when we discuss the repentance of Sophia and the plan of
redemption.
“The Second Treatise of the Great Seth,” a Nag Hammadi text, pro-
vides another example of the Gnostic denigration of the Old Testament
God and his creation, and is an overt polemic against Church ortho-
doxy. The figure of Seth, incidentally, never appears, and is obviously
meant to be a symbol of Jesus, the ostensible source of the revelation.
For those … in the world had been prepared by the will of our sis-
ter Sophia—she who is a whore—because of the innocence which
has not been uttered. And she did not ask anything from the All, nor
from the greatness of the Assembly, nor from the Pleroma. Since
she was first she came forth to prepare monads and places for the
Son of Light, and the fellow workers which she took from the ele-
ments below to build bodily dwellings from them. But, having
come into being in an empty glory, they ended in destruction in the
dwellings in which they were, since they were prepared by Sophia
(Gr. Seth VII.50.25–51.12, in NHL, p. 330).
After discussing the role of Jesus, the text proceeds to denigrate al-
most all the Old Testament figures—Adam, the patriarchs, Moses, Da-
vid, Solomon, the prophets, even John the Baptist—by calling them
laughingstocks.
For the Archon was a laughingstock because he said, “I am God,
and there is none greater than I. I alone am the Father, the Lord, and
there is no other beside me.” … As if he had become stronger than I
[Jesus] and my brothers! … Thus he was in an empty glory. And he
does not agree with our Father (ibid., 64.18-33, pp. 335-36).
As for the world,
… the archons around Yaldabaoth were disobedient because of the
Ennoia [Thought] who went down to him from her sister Sophia.
They made for themselves a union with those who were with them
in a mixture of a fiery cloud, which was their Envy, and the rest
who were brought forth by their creatures, as if they had bruised
the noble pleasure of the Assembly. And therefore they revealed a
mixture of ignorance in a counterfeit of fire and earth and a mur-
derer, since they are small and untaught, without knowledge …
(ibid., 68.28-69.13, p. 337).

213
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

In “The Gospel of Thomas,” sometimes mistakenly referred to as a

Gnostic text, we find these two very Gnostic teachings: “A grapevine
[the world] has been planted outside of the Father, but being unsound,
it will be pulled up by its roots and destroyed”; “Whoever has come to
understand the world has found only a corpse, and whoever has found
a corpse is superior to the world” (GTh II.40.13-16; 42.30-32, in NHL,
pp. 122,124). Further, we find this denigrating portrait of the Old
Testament God in the “Acts of Thomas,” as Thomas questions the ser-
pent, the offspring of Ialdabaoth, as to his origin. The serpent answers:
I am a reptile of reptile nature, the baleful son of a baleful father; I
am son of him who … sits upon the throne and has power over the
creation which is under heaven … I am he who entered through the
fence into Paradise and said to Eve all the things my father charged
me to say to her; I am he who kindled and inflamed Cain to slay his
own brother … I am he who hurled the angels down from above,
and bound them in lusts for women, that earth-born children might
come from them and I fulfill my will in them … I am he who hard-
ened Pharoah’s heart … (ATh II.32, in NTA II, p. 460).
In “The Treatise on Resurrection,” a Valentinian tract we shall dis-
cuss when we consider the resurrection of Jesus, we find this striking
line, in the context of resurrection: “It [the resurrection] is no illusion,
but it is truth. Indeed, it is more fitting to say that the world is an
illusion … .” The author also quotes from an unidentified Gnostic text:
“Strong is the system of the Pleroma; small is that which broke loose
and became the world” (Treat. Res. I.48.12-15; 46.35-38, in NHL,
pp. 52-53).
“The First Apocalypse of James,” still another example of the
Gnostic denigration of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, presents Jesus
saying to James: “… leave Jerusalem. For it is she who always gives the
cup of bitterness to the sons of light. She is a dwelling place of a great
number of archons” (1 ApocJs V.25.15-19, in NHL, p. 243). Jerusalem,
being the place of Jesus’ crucifixion, thus becomes a symbol for the
sufferings of the material world.
Our final Gnostic text before turning to the Valentinian gnosis is
“The Gospel of Philip,” which most likely dates from the latter half of
the third century. Though basically Valentinian in its character, it
shares the hostile worldview that we find in many of the other Gnostic
writings, but which is largely absent in the writings we can attribute

214
 Non-Duality

either to Valentinus himself, or to disciples such as Ptolemaeus who

immediately followed him, where the tone is more neutral. The fol-
lowing examples will be illustrative:
The world is a corpse-eater. All the things eaten in it themselves
die also (GPh II.73.19-21, in NHL, p. 144).
And as soon as Christ went down into the water he came out
laughing at everything of this world, not because he considers it a
trifle, but because he is full of contempt for it. He who wants to en-
ter the kingdom of heaven will attain it. If he despises everything
of this world and scorns it as a trifle, he will come out laughing
(ibid., 74.28-36, pp. 144-45).
Now you who live together with the Son of God, love not the
world, but love the Lord, in order that those you will bring forth
may not resemble the world, but may resemble the Lord (ibid.,
78.20-24, p. 147).
A more characteristic Valentinian statement from this text will pro-
vide a summarizing introduction to the Valentinian view:
The world came about through a mistake. For he who created it
wanted to create it imperishable and immortal. He fell short of at-
taining his desire. For the world never was imperishable, nor, for
that matter, was he who made the world (ibid., 75.2-9, p. 145).

2. Valentinian
Our contemporary psychological age would certainly consider the
Valentinian gnosis to be the most sophisticated of all the Gnostic theo-
logical systems. Church Father Tertullian claimed that Valentinus
“found the seed of an older doctrine” (F I, p. 122n.9), which some com-
mentators have seen as the Ophites and/or the Barbelognostics, whose
most representative and highly developed work, “The Apocryphon of
John,” we have already examined. Whatever the antecedents of certain
ideas or forms of expression may have been, clearly Valentinus applied
an originality if not genuine inspiration to these ideas, focusing the cos-
mic events of separation and world creation on a purely internal phe-
nomenon. His psychological understanding, as we have seen, provides
an ancient counterpart to the particular brand of modern Gnosticism we
find in A Course in Miracles. Midst the Gnostic theater in which
Valentinus found himself in the mid-second century A.D., this great

215
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

teacher reinterpreted the role of Sophia, the central figure in the Gnostic
cosmic drama, recasting her as the prototype for everyone who
“wanders in the world uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear”
(A Course in Miracles, T-31.VIII.7:1).
As in the preceding chapter, we will present the Valentinian myth as
it is found in Irenaeus, supplemented by other writings that are illustra-
tive of the narrative. We left off our discussion in Chapter 5 with the
production of Sophia’s “folly”—called variously a “formless entity,”
“frail fruit,” and an “abortion”—and the creation of Horos. As Cross
and Limit, Horos has a dual function, to reiterate what we discussed
above: Sophia is returned to the Pleroma which is restored to its full-
ness, at the same time the Pleroma is protected by the Limit excluding
the “formless entity.” Thus we have essentially two Sophias, upper and
lower. It is the “lower Sophia,” outside the Pleroma, that is our concern
here, and which is the object of the Gnostic redemption.
She [Sophia] was outside the light and the Pleroma and was with-
out shape and form, like an abortion, since she comprehended
nothing (Adv. haer. I.4.1, in F I, p. 133).
Alone with her unfulfilled passion, “violently excited” as it were by
her unsuccessful attempt, Sophia
fell into all sorts of suffering which has many forms and varieties:
she experienced sorrow, because she had not comprehended; fear,
lest life might abandon her, as light had done; and, in addition, per-
plexity: but all these she suffered in ignorance. … Moreover, there
came upon her another disposition, namely, that of turning to him
who gave her life.
This, they say, was the formation and substance of the matter
from which this universe came into being. From that returning of
hers … [i.e., repentance and subsequent grief] every soul in the
world and that of the Demiurge had its origin: from her fear and
sorrow, all the rest took its beginning … (ibid., 4.1-2, p. 134).
This same passage is presented in Jonas, with a slightly different
translation. The importance of this passage in the general argument
of this book warrants its immediate repetition, along with Jonas’
comments:
The formless entity to which in her [Sophia’s] striving for the im-
possible she gave birth is the objectivation of her own passion; and
at the sight of it, and reflecting upon her fate, she is moved by

216
 Non-Duality

varying emotions: grief, fear, bewilderment and shock, repentance.

These emotions too become embodied in the formlessness, and
their complete series, developed in ever-new variations by the indi-
vidual thinkers, plays an important ontological role in the system:
[quoting Irenaeus Adv. haer. I.2.3] “From here, from the igno-
rance, the grief, the fear and the shock, material substance took its
first beginning.” … This substance … is nothing else than a self-
estranged and sunken form of the Spirit solidified from acts into
habitual conditions and from inner process to outer fact (Jonas,
pp. 183,187).
This movement from “inner process to outer fact” is, of course, the
psychological dynamic of projection, here remarkably depicted in
texts written almost eighteen centuries before Freud! Jonas adds that
“matter” is the external, “oblivion” the internal aspect of the “defi-
ciency” in which Error objectified itself. In the final product, the
“deficiency” is the world as fashioned by Error in a “shape,” in
which the force of oblivion that lies at its root lives on (Jonas,
p. 317n).
Moreover, we see that Sophia’s “repentance” does not heal the split,
but becomes in fact part of the projection into matter: believing that
there was something to repent for, she ends up making the error real.
We shall return to this important point in Part III.
Jonas comments further that we may see the centrality of Sophia’s
reactions for the Valentinian thought system by the many and varied
accounts that are given throughout their writings, cutting across their
many schools:
The very fact that the correlation of emotions and elements is not
fixed in detail but varies considerably from author to author, and
probably even within the thought of one and the same author, illus-
trates how the subject was again and again pondered on (Jonas,
p. 187).
Examining this process more closely, we find that there are actually
three divisions, corresponding to the three divisions found in humanity
which we shall consider in more detail in the following chapter. As we
have already observed, the Valentinian systems show an impressive
consistency in terms of their anthropology reflecting the basic ontology.
In Chapter 5 we saw that Sophia was restored to her perfection by
Christ and the Holy Spirit, and that, in fact, Sophia became separated

217
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

into an upper and a lower self. The lower Sophia is our current focus,
and corresponds to the separated self, called the ego by A Course in
Miracles; the upper Sophia is our true nature as spirit and light, called
pneuma by the Gnostics, and Christ by the Course. This Self of course
does not concern us here, for the pneuma plays no role in the fashion-
ing of the world.
Jonas has pointed out that although ignorance is usually classified
as one of the resulting emotions of Sophia’s folly, along with grief,
fear, and bewilderment, it actually is the reigning principle that is im-
manent in the other three, the condition out of which they arise. The
Gnostic writers sought to have four emotions, from which to derive
the traditional four elements of matter, and so ignorance was added
on. However, the importance of ignorance as the problem as well as
being the ultimate cause of the material world will become apparent
when we consider the Gnostic theory of salvation in Chapter 8. None-
theless, it is this combination of emotions that directly leads to the
world of matter—earth, water, air, and fire—as is seen in this excerpt
from Irenaeus:
The corporeal elements of the universe sprang, as has been said be-
fore, from the terror and perplexity, as from a more permanent [the
translator notes that the Greek reads “more ignoble”] source: earth,
as a result of the state of terror; water, as a result of the agitation of
fear; air, as a result of the congealing of sorrow. Fire is inherent in
all of these elements as death and decay, just as they also teach that
ignorance is hidden in the three passions (Adv. haer. I.5.4, in F I,
p. 137).
The remaining emotion in the series is the conversion or turning
back to God, what Hippolytus’ account refers to as the supplication
for ascent. It is this entreaty that ultimately leads to the psychical (or
mental) element in people, which falls between matter and spirit, or
what we may call the soul (to be distinguished from the spirit). The
psychics, in the Valentinian system, are those who have the choice of
turning upward to God or else falling deeper into the world of matter,
and we shall consider them in more detail in the following chapter. At
this point, however, we shall consider the dual manner in which the
“conversion” operates. On the one hand, the soul may choose to re-
flect the spirit that is seen in the Savior, and it is this that leads to the
presence of the spirit—or the pneumatic element—in this world. On

218
 Non-Duality

the other hand, the soul may choose to identify with the materializa-
tion that gives rise to the material universe. This second aspect is the
function of the Demiurge, the representative (symbol) of the process
of taking the substances of the emotions and translating them into
matter.
Two parallel accounts follow, which summarize this part of the pro-
cess. The first is from Church Father Clement of Alexandria and is
taken from his Excerpta ex Theodoto, a compilation of the writings of
Theodotus as well as other Valentinians.
Immediately therefore the Savior [Jesus] bestows on her [So-
phia] the form according to knowledge and healing from her pas-
sions, showing to her the things in the Pleroma from the
unbegotten Father as far as herself. He removed the passions from
her who had suffered them and made her impassible [i.e., incapa-
ble of suffering], but, having separated the passions from her, he
kept them. And they were not dispersed, as in the case of the inner
[the upper Sophia], but he made both them and those of the second
disposition into substances. So, by the appearance of the Savior,
Sophia becomes passionless and what is outside (the Pleroma) is
created. For “all things were made by him and without him was not
anything made” (John 1:3) (Excerpta 45.1-2, in F I, pp. 146-47).
This last quotation, incidentally, is an example of the kind of scripture
citation of which the Gnostics were so characteristically fond—using
the traditional Church texts to support their own arguments—and
which so enraged the Church authorities. Clement continues:
So, from incorporeal and contingent passion he first molded them
(the passions) into a still incorporeal matter and then, in the same
way, changed them into compounds and bodies—for it was not
possible to turn the passions into substances all at once—and he
created in the bodies a capability according to (their) nature (ibid.,
46.1-2, p. 147).
A similar report is found in Irenaeus, and is quoted now as illustra-
tive of the process similar to what is found in the gospels. As Foerster
points out (F I, p. 146), one may find a similar relationship between
Clement and Irenaeus as is seen between Luke and Matthew (one may
add Mark as well), in the sense that these later documents used the
same earlier source, but reinterpreted it through the particular lens of
the evangelist or Church Father. Now, Irenaeus:

219
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

When their mother had passed through all her suffering and had,
with difficulty, emerged from it, she is said to have turned her at-
tention to supplicating the light which had left her, that is, Christ.
He had gone up into the Pleroma, and was naturally reluctant to
descend a second time, and so he sent to her the Paraclete, that is,
the Savior [again, Jesus], to whom in fact the Father gave all power
and put all things under his authority, and the aeons too … . But he
was sent to her along with the angels, who were his coevals.
Achamoth [variant name for Sophia], they say, put a veil over her
countenance out of reverence for him, but then, when she had seen
him with all his fructifying power, she ran to him and received
strength from his appearing. And he gave to her the formation that
is in accordance with knowledge and healed her of her passions
and separated them from her, but he still was concerned about
them, because it was not possible for them to disappear, like those
of the former [the upper Sophia], for they had already become
fixed by habit and powerful. Therefore he separated them and
made them solid and transformed them from an incorporeal pas-
sion into an incorporeal matter.
I interrupt this account to point out what appears to be another ex-
ample of the strong Platonic influence in many of the Gnostic theories,
to be discussed more fully later. The passage in question deals with the
intermediate step between the “incorporeal passions” and the world of
matter, what Clement and Irenaeus term “incorporeal matter.” This in-
termediary is reminiscent, albeit in distorted fashion, of Plato’s Ideas:
the idealization of form that subsequently becomes manifest in the
world of multiplicity, the material world of shadows and illusions.
Plato himself gives no cosmological sequence to this, which remained
the task of the Gnostic theorists. This Platonic borrowing renders
more sensible the generally benevolent Valentinian attitude towards
the Demiurge.
Returning to Irenaeus’ narrative,
Then he [Christ] implanted into them [Sophia’s passions] an apti-
tude and nature such that they could come together into com-
pounds and bodies, so that two substances might come into being,
the one evil, resulting from the passions, the other passible, result-
ing from the conversion. In this way, they maintain, the Savior in
effect created all. But Achamoth, freed from her passions, received
with joy her vision of the lights coming with him (that is, the an-
gels with him), became pregnant, and … gave birth to progeny after

220
 Non-Duality

their image, a spiritual offspring which was formed after the like-
ness of the Savior’s bodyguards.
These three substances underlie all else, in their opinion: one from
the passion, and this was matter; a second from the conversion, and
that was the psychic; and, thirdly, what she herself brought forth,
and that was the spiritual (Adv. haer. I.4.5–5.1, in F I, p. 134-35).
Again, in the next chapter we shall discuss the threefold nature of
humanity that results from these three substances.
We turn our attention now to the role of the Demiurge in the cre-
ation of the world. It is in their respective cosmologies that we see
most graphically depicted the difference between the Gnostics and the
Church and, in fact, the difference between the Gnostics and A Course
in Miracles. In the former comparison, the differences are specific to
the actual metaphysical teachings themselves; i.e., regarding the role
of God in creating the world. In the latter, despite a generally shared
metaphysics, we find differences in the tone of the writing, reflecting
differing attitudes towards the world and body: differences, as we shall
see, every bit as important as those existing between the Gnostics and
their adversaries in the orthodox Church.
As a result of her contact with the Savior Jesus, the lower Sophia
or Achamoth forms the Demiurge, referred to as Ialdabaoth in other
Gnostic sources. The Demiurge is known as the “king” of all that fol-
lows from his creation. The term “king” is not without its Gnostic
irony, however, for unbeknownst to the Demiurge he merely carries
out the desires of his mother Sophia who is the true creative agent.
As we shall see, the Gnostics derived much satisfaction, not to men-
tion polemic enjoyment, from reminding their Church readers of the
Demiurge’s “conceit and presumption in which he believes himself
to be alone and declares himself to be the unique and highest God”
(Jonas, p. 191).
What the Demiurge shapes has both spiritual and material fruits;
the former is called the Right, the latter the Left, which includes the
eventual creation of humanity. First on the Demiurge’s agenda was to
create the heavens, above which becomes his own home. As Irenaeus
summarizes:
He … prepared seven heavens above which the Demiurge [himself]
was to dwell. And, for this reason, they name him Hebdomad, and
the mother, Achamoth, Ogdoad: she thereby preserves the number

221
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

of the original and primary Ogdoad of the Pleroma (Adv. haer. I.5.2,
in F I, p. 136).
Topographically, then, we can understand that first there is the
Pleroma, beneath which is the lower Sophia (Ogdoad, Achamoth,
Mother) who awaits the consummation of her salvation. Beneath her
is her son, the Demiurge (the Hebdomad), who resides in the “Place
of the Middle,” beneath whom is the material universe. It is interest-
ing to note that one of the Hebrew synonyms for God, to avoid calling
Him by name directly, is Hamakom, “The Place.”
Clement’s collection provides the reason for the “seven heavens.”
As we have already seen, the Gnostic writers were fond of citing scrip-
ture as justification for their own theologies, just as the New Testament
authors repeatedly cited Old Testament sources for their own purposes.
In Clement’s version, some of the details differ but the basic substance
remains the same:
The first and universal Demiurge is the Savior [i.e., Jesus, by virtue
of his having saved Sophia], but Sophia, as the second, “built her-
self a house and supported it with seven pillars” (Pr 9:1) (Excerpta
47.1, in F I, p. 147).
The narrative continues:
And first of all things she put forth, as an image of the Father, the
god [the Demiurge] through whom she made “the heaven and the
earth” (Gn 1:1), that is, the heavenly and the earthly, the Right and
the Left (ibid., 47.2).
Clement now provides one Gnostic version of the Genesis creation
story, and not an altogether positive one, as its conclusion suggests:
He [the Demiurge], being an image of the Father, becomes a father
and brings forth first the psychic Christ, an image of the Son, then
the archangels, as images of the aeons, then angels, as images of
the archangels, all from the psychic, luminous substance [the
Right], of which the prophetic word says, “And the spirit of God
hovered over the waters” (Gn 1:2). Because the two substances
made by him were combined he declares concerning the pure that
it “hovered over,” and concerning what was heavy, material,
muddy, and dense, that it “lay underneath.” That this also, in the
beginning, was incorporeal he indicates by calling it “invisible”
(Gn 1:2), though it was invisible neither to man, who did not then

222
 Non-Duality

exist, nor to God, for he in fact formed it; rather, he has somehow
expressed in this way the fact that it was unformed, unshaped, and
undesigned.
The Demiurge separated the pure from the heavy, since he per-
ceived the nature of both, and made light, that is, he let it appear
and brought it to light and form, for the light of the sun and of the
heaven was made much later. And of the material he made the one
out of the sorrow, creating substantially “the spiritual powers of
wickedness” (Ep 6:12), with whom we have to struggle … he
made from the fear, namely, the wild beasts, and another from the
terror and perplexity, namely, the elements of the universe (ibid.,
47.3–48.3, pp. 147-48).
We find a similar expression of the deity’s arrogance in this Mandean
account of the King of Darkness’ cry:
“Is there any one who is stronger than I, whom all the worlds
serve? If there is someone who is stronger than I, then let him
come forward and fight with me, whose food is the mountains, in
whose belly only its wrath is found. All the great ones and giants,
together with their demons … they are all subservient to me. … and
prostrate themselves daily before me.” … [Then] Ruha spoke to her
son and instructed the King of Darkness: “There is someone who is
greater than you, and whose power surpasses all your worlds.
There is a world which is more extensive than yours, in which
mighty ones dwell. … and their forms … are more radiant than all
the worlds” (GR III, in F II, pp. 205-206).
Hippolytus’ narrative continues with the account of the Demiurge’s
ignorance of the true creative agent:
The Demiurge, they say, knows nothing whatsoever, but is, in
their view, without understanding and silly, and he does not know
what he is doing or bringing to pass. In him, who does not know
what he is doing, Sophia was active and operative, and when she
was active he believed that he was bringing about by himself the
creation of the world. Therefore he began to say: “I am God, and
apart from me there is no other” (Is 45:5). … Foolishness … is the
power of the Demiurge. For he was foolish and without under-
standing, and believed that he himself was creating the world, un-
aware that Sophia, the mother, the Ogdoad, was accomplishing
everything for the creation of the world, without his knowledge
(Ref. VI.33.1; 34.8, in F I, pp. 190,192).

223
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

Finally, we consider Irenaeus’ account of the Demiurge’s ignorance

and arrogance which, again, allows us to see the Platonic influence:
They say that the Demiurge believed that he had created all this
of himself, but in fact he had made them because Achamoth
prompted him. He made the heaven without knowing the heaven;
he formed man without knowing him; he brought the earth to light
without knowing it. And, in every case, they say, he was ignorant
of the ideas of the things he made, and even of his own mother,
and imagined that he alone was all things (Adv. haer. I.5.3, in F I,
p. 136, my italics).
As Jonas has pointed out (p. 191), this passage is a deliberate revision
of Plato’s Demiurge who is very much conscious of the ideas from
which he creates the world.
Almost without exception, the Gnostics, including the Valentinians,
equated the Demiurge or creator God with the God of the Old Testament
and, as we have already seen, not in the kindliest of lights. However, of
all the Gnostic schools it is the Valentinian which seems to have the most
charitable view. Exceptions would be Clement’s account, already
quoted, and that of Hippolytus, as seen in the following reference to the
Old Testament:
All the prophets and the law spoke from the Demiurge, a silly
god … and they were foolish and knew nothing. … For none of the
prophets … said anything at all concerning the things of which we
speak. For everything was unknown because it was spoken by the
Demiurge alone (Ref. VI.35.1-2, in F I, p. 192).
The most benevolent view toward the creator God and the Old
Testament is found in the “Letter to Flora” by the famous Valentinian
disciple Ptolemaeus, whose teachings appear to be the basis for much
of Irenaeus’ criticisms. The letter was preserved in its entirety by the
fourth-century Church Father Epiphanius, and its basic purpose was to
instruct a certain lady who was obviously not yet a part of the
Valentinian community. We shall return to this letter when we discuss
the question of asceticism and libertinism in Chapter 10. Here, we
comment on the specific view expressed about God in the two great
ethical teachings of the Old and New Testaments: the Decalogue (the
Ten Commandments) and the Sermon on the Mount.
Ptolemaeus’ argument is that there are essentially three “Gods.”
The first is the true God, incorruptible and light; the third is the

224
 Non-Duality

“adversary,” or the Devil, whose nature is corruptible and darkness;

the second God is the Old Testament creator God, who stands between
these two extremes. Ptolemaeus discusses this in the context of the
Law, where he says:
For it is evident that this law was not ordained by the perfect God
and Father … because it is not only imperfect and in need of com-
pletion by another, [Jesus is meant here] but also contains com-
mands which are not consonant with the nature and disposition of
such a God. … It is clear to you from what has been said that these
people completely miss the truth. Each of the groups has experi-
enced this in its own way: the one, because they do not know the
God of righteousness [the Demiurge], and the other, because they
do not know the Father of all whom alone the one [Jesus] who knew
him revealed by his coming. It remains for us [the Valentinian
Gnostics] who have been counted worthy of the knowledge of both
of these to provide you with an accurate and clear account of the na-
ture of the law and of the law-giver by whom it was ordained. We
shall draw the proofs of what we say from the words of our Savior
[Jesus], for through these alone are we led without stumbling to the
comprehension of that which is (Panar. XXXIII.3.4,7-8, in F I,
pp. 155-56).
Ptolemaeus develops his argument by references to the Sermon on
the Mount and other New Testament passages, showing how Jesus has
corrected the mistakes of the Old Testament. He does this, however,
without the denigration of the biblical God that is found in most of the
other Gnostic texts. He concludes his argument by summarizing his
view about this “Middle” God:
There remains the question who this God is who ordained the law.
But I think that I have shown you this as well in what has been al-
ready said, if you have listened carefully. For if this law was or-
dained neither by the perfect God himself, nor by the Devil … then
the one who ordained the law must be other than these two. But in
fact he is the Fashioner [Demiurge] and Maker of this entire uni-
verse and of what is in it. He is different from these two realities
and since he stands in the midst between them, he rightly bears the
name “Middle.” And if the perfect God is good by his own
nature … and if the one of the opposite nature is evil and wicked,
characterized by injustice, then the one who is situated in the midst
of the two and who is neither good nor evil and unjust, can be

225
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

properly called just … . This God is inferior to the perfect God, and
lower than his justice, since he is generated and not ungenerated …
but he is greater and more powerful than the adversary, and is of a
substance and of a nature other than the substance of either of
these. The nature of the adversary is corruption and darkness, for
he is material and multipartite. The nature of the ungenerated
Father of All is incorruption and self-existent, simple, and homo-
geneous light (ibid., 7.1-7, p. 160).
It is clear from this how far removed this early Valentinian account
is from the more general and characteristic Gnostic attitude. It serves
to illustrate again how these second-century theologians never consid-
ered themselves to be anything other than Christians, part of the
Church that traced its roots back to Jesus himself and the apostles.
Finally, Ptolemaeus leaves for another time the explanation of how this
“Middle” God evolved, the explanation of the separation we have
made the burden of Chapter 5.
For the present do not let this trouble you as you desire to learn
how from one beginning of all things, which is simple and, as we
acknowledge and believe, ungenerated, incorruptible, and good,
there were constituted these natures, namely that of corruption [the
Devil] and that of the Middle, which are of different substance, al-
though it is the nature of the good to generate and produce things
which are like itself and of the same substance (ibid., 7.8, p. 161).
Thus, we have seen that the Valentinian Demiurge, on one level at
least, bears little resemblance to the demonic figure of Ialdabaoth of
other Gnostic writers. To be sure, the basic teaching that the physical
world is not the creation of the supreme transcendent God remains the
same. Nonetheless, there is a decided shift in mood from the Ialdabaoth
who seems no different from the Devil, and the Valentinian Demiurge
who while perhaps foolish and beneath the supreme goodness of the true
God, shares not in the evil nature of his non-Valentinian counterparts.
An explanation, on one level at least, for this difference in mood can
possibly be found in the aforementioned Platonic influence so promi-
nent in Valentinus and his disciples. In addition to what we have al-
ready seen we can cite two more, one apparently from the pen of
Valentinus himself. Let us begin with Irenaeus’ report of the teaching
of Marcus, a Valentinian who seemed to distinguish himself by his (at
least according to Irenaeus) grandiose prophetic claims for himself,

226
 Non-Duality

not to mention his preoccupation with numerical symbolism. The pas-

sage to follow is of interest in illustrating at least one divergence from
other Valentinians, insofar as here the Demiurge does have awareness
of the nature of the world above himself, even though he is unable to
replicate it without serious distortion:
In addition … the Demiurge wished to imitate the infinitude, the
eternity, the limitlessness, and the timelessness of the Ogdoad
above. But he could not express its permanence and eternity be-
cause he was the offspring of deficiency; consequently he spread
out its eternity into long periods of time, seasons, and vast num-
bers of years, thinking to imitate its infinitude by means of the
multitude of these times (Adv. haer. I.17.2, in F I, p. 213).
As Jonas has discussed (Jonas, p. 194), this passage is a parody on
the more famous passage in Plato’s Timaeus which describes in quite
positive terms the creation of the world of time, resembling the eternal
universe beyond the world of materiality: “the moving image of eter-
nity.” Marcus’ description, placed side by side with Plato’s, provides
us with a compelling illustration of the strong polemic found in much
of the Gnostic writings. Here, we can almost feel the rage grow within
the Platonists as they read these words, a rage no doubt delighted in by
their Gnostic counterparts. We have already discussed in this chapter
the reaction of one such philosopher, the third-century Neoplatonist
Plotinus.
In what is perhaps the closest we will ever come to Valentinus’
own thought and expression, even if it is not his own work—“The
Gospel of Truth”—we find the following succinct statement of the
aforementioned process:
Ignorance of the Father brought about anguish and terror. And the
anguish grew solid like a fog so that no one was able to see. For
this reason error became powerful; it fashioned its own matter fool-
ishly, not having known the truth (GT I.17.10-17, in NHL, p. 38).
Clement of Alexandria has preserved some precious few frag-
ments, seemingly original to Valentinus himself. One of them offers
another clear example of the free borrowing of which the Gnostics
availed themselves of the words and thoughts of Plato:
Concerning this god he [Valentinus] speaks as follows, in a
rather obscure way, writing thus: “The world is as much inferior to

227
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

the living aeon as the picture is inferior to the living figure. What
then is the reason for the picture? It is the majesty of the living fig-
ure, which presents the example for the painter so that it may be
honored through his name. For the form was not found to corre-
spond to the actuality, but the name filled up what was lacking in
the image. But the invisible power of God works for the authentic-
ity of the image.” Then Valentinus designates the creator of the
world, in so far as he was called God and Father, as the likeness of
the true God and as his herald, but Sophia as the painter whose
work the likeness is, for the glorification of the invisible
one … [Clement’s excerpt breaks off here] (Strom. IV.13.6, in F I,
p. 242).
Valentinus is identifying the aeon—representative of the Pleroma,
created by the true God—with the living figure. Sophia is the painter
who in her awe of God, the true Creator, attempts to replicate the heav-
enly majesty by fashioning the Demiurge. This Demiurge becomes the
painter’s picture, of obviously inferior quality. Nonetheless Valentinus
does not denigrate the Demiurge, for the power of God has still worked
through Sophia establishing “the authenticity of the image.”
Fineman discusses this cosmogonic process:
That Achamoth and a Demiurge, issue of Sophia’s fall, proceed to
repeat her initial mimesis, engendering the lower world through de-
clensive reflections of her first substitution, illustrates the principle
that, once set in motion, the free play of substitution goes on and
on, imitating imitation, repeating repetition, in a series that traces
the course of Gnostic desire directly back to the displacements and
deferments initiated by the origin lost through the Name itself
(“Gnosis and the Piety of Metaphor,” in Layton, p. 304).
This echoes the description in A Course in Miracles of the process of
substitution that followed the original substitution, to which we shall
return in Chapter 13. Fineman’s passage also mirrors the Course’s
understanding that our individual ego experiences in the world are
ultimately derived from the ontological experience of separation and
substitution.
The reader here is thus immediately thrown back into the world of
Plato’s thought which, in this context, we may summarize very briefly
as reflecting three levels. The first and highest is the Good, symbolized
in one of Plato’s metaphors as the sun. This Good is the source of the
Ideas, the idealizations of objects. The Good and the Ideas together

228
 Non-Duality

constitute the level of perfect reality. Second, the manufactured objects

of this world correspond, albeit in imperfect ways, to the perfect Idea.
Finally, the artistic representations of these manufactured objects, re-
ferred to as shadows or illusions, are still further from the truth of the
ideal.
A summarizing analogy for the theory of the Ideas is given by Plato
near the end of the Republic (X 596c-602b), where he contrasts “god,”
the carpenter, and the painter in their respective makings of a bed. The
analogy is the basis for Valentinus’ image of the painter and the living
figure. Plato portrays art here rather clearly as being but an imitation of
a secondary reality, and thus it can tell us nothing about what is real.
God created one bed-in-itself; the carpenter builds a particular bed, and
more than one; and the artist makes a representation of the bed the car-
penter made, which in turn is but a reflection of the real bed-in-itself:
what he [the carpenter] produces is not the form of bed which ac-
cording to us is what a bed really is, but a particular bed. … his
product … resembles “what is” without being it. And anyone who
says that the products of the carpenter or any other craftsman are
ultimately real can hardly be telling the truth … . the bed the car-
penter makes is a shadowy thing compared to reality. … there are
three sorts of bed. The first exists in nature, and we would say …
that it was made by god. No one else could have made it … . The
second is made by the carpenter. … And the third by the painter. …
the artist’s representation stands at third remove from reality. … So
the tragic poet, if his art is representation, is by nature at third re-
move from the throne of truth; and the same is true of all other rep-
resentative artists (598a-e).
I interrupt Plato’s argument to point to the borrowing of this idea by
A Course in Miracles. In a passage from the manual, partly quoted ear-
lier, we read the following statement regarding words, which
were made by separated minds to keep them in the illusion of
separation. … Let us not forget, however, that words are but
symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed from reality
(M-21.1:7,9-10).
Being “twice removed” of course places words in the third position—
“at third remove.” We incidentally find the same idea expressed in
Philo, where he writes in the context of the descent of the human race
from the perfection of Adam:

229
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

I have observed the same thing happening in the case of sculpture

and painting: the copies are inferior to the originals, and what is
painted or molded from the copies still more so, owing to their
long distance from the original. … As generation follows genera-
tion the powers and qualities of body and soul which men receive
are feebler (On the Creation 141).
We return to Plato who continues by pointing out that the painter
represents not the thing-itself (as it truly is as an Idea), but the thing
that the craftsman makes, and not even as that thing is made, but as it
appears to the painter. He now concludes his argument:
The art of representation is therefore a long way removed from
truth, and it is able to reproduce everything because it has little
grasp of anything, and that little is of a mere phenomenal
appearance. … In all such cases … we should bear the following
considerations in mind. When someone tells us that he has met
someone who is a master of every craft and has a more exact under-
standing about all subjects than any individual expert, we must an-
swer that he is a simple-minded fellow who seems to have been
taken in by the work of a charlatan, whose apparent omniscience is
due entirely to his own inability to distinguish knowledge, igno-
rance, and representation. … We may assume, then, that all the
poets from Homer downwards have no grasp of truth but merely
produce a superficial likeness of any subject they treat, including
human excellence (Rep. X 598b-d; 600e).

The Metaphysics of Time

Attitudes toward time, of course, correspond to attitudes toward

the physical world. Time and space are, as A Course in Miracles
states, but different forms of one illusion, i.e., the belief in separation
(T-26.VIII.1:3). From our previous examination of the cosmologies
of Platonism, Christianity, and Gnosticism it will be clear how time is
seen, at least in a general sense. Let us take each of these specifically
in turn. The contours of this discussion are largely based on the fine
paper “Gnosis and Time” by Henri-Charles Puech.

230
 The Metaphysics of Time

1. Platonism
The ancient Greeks conceived of time as mirroring the eternal Ideas.
We have already quoted Plato’s evocative phrase from the Timaeus that
time was “the moving image of eternity.” The religious inspiration for
the Greeks, Plato being one of the clearest examples of this, was the or-
dered movement of the cosmos. For classical antiquity this great and
living god that was the physical universe reflected the eternal and un-
changing nature of the Supreme non-material principle, God or the Idea
of the Good. Puech states:
Time is perceived and considered in the light of a hierarchized vi-
sion of the universe, in which the inferior realities are only de-
graded and necessary reflections of the superior realities which
give them being and life and govern their movements. Time is part
of a cosmic order; on its own level it is an effect and an expression
of that order. If it moves in a circle, it is because, in its own way, it
imitates the cyclical course of the stars on which it depends. Its
endlessness, its repetition of conjunctures, are, in a mobile form,
images of the unchanging, perfect order of an eternal universe,
eternally regulated by fixed laws, an order of which the heavens,
with the uniform revolution of their luminaries, offer still more
sublime images (Puech, pp. 43-44).
In his reverence for the heavens (the cosmos) we find in Aristotle
the same attitude we have already examined in Plato and Plotinus. For
Aristotle, too, eternity is outside of time and the material universe:
It is clear then that there is neither place, nor void, nor time, out-
side the heaven. Hence whatever is there, is of such a nature as not
to occupy any place, nor does time age it; nor is there any change
in any of the things which lie beyond the outermost motion; they
continue through the entire duration unalterable and unmodified,
living the best and most self-sufficient of lives (On the Heavens
279a18-22).
The Platonic or Greek notion of time is unique, however, for it is
seen as circular: the events occurring now are the same as have already
occurred in prior cycles, and will yet recur in future ones. In truth, then,
for the ancient Greeks there is nothing new under the sun. All has been,
is now, and will yet be again. There are thus, for example, alternating
periods of an inspired Golden Age of happiness and the degenerative

231
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

instability that followed, such as Plato experienced in the Athenian

city-state which had murdered Socrates, an event which must therefore
occur again and again throughout all of time. In the Republic Plato
writes:
It will be difficult to bring about any change for the worse in a
state so constituted; but since all created things must decay, even a
social order of this kind cannot last for all time, but will decline.
And its dissolution will be as follows. Not only for plants that
grow in the earth, but for animals that live on it, there are seasons
of fertility and infertility of both mind and body, seasons which
come when their periodic motions come full circle, a period of lon-
ger duration for the long-lived, shorter for the short-lived (Rep.
VIII 546a).
And in the Statesman:
There is an era in which God himself assists the universe on its
way and guides it by imparting its rotation to it. There is also an
era in which he releases his control. He does this when its circuits
under his guidance have completed the due limit of the time
thereto appointed. Thereafter it begins to revolve in the contrary
sense under its own impulse—for it is a living creature and has
been endowed with reason by him who framed it in the beginning
(States. 269c).
Regarding this cyclical nature of the world of time, in which all
events simply recur and recur, Aristotle says, by way of an example:
“as a movement can be one and the same again and again, so too can
time, e.g., a year or a spring or an autumn” (Physics 220b12). The
basic motion of time is circular, since only the circular is the motion of
unchanging eternity, having no beginning nor end. Its origin is the
prime mover, “indivisible and … without parts and without magni-
tude” (Physics 267b25), and so this unceasing circularity is the only
true measure of time. We find an even stronger statement of time’s
circularity in this passage that was originally thought to be Aristotle’s,
but is now generally considered to be a product of his school:
How should one define the terms “before” and “after”? Should it
be in the sense that the people of Troy are before us, and those
previous to them before them and so on continuously? Or if it is
true that the universe has a beginning, a middle and an end, and
when a man grows old he reaches his limit and reverts again to the

232
 The Metaphysics of Time

beginning, and those things which are nearer the beginning merit
the term “before,” what is there to prevent us from regarding our-
selves as nearer the beginning? If that is true, then we should be
“before.” As therefore in the movement of the heavens and of
each star there is a circle, what is there to prevent the birth and
death of perishable things from being of this nature, so they are
born and destroyed again? So they say that human affairs are a
cycle (Problems XVII.3).
While the circularity of time was not an essential part of Plotinus’
system, he did discuss it, as seen here:
… if one ranks the Good as a centre one would rank Intellect as an
unmoved circle and Soul as a moving circle; but moving by aspira-
tion (Enn. IV.4.16).
The soul continues to seek the Good, its source and its home. Its aspi-
ration for the “unmoving circle” moves the heavenly spheres, and so
we see that the dimension of time in the soul is mirrored in the cosmos.
Aristotle, incidentally, differed from Plato in his emphasis of the
real nature of time from the point of view of the material world, study-
ing what time does by observing its expression in the world. Plato’s
emphasis was on the metaphysical and spiritual qualities of time’s re-
lation to eternity, time being its moving image. Moreover, time helps
the universe to become perfect like eternity, as the soul uses time as the
means to recognize its innate perfection. Remembering Plotinus’ sys-
tem, we see that time is conceived as less than eternity, a diminution
consisting of downward emanations that in essence are inferior and im-
perfect intermediaries between eternity and the phenomenal world.
Nonetheless Plotinus, like his great predecessors, saw eternity reflected
in the soul through its presence in the ordered movement of the cosmos.
The typical Greek response, as we have seen, was to venerate this
ordered movement of the cosmos as a living god, an indication of the
fundamental good of the world. In late antiquity, however, one finds
interestingly enough the opposite reaction to the same perceived phe-
nomenon: a depressed pessimism which saw no way of changing the
inexorability of the cosmos nor its unceasing circularity, an anguished
and hopeless weariness with it all. Marcus Aurelius, the second-
century Stoic Roman Emperor gave articulate expression to this ennui
in his Meditations:

233
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

Consider in what condition, both in body and soul a man should

be when he is overtaken by death; and consider the shortness of
life, the boundless abyss of time, past and future, the feebleness of
all matter. … How small a part of boundless and unfathomable
time is assigned to every man! for it is very soon swallowed up in
the eternal. … and on what a small clod of the whole earth thou
creepest! Reflecting on all this, consider nothing to be great, ex-
cept to act as thy nature leads thee, and to endure that which the
common nature brings (Meditations XII.7,32).
The cause of this resignation is the unending circularity of the world:
… all things from eternity are of like forms and come round in a
circle … . Everywhere up and down thou wilt find the same things,
with which the old histories are filled, those of the middle ages and
those of our own day; with which cities and houses are filled now.
There is nothing new; all things are both familiar and short-
lived. … . everything which happens, always happened so and will
happen so, and now happens so everywhere … (ibid., II.14; VII.1;
XII.26).
The ordered movement of the stars and planets is thus experienced
as a prison-house of monotony at best, and abject slavery at worst. Un-
able to change what already is, however, these philosophers had no re-
course but to adopt a pessimistic resignation and acceptance. No way
out was seen. It remained for the Gnostics to rebel openly against this
planetary slavery by denying the divine origins of the cosmos itself,
thereby freeing the individual from its yoke.

2. Christianity
The Christian view of time is that it is linear, with a definite begin-
ning and end that has been, is, and will be under the control of God the
Creator and Final Judge. For the Christian, time from beginning to end
is part of “salvation’s history.” It begins with the events of creation
narrated in Genesis, proceeds through Adam’s fall from perfection, on
through the calls for salvation of the prophets which foreshadow the
manifestation of God in the person of His Son Jesus, and then culmi-
nating finally in the Second Coming of Jesus to announce the Last
Judgment and the end of the world. Thus from the very beginning of
original sin, all of time is oriented for the Christian towards this saving
event of God, which eschatologically ends time.

234
 The Metaphysics of Time

The world that God created is therefore real, and from time to
time has been thought of as the manifestation of God Himself. The
progression through time is purposive, the past announcing and setting
the stage for the future; its purpose nothing less than the salvation of
humanity, with the central focus of God’s involvement and interven-
tions in the world being the saving of the total person—mind, body,
and spirit. The true center of history is the coming of Jesus in Palestine.
From this point all the past and future derive their meaning. It is a
unique event, happening once and for all, which gives significance to
history and to time. Thus Christianity grafted itself onto Judaism, seen
as the religion of the past yet also the means of unifying all history.
Though sorely tempted in its early years to establish itself as separate
from and in opposition to Judaism, the Church eventually opted to re-
tain Judaism and its biblical canon as its precursors. This established
links with the ancient past, and gave greater meaning and credence to
its own revelation.
To sum up, the Christians of the first centuries conceived of time
as rectilinear, continuous, irreversible, and progressive; they saw in
it a true, direct, and meaningful manifestation of God’s will. In this
organic whole each event—past, present, future—has its place and
its meaning; each event forms a unity with those that preceded and
with those that will follow. In time and by time, to employ the lan-
guage of the period, there is accomplished a divine “disposition” or
“dispensation,” an oikonomia—a word which designates both the
providential development of history according to the plans of God
and, in a more restricted sense, the Incarnation, the central point in
this development, through which all things are ordered and ex-
plained (Puech, p. 52).
Thus, the Greek circular view of time would make no sense, as
Origen strongly argues:
… I do not know what proof they [the Greeks] can bring in support
of this theory. For if it is said that there is to be a world similar in
all respects to the present world, then it will happen that Adam and
Eve will again do what they did before, there will be another flood,
the same Moses will once more lead a people numbering six hun-
dred thousand out of Egypt, Judas also will twice betray his Lord,
Saul [Paul] will a second time keep the clothes of those who are
stoning Stephen, and we shall say that every deed which has been
done in this life must be done again. I do not think that this can be

235
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

established by any reasoning, if souls are actuated by freedom of

choice and maintain their progress or the reverse in accordance
with the power of their own will. For souls are not driven on some
revolving course which brings them into the same cycle again after
many ages … (First Princ. II.3.4).
St. Augustine was the first Christian theologian to devote full energy
and thought to the problem of time, seeking to understand it psycholog-
ically through his particular blend of Neoplatonic thought and Christian
faith. Thus he enables us to compare and contrast the Neoplatonic and
Christian positions. Augustine’s eternity is changeless and antedates
time, though not temporally of course. God does not exist in a temporal
mode prior to the creation of the universe. Yet God in eternity is onto-
logically prior to time, insofar as He is its cause; without eternity there
could be no time. God is eternal and, being perfect and immutable, has
always existed. Yet this eternal God brought time into being with the
creation:
And if the sacred and infallible Scriptures say that in the begin-
ning God created the heavens and the earth, in order that it may be
understood that He had made nothing previously … then assuredly
the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time
(City of God 11.6).
Time is, for Augustine, a psychological phenomenon occurring
within the soul (“a stretching out of the soul”). This is in contrast to
Plotinus who saw time metaphysically. In fact there is for Augustine
no true past or future, but only the present which, as in Heraclitus, is
in constant flux. Thus Augustine demonstrates the inherent transitori-
ness and instability of this world, for only in God is there permanence
and unchanging truth.
For both Plotinus and St. Augustine, eternity precedes time and is
not coeternal with it. Plotinus believed that time is necessary, following
the principle of emanation, although, as we have seen, time is the prod-
uct of an inherently inferior downward procession. It is thus implied in
the very being of eternity. Not so with Augustine, for whom time is
simply the creation of God, not necessary by virtue of eternity; thus the
difference in emphasis in the two Neoplatonists: Plotinus is able to de-
rive time from the understanding of eternity, while Augustine cannot
do this in his system, but must rely instead upon the psychological ex-
amination of our experience of time, which becomes his datum for

236
 The Metaphysics of Time

understanding. For Augustine the soul exists within the world of time,
from which it must be saved through the Will of God. For Plotinus, on
the other hand, the soul is not truly in time, though time exists within
it; the soul, rather, is within the Mind that preceded it in the descent. As
Callahan phrased it: “time [for Plotinus] is the life of soul as it passes
from one state of actualization to another” (Callahan, p. 120).

3. Gnosticism
Though sharing some of the Hellenic and Christian understandings
of time, as we have seen, the Gnostic view is essentially a negative
one. Similar to their notion of the physical world, the Gnostics see time
as an instrument of the archons or world-rulers to control and imprison
the souls trapped here. Thus, rather than seeing time and the world as
reflections of eternity (Platonism) or as an instrument of the divine
Will (Christianity), and therefore worthy of awe and veneration, the
Gnostics rebelled against what had become for them a symbol of the
soul’s imperfection that led to its imprisonment by the archons. Time,
thus, is perceived as alien and evil; the home of a degrading slavery, a
somnolent ignorance in sharp contrast to the heavenly state of eternity.
Our current life is not our true one, and time,
whose instants engender and destroy one another, in which each
moment arises only to be engulfed in the next moment, in which
all things appear, disappear, and reappear in a twinkling, without
order, without aim or cessation or end—time contains within it a
rhythm of death beneath an appearance of life (Puech, pp. 65-66).
This constellation of attitudes towards time and the world can lead to
pessimism unless a means is given for escaping from it. We are not too
far here from the sentiments of Marcus Aurelius who, as we have seen,
knew no way out except for acceptance and resignation for the good
and divinely ordered cosmos. The Gnostics, on the other hand, saw
time and the cosmos as evil antagonists to truth and reality, mutually
exclusive of each other. As Puech succinctly states:
The Greek says: “God and the world,” linking the two terms indis-
solubly; the Gnostic says: “God or the world,” dissociating the two
terms, which for him represent two heterogeneous, independent, ir-
reconcilable realities (Puech, p. 60).

237
Chapter 6 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

The Gnostics accept the Platonic view that time and the world de-
scended from eternity, but far from seeing such descent as a positive
and inevitable expression of the divine, they see it rather as the product
of the fall. Time is thus a horrifying condition to be negated, rebelled
against, and finally transcended. As for the Gnostic position vis à vis
the Christian, it takes the Christian divine linearity and breaks it
through the intervention of a God who is totally alien to history and its
rulers. This ends their rule of ignorance, substituting instead the saving
gnosis. Thus, in relation to the Greek, the Gnostic position is anti-
cosmic, while regarding the Christian, it is anti-historical.
With all the Gnostic vituperation against time, we find relatively
little written about it from a philosophical point of view, as we have
found in the Greek philosophers. The Gnostics concerned themselves
mainly with their experience of horror of finding themselves in time,
not with its origin. We may cite two exceptions, however. One is in
“The Apocryphon of John,” in a passage absent from the Nag Hammadi
Library, but found in another version in a collection known as the
Berlin Papyrus. Ialdabaoth, the leader of the archons and son of Sophia
who casts him out, attempts to imitate the power of the aeons:
Being ignorant, he did not know that she [Sophia] was wiser than
he; he took counsel with his Powers; they engendered Destiny and
bound the gods of the heavens, the angels, the demons, and men in
measure, duration, and time, in order to subject them all to the
chain of Destiny, which governs all—an evil, tortuous thought
(Berlin Papyrus 8502, fol. 71, in Puech, p. 71).
Time, under the power of Ialdabaoth, thus becomes the distorted and
evil imitation of eternity belonging to the aeons of the Pleroma. The
purpose of this imitation is to enslave humanity and keep it from re-
membering its eternal home. We have already discussed the Gnostic
denigration of Plato’s “time is the moving image of eternity.” From
this image of time flowing smoothly from eternity, we are left with a
fearful caricature of time masquerading as the truth. The second ex-
ception is in the more complete version of “Asclepius,” also not found
in the Nag Hammadi Library:
For where things are discerned at intervals of time, there are false-
hoods; and where things have an origin in time, there errors arise
(Asclepius, 37, in Puech, p. 72n).

238
 The Metaphysics of Time

Salvation, or the way out of the prison of destiny, does not really
occur in time, as in the Christian revelation, but is atemporal in its es-
sence. It comes through a sudden shift from the horizontal plane to the
vertical, of the sudden reception of the Gnostic revelation. For most
Gnostics, salvation does not depend on any prior state, condition, or
preparation, nor does it require any kind of divine intervention such as
is seen in the incarnation of Jesus. The perfect one (i.e., the Gnostic)
simply awakens to the treasure of the Self that was always there, and
whose gold has never been sullied by the mud of this world. As we will
see again in Chapter 9, salvation is acorporeal and the resurrection is
purely of the mind or spirit, for which the body is totally irrelevant.
Thus, while the Gnostic cannot deny the experience of time while in
the body, its importance is minimized, if not outrightly denied. The
historical life of Jesus is relegated almost to insignificance, while the
Gnostic’s experience of the Jesus living in the mind, the source of the
gnosis, is of great importance.
In summary then, one can see, after Puech, that the Greek view of
time is circular, the Christian’s linear, while for the Gnostic it is a bro-
ken line, cut into by the revelation which lifts the trapped soul out of
time entirely. Time and its figures are seen almost as mythological
figures, relegated in importance to being mere symbols of a process
occurring in a reality rooted in the Gnostic’s present experience. It is
this experience that alone can save; time may furnish the arena for sal-
vation, but only to allow the soul to escape its evil clutches.

239
 Chapter 7

THE NATURE OF HUMANITY:

SPIRIT, MIND (SOUL), BODY

The creation of homo sapiens is the culmination of the work of the

Demiurge, just as it is in the more traditional cosmogonic and anthro-
pogonic accounts. The same principles and dichotomies (or even
trichotomies) we have seen on the macrocosmic level regarding the
world appear in the microcosmic body. As has been stated, the Gnostics
exhibit a consistency between their macrocosmic and microcosmic
levels.
Foerster writes in his introduction to the collection of patristic writ-
ings on the Gnostics that “the totality of Gnosis can be comprehended
in a single image. … ‘gold in mud.’” The gold refers to our true Identity,
what we may call the spiritual Self and the Gnostics called the pneuma.
“The mud is that of the world: it is first of all the body, which with its
sensual desires drags man down and holds the ‘I’ [the Self] in thrall”
(F I, pp. 2-3).
It is this oppositional duality that mirrors the duality we considered
earlier between God and the world. And so it must be, for the Sophia
that separated herself from God began a long downward process that
culminated in the emergence of the human being, set off from God by
the body. Within the body, however, is found what some Gnostics
termed the spark, which is actually part of the great light of God, “a
portion of the divine substance from beyond which has fallen into the
world” (Jonas, p. 44). In many of the texts we shall consider, it can be
seen that the world rulers, derived from Ialdabaoth, made the body so
as to imprison this spark. We shall expand on this motivation in Part III
in our comparative discussion of the body’s purpose.
Finally, there is the psychical,11 which may be recalled from our dis-
cussion in the preceding chapter. This aspect of humanity, like the
body, is part of the non-divine element and therefore must be saved. It
is intermediate between the spirit and the flesh. The object of salva-
tion, which is the subject of the following chapter, is to “rescue” the

11. I use this word instead of the simpler “psychic,” to avoid confusion with the latter’s
contemporary trans-physical connotation.

241
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

spirit that is imprisoned in the body. Its state is variously described as

being numb, asleep, or intoxicated by the world. The consequences of
this state are that humanity is ignorant of its true origins, and yet feels
alienated in this world that is not its home.
Since almost all the Gnostic systems are in agreement as to the gen-
eral contours of the spirit-mind-body constellation, and, in fact, of the
remaining parts of this story (the nature of salvation, the redeemer Je-
sus, and the practical implications), we shall dispense with our previ-
ous structure of duality vs. non-duality as we proceed with our analysis.
The differences noted among the various schools cut across these lines,
and so we shall consider these differences as we go along. This chapter
has the following three sections: creation, the spirit-mind-body config-
uration, and the states of alienation, sleep, and drunkenness.

Creation of Humanity: Gnosticism

We have in our possession two extensive treatments of the creation

myth: “On the Origin of the World” and “The Apocryphon of John,”
which we considered in previous chapters. We begin this section with
an examination of these, along with the parallel Nag Hammadi tractate,
“The Hypostasis of the Archons.” These Gnostic texts are based upon
the Genesis story, though of course with the characteristic Gnostic re-
interpretations. The basic components of the Gnostic myth are that
Adam is made by Ialdabaoth in collaboration with the other rulers,
which include the seven planets; however, he is made without life. Ial-
dabaoth (also called the Demiurge or First Father) and the seven cor-
respond, of course, to the Lord God and His host of the Genesis
narrative. The pneuma, or divine spirit, is surreptitiously given to
Adam by Sophia (actually his grandmother), which in effect places
him higher than his father, Ialdabaoth, and sets the stage for his subse-
quent redemption. It is this divine spark that has “fallen asleep.” Adam
therefore is seen to have two natures—his body given by the archons,
and his spirit (referred to as Light-Adam), ultimately derived from
God himself. Adam’s importance for the Gnostics lay of course in his
being the symbolic expression of the existential state in which all peo-
ple find themselves, conscious of this “sleeping” state or not. We thus
all share the need to awaken to our true Identity, recognizing the inher-
ent valuelessness of the body and of its creator, and thwarting the plan

242
 Creation of Humanity: Gnosticism

of the “archons” to keep us asleep. In Part II-B we shall present A

Course in Miracles’ version of the ego’s plan (the Course’s psycholog-
ical counterpart to the mythological archons) to protect itself by keeping
the Son of Light (or God) asleep. Here in the Gnostic literature we see
the plan expressed in a more primitive form than in the more sophisti-
cated Course, yet the underlying content of obscuring humanity’s spiri-
tual identity remains the same. We pick up the narrative in “On the
Origin of the World,” at the point where the archons conceive the plan
to make a man (Adam) to ensure their own survival:
… if you desire that he [the Light-Adam] not be able to destroy our
work, come, let us create a man [Adam] from the earth according to
the image of our body and according to the likeness of that one, in
order that he may serve us so that whenever that one sees his like-
ness he may become enamored of it. Then he will no longer ruin
our work, but we shall make those who will be begotten from the
light servants to ourselves … (Orig. Wld. II.112.32–113.4, in NHL,
p. 170).
The Demiurge summons the seven archons (corresponding to the
seven planets) and orders them to proceed with the plan:
Then each one of them cast his seed on the midst of the navel of
the earth. Since that day, the seven rulers have formed the man:
his body is like their body, his likeness is like the man [the Light-
Adam] who appeared to them. His molded body came into being
according to a portion of each one of them. … He became a living
man, and he who is the father was called “Adam,” according to
the name of the one who was before him (ibid., 114.27–115.3,
pp. 171-72).
The parallel with, and therefore denigration of, the Old Testament
God is apparent here in the deliberate use of the Genesis language: “in
the likeness of God,” and the plural form of the Hebrew word for God,
“Elohim.” Without a soul Adam was left for forty days by First Father
who feared his son, lest he discover the true nature of the plot. On this
final day Sophia Zoe gave him her breath, and so he began to move,
although he still could not rise. This frightened the archons who ques-
tioned the breath. Assured that it could not escape its imprisonment in
Adam’s body and that Adam still could not arise, they “rested them-
selves from their troubles,” and so “they called that day ‘the rest’”
(ibid., 115.25-27, p. 172), the Gnostic equivalent of the Sabbath.

243
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

We proceed next to the awakening of Adam. After Sophia sent her

daughter Zoe (life), also called Eve, to enliven Adam by bestowing the
light-spirit on him, he rises, opens his eyes, and exclaims: “You will
be called ‘the mother of the living’ because you are the one who gave
me life” (ibid., 116.6-8, p. 172). Intrigue follows upon intrigue as the
archons attempt to counteract this “invasion” from the light. Part of
their plan is to conceal from Adam Eve’s true origin:
But let us not tell Adam that she is not derived from us, but let us
bring a stupor upon him, and let us teach him in his sleep as though
she came into being from his rib so that the woman will serve and
he will rule over her (ibid., 116.20-25, p. 173).
The archons also plan to defile her sexually, thereby entrapping her in
the body and preventing her return to the light. Eve counters by enter-
ing the tree of knowledge, leaving her mere earthly body with Adam.
The rulers thus “cast their seed upon her,” resulting in the birth of
Adam’s offspring (ibid., 117.2-3).
In “The Hypostasis of the Archons,” a sister text to “On the Origin
of the World,” the same event is described this way:
And when they [the Authorities or Archons] saw his [Adam’s]
female counterpart … they became agitated with great agitation; and
they became enamored of her. They said to one another, “Come, let
us sow our seed in her,” and they pursued her. And she laughed at
them for their witlessness and their blindness; and in their clutches,
she became a tree, and left before them her shadowy reflection re-
sembling herself; and they defiled it foully.—And they defiled the
form that she had stamped in her likeness, so that by the form they
had modeled, together with their own image, they made them-
selves liable to condemnation (Hypos. Arch. II.89.19-30, in NHL,
pp. 154-55).
Fearful that Adam may learn the truth from the spiritual Eve in the
tree of knowledge, a possibility the archons somehow learn about, they
plot further: “Then the seven took counsel … .” Their plot, so familiar
to our Western world, is taken from the third chapter of Genesis, the
story of the fall. In the Gnostic version, however, the serpent (here
called the beast, subsequently called the instructor by Eve) is “the one
who is wiser than all of them.” Therefore, Adam’s and Eve’s partak-
ing of the tree’s fruit is the dawning of wisdom: “Then their mind

244
 Creation of Humanity: Gnosticism

opened. For when they ate, the light of knowledge shone for them”
(Orig. Wld. II.118.16-17,25; 119.11-13, in NHL, p. 174).
The rulers now retaliate by sending in an earthquake, from which
Adam and Eve seek to hide. Confronted finally, Adam and Eve
“confess” their sin, and the rulers realize the great threat now upon
them. They devise a test for Adam, asking him if he knows the names
of the animals, an ingenious Gnostic refashioning of the story of the
naming of the animals:
When he [Adam] saw them, he named their creatures. They were
troubled because Adam had sobered from every ignorance (ibid.,
120.23-25, p. 175).
The rulers had no recourse, now that Adam had become aware of the
light of knowledge, but to banish him and Eve from Eden, as is re-
counted in the dramatic close to Chapter 3 in Genesis.
Thus Adam and Eve reflect the essential Gnostic duality of all
humanity—spirit and flesh—setting the stage for the redemptive ac-
tivity of awakening the sleeping light through the acquisition of
knowledge, the subject matter of Chapter 8. Let us turn now to our
second creation myth, found in “The Apocryphon of John.”
While some details differ, we find here a similar account as in “The
Origin of the World.” We begin with the fear of the chief archon,
Yaltabaoth, as he is made to recognize that there is one greater than he:
And the … chief archon trembled, and the foundations of the
abyss shook. And of the waters which are above matter, the under-
side was illuminated by the appearance of his image which had
been revealed. … And he said to the authorities [archons] which at-
tend to him, “Come, let us create a man according to the image of
God and according to our likeness, that his image may become a
light for us.” And they created by means of each other’s powers in
correspondence with the indications which were given. And each
authority supplied a characteristic by means of the form of the im-
age which he had seen in its psychic form. He [the chief archon]
created a being according to the likeness of the first, perfect Man.
And they said, “Let us call him Adam, that his name may become
a power of light for us” (ApocryJohn II.14.24-30; 15.1-13, in NHL,
pp. 106-107).

245
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

What of course we see here is what centuries later Voltaire would

give sharp expression to: “God created man in his own image; and then
man returned the compliment.” This idea finds numerous parallels in
other Gnostic texts, as for example in the Valentinian “Gospel of
Philip:”
God created man. But now men create God. That is the way it is in
the world—men make gods and worship their creation. It would be
fitting for the gods to worship men! (GPh II.71.35–72.4, in NHL,
p. 143)
And in the Hermetic tract “Asclepius” we read:
Just as God has willed that the inner man be created according to
his image, in the very same way man on earth creates gods accord-
ing to his likeness (Ascl. VI.69.22-27, in NHL, p. 302).
The seven powers (planets) then begin the process of creation, de-
scribed in minute detail by our text—each step along the way having
a corresponding name—until the creation is complete and Yaltabaoth
believes that his power is safely protected.
In what amounts to a mythological chess game, the powers of light
now make their counter move. The mother (Sophia) petitions the
“Mother-Father of the all who is most merciful” for help to regain the
power she had lost to her son (Yaltabaoth). Her plea is not in vain and
is met with a clever plan of divine deception. This incongruity is quite
familiar in the Gnostic literature, and not without its antecedents in the
classical Greek gods’ very human ego activities. Angels of light con-
vince Yaltabaoth to
bring forth the power of the mother. … “Blow into his [Adam’s]
face something of your spirit and his body will arise.” And he blew
into his face the spirit which is the power of his mother [Sophia];
he did not know this, for he exists in ignorance. And the power of
the mother went out of Yaltabaoth into the psychic soul [of Adam]
which they had fashioned after the image of the One who exists
from the beginning. The body moved and gained strength, and it
was luminous (ApocryJohn II.19.17-18,22-33, in NHL, p. 109).
The archons now become jealous that Adam’s intelligence is
greater than theirs, he now having the light, and so they sought to
throw him “into the lowest region of all matter.” The true God counters

246
 Creation of Humanity: Gnosticism

by sending to Adam a helper, “luminous Epinoia,” also called Life

(Zoe). She
assists the whole creature by toiling with him and by restoring him
to his fullness and by teaching him about the descent of his seed and
by teaching him about the way of ascent, which is the way he came
down. And the luminous Epinoia was hidden in Adam, in order that
the archons might not know her, but that the Epinoia might be a cor-
rection of the deficiency of the mother (ibid., 20.17,19-28, p. 110).
Thus we see the sum and substance of the Gnostic teaching of the fall
and redemption through the Gnostic revelation.
The chess game continues, and the archons’ gambit is to bury the
light within Adam, enshrouding it by creating the body:
… the whole array of archons and angels … brought him [Adam]
into the shadow of death in order that they might form him again
from earth and water and fire and the spirit which originates in
matter, which is the ignorance of darkness and desire, and their op-
posing spirit which is the tomb of newly-formed body with which
the robbers had clothed the man, the bond of forgetfulness; and he
became a mortal man (ibid., 20.34–21.13).
This, of course, is the Genesis creation story of Adam, here deliber-
ately brought about by the evil powers to defend against the light of
truth that shines in all humanity: “This [mortal man] is the first one
who came down and the first separation. But the Epinoia of the light
which was in him, she is the one who will awaken his thinking” (ibid.,
21.13-16).
The archons continue by placing this Adam in paradise, whose lux-
ury, however, is “deception and their trees are godlessness and their
fruit is deadly poison and their promise is death” (ibid., 21.21-24).
However, the rulers attempt to shield the tree of knowledge of good
and evil from Adam. Moreover, here, as opposed to other Gnostic
texts, the serpent is evil, an extension of the archons: “The serpent
taught them to eat from wickedness, begetting, lust, and the destruc-
tion, that he might be useful to him” (ibid., 22.12-15, p. 111).
Yaltabaoth now puts Adam to sleep as further defense against the
light, and attempts to extract this light from him by creating Eve out of
his rib:

247
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

And he made another creature in the form of a woman according to

the likeness of the Epinoia which had appeared to him. And he
brought the part which he had taken from the power of the man
into the female creature … (ibid., 22.34–23.37).
But the plan backfires, for as soon as Adam sees the earthly Eve by his
side the luminous Epinoia within
lifted the veil which lay over his mind [just placed there by the
chief archon]. And he became sober from the drunkedness of dark-
ness. And he recognized his counter-image … (ibid., 23.6-9).
It is at this point that our text brings in the eating from the tree of
knowledge, now revealed to Adam and Eve by the Epinoia in the form
of an eagle, that she
might teach and awaken them out of the depth of sleep. For they
were both in a fallen state and they recognized their nakedness.
The Epinoia appeared to them as a light and she awakened their
thinking (ibid., 23.30-35, pp. 111-12).
Enraged, Yaltabaoth banishes Adam and Eve from paradise midst
much cursing. The remaining stages of the narrative—the chief
archon’s vengeance and the counter ploys of the spirit—we will pass
over quickly. The chief archon seduces the pure maiden he notices
standing beside Adam, and the two sons that follow are called Eloim
and Yave, Old Testament names denoting God, who then become
Cain and Abel. They rule over the body that is called a tomb. From
Yaltabaoth’s act sexual intercourse becomes an integral part of the
evil, physical world, further evidence of the strong anti-corporeal and
anti-sexual tone that runs through many of the Gnostic traditions. The
Flood is one of the more destructive aspects of the archons’ plan,
though it is partially thwarted by Noah who is forewarned by the be-
ings of light.
We move now from these anthropogonic myths, all found in the
Nag Hammadi Library, to the Valentinian, Manichean, and Mandean
versions. In the preceding chapter we considered the Valentinian view
of creation. Let us continue our examination of Irenaeus’ reporting of
Ptolemaeus, the prominent Valentinian teacher, from that point in the
narrative after the Demiurge had formed the world:
When he (the Demiurge) had formed the world, he made the
choic [fleshly] man, not out of this present dry land, but out of the

248
 Creation of Humanity: Gnosticism

invisible substance, the liquid and flowing part of matter, and into
him he breathed the psychic (man), and this is he who came into
being “after the image and likeness” (Gen 1:26): “after the image”
refers to the material which is similar to God but not of the same
substance: and “after the likeness” is the psychic man, and there-
fore his substance is also called the “spirit of life” (Gen 2:7), for it
derives from a spiritual emanation. Finally, they say, there was put
on him the coat of skin by which is meant, according to them, the
flesh that is subject to sense-perception.
But the offspring of their mother, Achamoth … was inserted se-
cretly into him (the Demiurge) without his knowing it, in order that
through him it might be sown in the soul which derives from him
and in the material body, and, having been born and increased
there, might be prepared to receive the perfect Logos. … Thus, they
[the Valentinians] have their soul from the Demiurge, the body
from the dust, flesh from matter, and the spiritual man from the
mother, Achamoth.
There are then three substances: the material, which they also call
“left,” must of necessity, they say perish … the psychic, which they
also term “right,” stands midway between the spiritual and the ma-
terial, and consequently passes to whichever side it is inclined; the
spiritual was sent forth in order that, after being linked with the psy-
chic, it might be shaped and trained with it in conduct … (Adv. haer.
I.5.5-6, in F I, pp. 137-38).
From these three substances Ptolemaeus then deduces three types of
men, to which we will return in the next chapter when we discuss
salvation:
They assume three types of men; the spiritual, the choic, and the
psychic, corresponding to Cain, Abel, and Seth [Seth, as we have
seen, is the epitome of the spiritual man for the Gnostics, their
ideal], in order that they may represent by these the three natures,
not with reference to an individual but with reference to kinds of
men (ibid., I.7.5, in F I, p. 141).
We have seen that the earlier Basilides similarly has three classes of
humanity, relating to the extent to which people have yielded to the
seductions of the body and the world: the highest class returns directly
to Heaven, the middle eventually returns, while the third remains in the
physical world below. Basilides, however, as Stead points out, does
not deny even this group some benefits, though they must remain
beyond Heaven (Layton, p. 93).

249
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

We turn next to the creation myth of Mani. In the previous chapter

we left our narrative at the point when the Darkness launched its final
strategy to entrap the Light: the creation of Adam and Eve in imitation
of the divine forms it has already seen. Jonas dramatically summarizes
the motivation of the King of Darkness:
Anticipating the eventual loss of all Light through the continual
separating effect of the heavenly revolutions [the cosmic ferris
wheel we observed in the previous chapter]; seized by the ambi-
tion to create out of himself something equal to that vision; reckon-
ing by this means to devise the safest prison for the alien force; and
finally, wishing to have in his world a substitute for the otherwise
unattainable divine figure, over which to rule and through which to
be sometimes freed from the odious company of his kind, the King
of Darkness produces Adam and Eve in the image of the glorious
form, and pours into them all the Light left at his disposal (Jonas,
pp. 226-27).
This process, in characteristic Manichean style, is filled with rather
gruesome and sexual details involving demonic intercourse and infan-
ticide through devouring. Setting these aside, however, we observe
the common Gnostic theme of the inferior principle (whether the
Darkness, Sophia, or the Demiurge) creating the human being in the
image of God, the end product being a gross distortion—the body—
of the purity of the divine spirit. As Jonas exclaims: “This is what has
become of the Biblical idea of man’s being created in the image of
God!” (Jonas, p. 227).
The body is correspondingly seen as the work of the devil, literally,
which leads to the extreme hostility towards the body, especially sex,
and the almost total asceticism for which Manicheism is known. It is
the most extreme form of a principle we have seen at work in most of
the Gnostic systems, yet nowhere with the intensity we find in the
Manichean texts. Jonas comments:
In the context of this theoretical underpinning [the general Gnostic
view], the dwelling on the especially repulsive details of man’s be-
getting by the demons merely adds an element of the nauseous to
an otherwise “rationally” supported enmity (Jonas, pp. 227-28).
Thus, for Mani, humanity mirrors the dualism of the world: light
and darkness; spirit and flesh; good and evil. The particles of light-
spirit are trapped in dark-body, kept there by the desires of the flesh that

250
 Creation of Humanity: Gnosticism

entrap still further. This of course is the King’s purpose for creating
Eve: “To her they [the demons of darkness] imparted of their concupis-
cence in order to seduce Adam” (Jonas, p. 228). The awakening of
Adam’s lust has a twofold purpose: First, it roots him still further in the
flesh, wallowing in what the Manicheans regarded as its filth; second,
through reproduction, the Darkness’ plan to disperse the light is given
greater advancement. More and more particles of light become trapped
in the body, thereby multiplying the needs and efforts of the powers of
light to recover them.
To Mani, therefore, the struggle becomes centered on the Darkness’
continuing attempts to seduce men through women, and the Light’s
awakening them before the allurement of the flesh becomes too strong.
Rudolph summarizes the situation in this way:
… man is the central subject of world events. His soul, as part of
the light (i.e., of God), is the element to be saved, and the saving
element is the “spirit” that was granted to him by revelation or
knowledge. The body is the dark, evil, component of man, which
in death returns to its origin, the darkness, in order to let the soul
ascend, in its liberated state, to its place of origin. But the soul
that remains unawakened is reborn on earth unto a new life …
(Rudolph, p. 338).
Finally, we consider the creation myth of the Mandeans and, al-
though clothed in the unique Mandean style, we shall find many of the
same ideas we have already seen. We begin with the inability on the
part of the creating principle to enliven Adam:
They [Ptahil and the planets] created Adam and laid him down but
there was no soul in him. … They appealed to the ether wind, that
it might hollow out his bones. … That marrow be formed in them,
that he might become strong and stand on his feet (GR III.p101,
in F II, p. 187).
On it goes, as the rulers appeal to other elements in nature until
the Planets gave utterance and spoke to Ptahil: “Grant us, that we
may cast into him some of the spirit which you brought with you
from the father’s house.” All the planets exerted themselves, and
the lord of the world [Ptahil] exerted himself. Despite their exer-
tions, they could not set him on his feet (ibid., p. 188).

251
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

At this point in the narrative there are many and conflicting ver-
sions, but in general they all reflect the influence of what is called the
Anthropos myth. In one version, Ptahil finally appeals to the “father of
the uthras” who sends the great Mana (the great Adam) who eventually
enters the body of Adam:
While Ptahil lifted Adam up it was I [Manda dHaiye] who raised up
his bones. While he laid his hands on him, it was I who made him
breathe the breath of life. His body filled with marrow, and the radi-
ance of the Life spoke in him (GR III.p.102, in F II, pp. 189-90).
One thing leads to another and it then becomes the turn of the evil
forces to counter:
When Ruha [the evil mother] and the planets heard of this, they
all sat down and lamented. … They rose up to forge evil plans and
said: “We shall capture Adam and seize him. … and detain him
with us in the world.” And they said: “When he speaks with a
soft voice, we shall speak with the voice of rebellion. When he
eats and drinks, we shall seize the world. We shall entrap the
world and produce all kinds of forms (or counterparts) in it. …
we shall seize and lay hold of his [Adam’s] heart. We shall cap-
ture him with horns and flutes so that he cannot escape from us”
(GR III.pp.104-105, in F II, p. 193).
The “gentle” uthras respond by creating Eve and, in contrast with
many of the other Gnostic systems, she is a force of light. In fact, the
Mandeans trace their ancestry to the union of this heavenly couple:
May the Family of Life be multiplied, and by them may the world
be roused. … [and] the Life will be grateful to them. … will release
them and make them rise up from this world of evil (ibid., p.107,
p. 196).
To summarize, this part of the Gnostic myth depicts all humanity as
composed of three parts—spirit, soul (mind), and body. Spirit is
created from spirit, its ultimate origin being God; while both the soul
and body are the product of the inferior principle, the cosmic power.
The body is made in the image of the Light-Adam or Primal Man,
which is animated (enlivened) by the psychical forces, also derived
from the cosmic power. The spirit, which has fallen into the world, is
entrapped there by the body, created by the world rulers for just this
purpose. This physical and psychical prison that houses the spirit

252
 Spirit, Mind, Body: Platonism

consists of seven components that derive from the seven planetary

spheres that enclose the world of matter and keep it imprisoned. After
an examination of the Platonic tradition which, as we have seen, was
an important source of the Gnostic tripartite view, we will return to a
more detailed examination of these three components.

Spirit, Mind (Soul), Body: Platonism

1. Plato
Plato’s tripartite view of the soul has had great influence through-
out Western intellectual history, not the least of which has been its in-
fluence on Freud’s tripartite psyche.12 The soul is discussed in the
Republic, but in the Timaeus we find a more complete treatment, in-
cluding specific discussion of the physical location of these three
parts, which detail need not concern us long here.
The divine reason makes its home in the head, and is kept apart by
the neck from the mortal emotion and appetite, localized in the lower
portions of the body. The seat of the emotions is found in the heart and
breast (the higher and lower emotions are also divided by the anat-
omy), while the base appetites (food, sex, etc.) are found in the belly,
genitalia, etc. There they are secured like “a wild beast,” or a “savage,
many-headed monster,” and kept quite separate from the higher func-
tioning of reason:
And they [the lower gods] put it in this position in order that it …
be as far as possible from the seat of deliberation … so leaving the
highest part of us to deliberate quietly about the welfare of each
and all (Tim. 70e).
The lower part is described as rebellious, needing to be placed
under the firm guidance of reason, with the help of the higher emo-
tions. Plato immortalized this struggle in the Phaedrus with his anal-
ogy of the charioteer (reason) and his good (emotion) and bad
(appetites) horses:
Let it [the soul] be likened to the union of powers in a team of
winged steeds and their winged charioteer. … With us men … it is a

12. For a fuller discussion of the similarities between Freud’s psychology and Plato’s,
see Plato, William and Mabel Sahakian, pp. 38-59.

253
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

pair of steeds that the charioteer controls; moreover one of them is

noble and good, and of good stock, while the other has the oppo-
site character, and his stock is opposite. Hence the task of our
charioteer is difficult and troublesome. … He that is on the more
honorable side is upright and clean-limbed, carrying his neck high,
with something of a hooked nose; in color he is white, with black
eyes; a lover of glory, but with temperance and modesty; one that
consorts with genuine renown, and needs no whip, being driven by
the word of command alone. The other is crooked of frame, a mas-
sive jumble of a creature, with thick short neck, snub nose, black
skin, and gray eyes; hot-blooded, consorting with wantonness and
vainglory; shaggy of ear, deaf, and hard to control with whip and
goad (Phaedrus 246a; 253d-e).
The goal of reason is the integration of the soul’s duality, inspiring
one to lift higher and higher until the vision of the Good is achieved,
as we shall see in Chapter 8 with the Allegory of the Cave. In the
Republic Plato likens the body to the encrustations that formed around
the sea-God Glaucas:
But if we want to see it [the soul] as it really is, we should look at
it, not as we do now, when it is deformed by its association with
the body and other evils, but in the pure state which reason reveals
to us. We shall then find that it is a thing of far greater beauty … .
and its original nature is as difficult to see as his [Glaucas] was af-
ter long immersion had broken and worn away and deformed his
limbs, and covered him with shells and seaweed and rock, till he
looked more like a monster than what he really was. That is the
sort of state we see the soul reduced to by countless evils. …
Think how its [the soul’s] kinship with the divine and immortal
and eternal makes it long to associate with them and apprehend
them; think what it might become if it followed this impulse
whole-heartedly and was lifted by it out of the sea in which it is
now submerged, and if it shed all the rocks and shells which, be-
cause it feeds on the earthly things that men think bring happi-
ness, encrust it in wild and earthy profusion. Then one really
could see its true nature … (Rep. 611c-612a).
Yet we have already seen in Chapter 6 a contrasting benevolent attitude,
where Plato views the body as created by the “providence of the gods”
to be the vehicle for apprehending the majesty of the heavens. We shall
return to this Platonic paradox in this and subsequent chapters.

254
 Spirit, Mind, Body: Platonism

2. Philo
In Philo we also find three classifications of people: earth-born,
heaven-born, and God-born:
The earth-born are those who take the pleasures of the body for their
quarry, who make it their practice to indulge in them and enjoy them
and provide the means by which each of them may be promoted.
The heaven-born are the votaries of the arts and of knowledge, the
lovers of learning. For the heavenly element in us is the mind … .
And it is the mind which pursues the learning of the schools and the
other arts … and trains and drills itself solid in the contemplation of
what is intelligible by mind. But the men of God are priests and
prophets who have refused to accept membership in the common-
wealth of the world and to become citizens therein, but have risen
wholly above the sphere of sense-perception and have been trans-
lated into the world of the intelligible and dwell there registered as
freemen of the commonwealth of Ideas, which are imperishable and
incorporeal (On the Giants 60-61).
Thus, the earth-born are descended souls who have already fallen and
become stuck to the world, the “men of God” have not really fallen at
all, and the heaven-born must nourish and reinforce their desire to re-
turn to God. Incidentally, Dillon has commented that Philo appears to
have been the first to suggest that there may be souls in bodies for rea-
sons other than the fall, a notion that was certainly picked up by the
Gnostics with their doctrine of the pneumatics (in Layton, p. 363).
According to Philo, the men of God, the wise, are those who
are never colonists leaving heaven for a new home. Their way is to
visit earthly nature as men who travel abroad to see and learn. So
when they have stayed awhile in their bodies, and beheld through
them all that sense and mortality has to shew, they make their way
back to the place from which they set out at the first. To them the
heavenly region, where their citizenship lies, is their native land;
the earthly region in which they became sojourners is a foreign
country (The Confusion of Tongues 77-78).
Elsewhere, Philo comments that when the other souls have de-
scended into bodies they are as if fallen into a stream,
sometimes … caught in the swirl of its rushing torrent and swal-
lowed up … . [These souls] have held no count of wisdom. They
have abandoned themselves to the unstable things of chance, none

255
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

of which has aught to do with our noblest part, the soul or mind,
but all are related to that dead thing which was our birth-fellow, the
body, or to objects more lifeless still, glory, wealth, and offices,
and honors, and all other illusions which like images or pictures
are created through the deceit of false opinion by those who have
never gazed upon true beauty (On the Giants 13,15).
Later in the same text Philo writes of these unfortunate souls who are
bound by ignorance, whose
chief cause … is the flesh, and the tie which binds us so closely to
the flesh. … [in which] the divine spirit cannot abide. … nothing
thwarts its [wisdom’s] growth so much as our fleshly nature. For
on it ignorance and scorn of learning rest. … [And] those which
bear the burden of the flesh, oppressed by the grievous load, can-
not look up to the heavens as they revolve, but with necks bowed
downwards are constrained to stand rooted to the ground like four-
footed beasts (ibid., 29-31).
These then are doomed forever to the lower regions of the body,
which Philo considers, as do many other Platonists, to be a corpse: “that
dwelling-place of endless calamities” (The Confusion of Tongues 177).
A century later Marcus Aurelius echoed a similar sentiment when he
wrote in his personal journal of the “rottenness of the matter which is
the foundation of everything! water, dust, bones, filth. … [the body
being] a dead thing” (Meditations IX.36; X.33).
Simply by being created in this body is proof of sin to Philo. Moses’
offering of the calf to bring about forgiveness of the people’s sins
shows that
sin is congenital to every created being, even the best, just because
they are created, and this sin requires prayers and sacrifices to pro-
pitiate the Deity, lest His wrath be roused and visited upon them
(Moses II.147).
In an allegorical interpretation of God’s slaying of Er, Judah’s first-
born (Gn 38:7), Philo writes:
For He is well aware that the body, our “leathern” bulk (“leathern”
is the meaning of “Er”),13 is wicked and a plotter against the soul,

13. Philo was indulging in allegorical license here by changing the Hebrew vowel “e”
to “o” to accommodate his own interpretation: Er means “watcher”; Or means “skin”
connoting “leathern,” see 2 K 1:8; Mt 3:4.

256
 Spirit, Mind, Body: Platonism

and is even a corpse and a dead thing. For … each of us [is] nothing
but corpse-bearers, the soul raising up and carrying without toil the
body which of itself is a corpse. … For when the mind soars aloft
and is being initiated in the mysteries of the Lord, it judges the body
to be wicked and hostile; but when it has abandoned the investiga-
tion of things divine, it deems it friendly to itself, its kinsman and
brother. The proof of this is that it takes refuge in what is dear to the
body (Alleg. Interp. III.69,71-72).
Yet as in all Platonists, before and after, we find in Philo great am-
bivalence towards the body, despicable on the one hand and yet to be
honored as God’s creation on the other. In the same passage on the kill-
ing of Er, Philo interjects that the body that was slain by God was yet
the body he made: “But from the beginning he (God) made the body a
corpse” (Alleg. Interp. 70, in Baer’s translation, p. 93n.1). Moreover,
just as God slew Er without reason, so has He “conceived a hatred for
pleasure and the body without giving reasons” (Alleg. Interp. III.77).
The nature of Adam, the first man, shares this ambivalence for he was
made
excellent in each part of his being, in both soul and body … . the
Creator excelled … in skill to bring it about that each of the bodily
parts should have in itself individually its due proportions, and
should also be fitted with the most perfect accuracy for the part it
was to take in the whole. … And we may guess that the sovereignty
with which that first man was invested was a most lofty one, seeing
that God had fashioned him with the utmost care and deemed him
worthy of the second place, making him His own viceroy and lord
of all others (On the Creation 136,138,148).
And yet we see that Philo in the same set of passages really means that
perfection is found in the soul and not the body:
That in soul also he was most excellent is manifest; for the
Creator … employed for its making no pattern taken from among
created things, but solely … His own Word. … It is on this account
that he says that man was made a likeness and imitation of the
Word, when the Divine Breath was breathed into his face. … Ev-
ery man, in respect of his mind, is allied to the divine Reason,
having come into being as a copy or fragment or ray of that
blessed nature, but in the structure of his body he is allied to all
the world (ibid., 139,146).

257
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

Furthermore, the soul placed in the created body must change, unlike
God:
Now every created thing must necessarily undergo change, for this
is its property, even as unchangeableness is the property of God. …
since no created thing is constant, and things mortal are necessar-
ily liable to changes and reverses, it could not but be that the first
man too should experience some ill fortune (Alleg. Interp. II.33;
On the Creation 151).
Thus Philo sees the body as a wicked tempter that we would do
much better without, though cannot deny is present. We must therefore
be continually on guard to resist the temptations and seductions of
bodily pleasure, to which we return in Chapter 10.

3. Origen
To Origen the body is the visible expression of the soul’s fall, the
“grosser bodies” that are the lowest rung on the ladder of descent. In
this powerful passage we see the influence of Plato’s Phaedrus in
Origen’s description of the downward transmigration of souls:
But by some inclination towards evil these souls lose their wings
and come into bodies, first of men; then through their association
with the irrational passions, after the allotted span of human life
they are changed into beasts; from which they sink to the level of
insensate nature. Thus that which is by nature fine and mobile,
namely the soul, first becomes heavy and weighed down, and be-
cause of its wickedness comes to dwell in a human body; after
that, when the faculty of reason is extinguished, it lives the life of
an irrational animal; and finally even the gracious gift of sensa-
tion is withdrawn and it changes into the insensate life of a plant
(First Princ. I.8.4).
Our true nature thus is the same as God’s, pure incorporeal spirit,
and our fall from this nature must ultimately lead to the return to it.
St. Jerome was horrified by this teaching, but fortunately left it extant
(after Origen’s translator, Rufinus, had omitted it) for the modern
reader to judge its worth:
That all rational natures, that is, the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit, all angels … and other powers, and even man himself in vir-
tue of his soul’s dignity, are of one substance. For … [this] rational
nature … [is in] the “inner man,” who was made in the image and

258
 Spirit, Mind, Body: Platonism

likeness of God. From which the conclusion is drawn that God and
all these creatures are in some way of one substance (ibid.,
p. 326n.1).
Origen also spoke of humanity having a “kind of blood-relationship
with God” (ibid., IV.4.10, p. 327), and in An Exhortation to Martyrdom
Origen speaks of the soul’s rational nature having “a certain kinship with
God” (Martyrdom XLVII). Thus Origen asks immediately afterwards:
… why do we hang back and hesitate to put off the perishable
body, the earthly tent that hinders us, weighs down the soul, and
burdens the thoughtful mind? (ibid.)
And in his Homily XXVII on “Numbers”:
… the soul so grows that when it has ceased being driven by the
troubles of the flesh, it has completed visions and gains perfect
understanding of things … (Homily XXVII.12).
The body, then, is anything but holy or divine:
… we must know that … [Christ] affectionately loves nothing earthly,
nothing material, nothing corruptible. For it is against its nature to
love anything corruptible affectionately, since it is itself the source
of incorruption (Prologue, in Origen trans. Greer, p. 226).
Nonetheless, the body for Origen remains the vehicle whereby
souls can restore themselves to their natural non-corporeal state:
… a rational mind … by advancing from things visible to things in-
visible, may attain to an increasingly perfect understanding. For it
has been placed in a body, and of necessity advances from things of
sense, which are bodily, to things beyond sense perception, which
are incorporeal and intellectual. … and … when their restoration is
perfectly accomplished these bodies are dissolved into nothing
(First Princ. IV.4.10,8).
We shall return to this final stage of the soul’s ascent in Chapter 8.
We now will see how Plotinus mirrors the same attitude as did
Origen, wherein the body is seen both as the negative expression of the
soul’s fall from God, and the positive expression of its return to Him.

4. Plotinus
The non-Christian Plotinus is far more expressive of the body’s
negative effects on the soul than his Christian Neoplatonic counterpart:

259
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

… the human soul … is said to suffer all kinds of evils and to be in

misery because it comes to exist among stupidities and desires and
fears and all other evils, in that the body is its chain and tomb and
the universe its cave and den … . Here the “moulting,” as it is
called, happens to it, and the being in the fetters of the body, since
it has missed the immunity which it had when it was with the uni-
versal soul directing the better part (of the universe); it was alto-
gether better for it before when it was running upwards; it is fallen,
therefore, and is caught, and is engaged with its fetter, and acts by
sense because its new beginning prevents it from acting by intel-
lect, and it is said to be buried and in a cave … (Enn. IV.8.3,4).
The “lower” faculties of the incarnate soul are but distortions of the
Soul’s true and eternal nature. It is in the Soul’s union with the body,
what Bréhier termed a “dangerous and unstable alliance,” that prob-
lems arise that cloud the remembrance of the Soul’s divine origins.
In passages remarkable for their parallels to A Course in Miracles’
descriptions of special relationships, we find further evidence of
Plotinus’ penetrating insight into the distortions that follow the Soul’s
identification with the body:
This universe … is not truly one; for it is many and divided into a
multiplicity, and one part stands away from another and is alien to
it, and there is not only friendship but also enmity because of the
separation, and in their deficiency one part is of necessity at war
with another. For the part is not self-sufficient, but in being pre-
served is at war with the other by which it is preserved. … The at-
tacks of living beings on each other, and their destruction of each
other, are necessary … . and men must fall sick if they have bodies
(Enn. III.2.2,4,5).
So therefore when we look outside that on which we depend we do
not know that we are one, like faces which are many on the out-
side but have one head inside. But if someone is able to turn
around, … he will see God and himself and the All; at first he will
not see as the All [i.e., as a whole] but then, when he has nowhere
to set himself and limit himself and determine how far he himself
goes, he will stop marking himself off from all being and will
come to all the All [i.e., as a unity] … . as long as it is in that which
has the impression perceived by the senses, the lover is not yet in
love; but when from that he himself generates in himself an im-
pression not perceptible by the senses in his partless soul, then love
springs up. But he seeks to see the beloved that he may water him

260
 Spirit, Mind, Body: Platonism

when he is withering. But if he should come to understand that one

must change to that which is more formless, he would desire that;
for his experience from the beginning was love of a great light
from a dim glimmer (Enn. VI.5.7; 7.33).

5. St. Augustine
In St. Augustine we find our by now familiar tripartite view of
humanity. In a letter to Coelestinus he wrote:
There is a nature which is susceptible of change with respect to
both place and time, namely the corporeal. There is another nature
which is in no way susceptible of change with respect to place, but
only with respect to time, namely the spiritual. And there is a third
Nature which can be changed neither in respect to place nor in re-
spect to time: that is, God (in Bourke, p. 45).
In the following passages we find, as with Plotinus, evidence of the
powerfully ambivalent attitude towards the world and the body. We
have already seen Augustine articulating the Platonic view of the di-
vine cosmos. Here, in a passage from the City of God we find it again,
along with the notion of the upright physical structure of the human
body reflecting God’s specific intention, a belief Augustine shared
with Plotinus and Clement as we saw in Chapter 6.
Moreover, even in the body, though it dies like that of the
beasts, and is in many ways weaker than theirs, what goodness of
God, what providence of the great Creator, is apparent! The or-
gans of sense and the rest of the members, are not they so placed,
the appearance, and form, and stature of the body as a whole, is it
not so fashioned, as to indicate that it was made for the service of a
reasonable soul? Man has not been created stooping towards the
earth, like the irrational animals; but his bodily form, erect and
looking heavenwards, admonishes him to mind the things that are
above. Then the marvelous nimbleness which has been given to the
tongue and the hands, fitting them to speak, and write, and execute
so many duties, and practice so many arts, does it not prove the ex-
cellence of the soul for which such an assistant was provided? And
even apart from its adaptation to the work required of it, there is
such a symmetry in its various parts, and so beautiful a proportion
maintained, that one is at a loss to decide whether, in creating the
body, greater regard was paid to utility or to beauty. Assuredly no

261
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

part of the body has been created for the sake of utility which does
not also contribute something to its beauty (City of God 22.24).
And yet elsewhere in the City of God and the Confessions we read
exactly the opposite. Listen again to the ardent seeker after God be-
moaning the awesome burden of his own body:
I marveled that now I loved you [God], and not a phantom in
your stead. Yet I was not steadfast in enjoyment of my God: I was
borne up to you by your beauty, but soon I was borne down from
you by my own weight, and with groaning, I plunged into the
midst of those lower things. This weight was carnal custom. …
“For the corruptible body is a load upon the soul, and the earthly
habitation presses down upon the mind that muses upon many
things” (Conf. 7.17.23).
And then we read this searing, all-inclusive condemnation of physical
existence in this world. We have room only for excerpts from this
three-page diatribe:
That the whole human race has been condemned in its first ori-
gin, this life itself, if life it is to be called, bears witness by the host
of cruel ills with which it is filled. Is not this proved by the pro-
found and dreadful ignorance which produces all the errors that en-
fold the children of Adam, and from which no man can be
delivered without toil, pain, and fear? Is it not proved by his love
of so many vain and hurtful things, which produces gnawing
cares … wars … perfidy … it is shameful so much as to mention;
sacrileges, heresies … and whatever similar wickedness has found
its way into the lives of men … ? they spring from that root of error
and misplaced love which is born with every son of Adam. … who
can conceive the number and severity of the punishments which af-
flict the human race—pains which are not only the accompani-
ment of the wickedness of godless men, but are a part of the human
condition and the common misery … . For at their hands we suffer
robbery … torture, mutilation … the violation of chastity to satisfy
the lust of the oppressor, and many other dreadful evils. What
numberless casualties threaten our bodies from without—extremes
of heat and cold, storms … earthquakes … countless poisons … .
What disasters are suffered by those who travel by land or sea! …
As to bodily diseases, they are so numerous that they cannot all be
contained even in medical books. And in very many, or almost all
of them, the cures and remedies are themselves tortures … . Has

262
 Spirit, Mind, Body: Gnosticism

not the madness of thirst driven men to drink human urine, and
even their own? Has not hunger driven men to eat human flesh,
and that the flesh not of bodies found dead but of bodies slain for
the purpose? Have not the fierce pangs of famine driven mothers
to eat their own children, incredibly savage as it seems? (City of
God 22.22)
On and on this Platonist goes, decrying “the miseries of this life … this
hell on earth.” One can only wonder, echoing the lines from Blake as
we ponder this last passage: did he who wrote the encomium of God’s
created world also write thee?

Spirit, Mind (Soul), Body: Gnosticism

Discussion of the Gnostic tripartite view of homo sapiens follows

logically from our discussion of the Gnostic creation myth. To summa-
rize briefly again, part of the divine substance—pneuma or spirit—has
found itself in this world through some sort of declination; second,
there is the psychical, or what we may term the mind or soul, which is
the part of nature that can choose; finally there is the body or hyle
(matter), which is doomed to corruption, the “living” symbol of the
creator god, the inferior principle that is a poor imitation of the true
God. The spirit is the equivalent to what A Course in Miracles calls the
Christ or our true Self. It has many synonyms in the Gnostic literature,
including the Mandean Mana, the Manichean luminous or living self,
the Naassene Man or Adam, the Primal Man or Anthropos, and the
spark or seed of light. In Pauline theology spirit is the counterpart to
the inner or new man. Jonas has pointed out the interesting fact that
Paul does not use the Greek word “psyche” for this spiritual principle,
as had been the practice since Plato. Rather, like the Gnostics who
came after him, he juxtaposes the psychic man (sometimes translated
as “natural”) with the pneumatic.
We begin by examining some of the texts that set forth this trinity.
First, “The Apocryphon of James”:
For without the soul [mind] the body does not sin, just as the soul is
not saved without the spirit. But if the soul is saved when it is with-
out evil, and the spirit is also saved, then the body becomes free
from sin. For it is the spirit that quickens the soul, but the body that

263
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

kills it; that is, it is it (the soul) which kills itself. Verily I [Jesus]
say unto you, he [God] will not forgive the soul the sin by any
means, nor the flesh the guilt; for none of those who have worn the
flesh will be saved. For do you think that many have found the
kingdom of heaven? (ApocryJs I.11.38–12.15, in NHL, p. 34)
From “The Tripartite Tractate”:
The first man is a mixed formation, and a mixed creation, and a
deposit of those of the left and those of the right, and a spiritual word
whose attention is divided between each of the two substances from
which he takes his being (Tri. Tract. I.106.18-25, in NHL, p. 83).
In the hermetic “Poimandres” we also find reference to the twofold
origin of man.
That is why man, unlike all the living things on earth, is twofold:
mortal because of the body, immortal because of the essential Man
(Corp. Herm. I.15, in F I, p. 331).
The component that receives the most extensive treatment by far,
however, is the body, the object of such great derision by the Gnostics.
This strong emphasis placed on the body in the Gnostic literature re-
flects the importance and psychological reality that was given to it. In
this section we present the evidence; the significance of this emphasis
will be discussed in Part III.
The Gnostic literature is replete with descriptions of the body, most
of which are very negative. The ethical and behavioral implications of
this denigration will be discussed in Chapter 10. For now we shall con-
tent ourselves with examining this anti-corporeal stance.
As we have already observed, Marcion sees homo sapiens, the prod-
uct of the creator of the world, as a despicable creature, impotent and
helpless. Of the sexual reproductive act, which was a bestial activity to
many Gnostics, Marcion has this to say:
In the womb a foetus coagulates out of horrible materials of genera-
tion, is nourished for nine months by the same filth, comes to light
through the genitals, and is fed and raised by a buffoonish process
(in Nigg, p. 62).
And the final proof for Marcion of the meaninglessness of human life
is the grave. Nigg has summarized Marcion’s sentiments as being that
all creation is but “a miserable tragicomedy for which only its creator
can be blamed” (Nigg, p. 62).

264
 Spirit, Mind, Body: Gnosticism

In “The Acts of John” the apostle chastises the painter Lycomedes

for his portraits: “You have drawn a dead likeness of what is dead”
(AJ 29, in NTA II, p. 221); while in the Manichean “Psalms to Jesus”
we read:
The enemy of my soul is the world, its riches and its deceit. All life
hates godliness: what am I doing in the place of my enemies? … in
the flesh of death that burns … (CCLXI, in Allberry, p. 75).
I have not mingled with the intercourse of the flesh, for it is a thing
that perishes (CCLXVIII, in Allberry, p. 86).
O Christ whom I have loved, belonging unto thee, I fell into the
snares of the body of death. The trappers that set traps for me
brought me beneath their nets, they excluded me from the air of the
freedom of the beautiful birds (CCLXXI, in Allberry, p. 89).
In the “Psalms of Heracleides” the human bodies are referred to as the
“Abortions, the Sons of Matter” (CCLXXXV, in Allberry, p. 108).
And Augustine writes of his erstwhile associates:
They ascribe the origin of sin not to free will but to the substance
of the enemy race. This, in their doctrine, is mingled with man and
all flesh is not the work of God, but of the evil spirit, which de-
rives from the contrary principle and is eternal, together with God
(de haer. in Haardt, p. 348).
Turning now to the Nag Hammadi texts we find these statements in
“The Gospel of Thomas,” reminiscent of the “gold in mud” metaphor:
If the flesh came into being because of spirit, it is a wonder. But if
spirit came into being because of the body, it is a wonder of won-
ders. Indeed, I [Jesus] am amazed at how this great wealth has
made its home in this poverty. … Wretched is the body that is de-
pendent upon a body, and wretched is the soul that is dependent on
these two (GTh II.38.31–39.2; 48.4-7, in NHL, pp. 121,127).
Similarly, the Valentinian “Gospel of Philip”:
No one will hide a large valuable object in something large, but
many a time one has tossed countless thousands into a thing worth a
penny. Compare the soul. It is a precious thing and it came to be in
a contemptible body. … In this world those who put on garments are
better than the garments. In the kingdom of heaven the garments are
better than those who have put them on (GPh II.56.20-26; 57.19-22,
in NHL, pp. 134-35).

265
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

In this fragment preserved by Clement of Alexandria we find a pur-

portedly authentic statement by Valentinus himself:
For many [evil] spirits dwell in it [the heart] and do not permit it to
be pure; each of them brings to fruition its own works, and they
treat it abusively by means of unseemly desires. To me it seems that
the heart suffers in much the same way as an inn: for it (an inn) has
holes and trenches dug in it and is often filled with filth by men
who live there licentiously and have no regard for the place be-
cause it belongs to another. Likewise, the heart, so long as it is not
cared for, is unclean and the abode of many demons (Strom. II.20.4-
6, in F I, pp. 241-42).
The Ophites, more primitive forerunners to Valentinus, made this
statement:
Adam and Eve previously had light, clear and as it were spiri-
tual bodies, just as they had been created. But when they came
here (to this world) they turned into something more opaque and
thick and sluggish. The soul, too, became lax and limp, since they
had from the creator only a breath of the world; so much so that
Prunicos [meaning the Lewd, an early version of the female So-
phia] pitied them and restored to them a whiff of sweetness of the
trace of light. Through this they came to recollect who they them-
selves were, and they knew that they were naked and had material
bodies; and they knew that they were burdened with death. They
became patient, knowing that the body is their garment only for a
time (Adv. haer. I.30.9, in F I, p. 90).
The same hostility towards the body is seen in the Mandean litera-
ture where the uthras, simple beings of light, take the pure soul, the
“treasure of Life,” and
they put it in filth and clothe it in the colors of the flesh. … with a
perishable garment … . and bring about imperfection and defi-
ciency in it (GR III.p.96, in F II, p. 202).
The body is described as
a rapacious sea, which robs and devours sheep [i.e., the soul]. It is
a dragon, a wicked son of man, who has seven heads [correspond-
ing to the seven planets]. … he has neither understanding nor heart
(GR III.9, in F II, pp. 223-24).
And in a lament by Adam:

266
 Spirit, Mind, Body: Gnosticism

Alas, alas, that my brothers beguiled me, removed me from their

midst, and brought, cast and hurled me into a stinking body, to the
destructive lions, the rebellious, unruly lions. They led me and
hurled me to the dragon who surrounds the whole world. They
brought, cast, and hurled me among the evil planets, who daily
provoke uproar (GL I.2, in F II, p. 224).
While these excerpts have been rather clear in their expression of
the Gnostic abhorrence of the body, perhaps nowhere is this hatred of
the Gnostics more dramatically seen than in their attitudes toward sex-
uality: the almost incarnate expression of evil. We have already seen
some evidence of this, especially in the Manichean cosmology, and
will return to this in Chapter 10. In the present chapter we shall illus-
trate this attitude with several examples from the Nag Hammadi
Library. First we will consider “The Exegesis of the Soul,” which re-
flects a strong Platonic influence, including the hostility towards the
body and sexuality. Here, we read of the fall of the soul into the body
in sexual terms:
As long as she [the soul] was alone with the Father, she was vir-
gin and in form androgynous. But when she fell down into a body
and came to this life, then she fell into the hands of many robbers.
And the wanton creatures passed her from one to another … . Some
made use of her by force, while others did so by seducing her with a
gift. In short, they defiled her. … And in her body she prostituted
herself and gave herself to one and all, considering each one she
was about to embrace to be her husband. When she had given her-
self to wanton, unfaithful adulterers, so that they might make use of
her, then she sighed deeply and repented. But even when she turns
her face from those adulterers, she runs to others and they compel
her to live with them and render service to them upon their bed, as if
they were her masters. Out of shame she no longer dares to leave
them, whereas they deceive her for a long time, pretending to be
faithful, true husbands, as if they greatly respected her. And after all
this they abandon her and go. … And her offspring by the adulterers
are dumb, blind, and sickly. They are feeble-minded (Exeg. Soul
II.127.22–128.26; in NHL, p. 181).
The anonymous Gnostic author of this treatise quotes Old and New
Testament sources as expressions of this vice of prostitution, and
concludes:

267
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

As long as the soul keeps running about everywhere copulating

with whomever she meets and defiling herself, she exists suffering
her just deserts (ibid., 131.13, in NHL, pp. 181,183).
From the strongly ascetic “Book of Thomas the Contender,” aimed
in part against the orthodox Church that was seen in the Thomas tradi-
tion as not being ascetic enough, we find the following excerpts deni-
grating the body. As in many of these Gnostic texts the speaker is the
risen Jesus, bestowing his revelation on the Gnostic apostle, here his
“twin brother” Thomas.
The Savior said, “All bodies of men and beasts are begotten irra-
tional [sexual intercourse is meant]. Surely it is evident in the
way … . these visible bodies eat of creatures similar to them with
the result that the bodies change. … just as the body of the beasts
perishes, so also will these formations perish. Do they not derive
from intercourse like that of the beasts? If the body too derives
from intercourse, how will it beget anything different from beasts?
So, therefore, you are babes until you become perfect. … for just
as beasts devour one another, so also men … devour one another”
(Th Cont. II.138.39–139.12; 141.27-29, in NHL, pp. 189, 191).
And finally, in words and tone reminiscent of Chapter 23 in Matthew,
we have Jesus of this tradition cursing those who put their faith in the
body. We present excerpts from this diatribe:
Woe to you who hope in the flesh and in the prison that will per-
ish! How long will you be oblivious? … Your hope is set upon the
world and your god is this life! You are corrupting your souls! Woe
to you for the fire that burns in you, for it is insatiable! … You
darkened your hearts and surrendered your thoughts to folly, and
you filled your thoughts with the smoke of the fire that is in you!
And your light has hidden in the cloud of darkness and the gar-
ment that is put upon you, you pursued deceitfully and you were
seized by the hope that does not exist. … Woe to you who love inti-
macy with womankind and polluted intercourse with it! And woe
to you because of the powers of your body, for those will afflict
you! (Ibid., 143.10-144.12, p. 193)
We find a similar description of the fate of the soul fallen into the de-
bauched life of the flesh in “Authoritative Teaching,” a Gnostic text that
does not seem to reflect any specific Jewish or Christian influences:

268
 Spirit, Mind, Body: Gnosticism

In this very way, when the spiritual soul was cast into the body, it
became a brother to lust, and hatred, and envy, and a material soul.
So therefore the body came from lust, and lust came from material
substance. For this reason the soul became a brother to them . …
That one then will fall into drinking much wine in debauchery. …
Therefore she does not remember her brothers and her father, for
pleasure and sweet profits deceive her. … For if a thought of lust en-
ters into a virgin man, he has … been contaminated. … Our soul in-
deed is ill, because she dwells in a house of poverty [the body],
while matter strikes blows at her eyes, wishing to make her blind
(Auth. Teach. VI.23.12-22; 24.14-20; 25.6-9; 27.25-29, in NHL,
pp. 279-80).
The text continues with a most telling description of what it means to
be in a body in this world. The image used is that of a fisherman (the
devil) laying the bait of the flesh with which to catch the fish—the soul
trapped in the body:
For this reason, then, we do not sleep, nor do we forget the nets
that are spread out in hiding, lying in wait for us to catch us. …
And we will be taken down into the dragnet, and we will not be
able to come up from it because the waters are high over
us … submerging our hearts down in the filthy mud. And we will
not be able to escape from them. For man-eaters will seize us and
swallow us, rejoicing like a fisherman casting a hook into the
water. … In this very way we exist in this world, like fish. … For he
places many foods before our eyes, things which belong to this
world. … Now all such things the adversary prepares beautifully
and spreads out before the body, wishing to make the mind of the
soul incline her towards one of them and overwhelm her, like a
hook drawing her by force in ignorance, deceiving her until she
conceives evil, and bears fruit of matter, and conducts herself in
uncleanness, pursuing many desires, covetousnesses, while fleshly
pleasure draws her in ignorance (ibid., 29.2–31.24, p. 281).
Finally, from the non-Christian “Paraphrase of Shem” we find these
strong sexual statements. In the preceding chapter we discussed the
creation myth found here, but omitted these sexual images which we
present now.
And when her [Nature] forms returned, they rubbed their tongue(s)
with each other; they copulated; they begot winds and demons and

269
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

the power which is from the fire and the Darkness and the Spirit.
But the form which remained alone cast the beast from herself. She
did not have intercourse, but she was the one who rubbed herself
alone. And she brought forth a wind which possessed a power from
the fire and the Darkness and the Spirit.
And in order that the demons also might become free from the
power which they possessed through the impure intercourse, a
womb was with the winds resembling water. And an unclean penis
was with the demons in accordance with the example of the Dark-
ness, and in the way he rubbed with the womb from the beginning.
And after the forms of Nature had been together, they separated
from each other. … But the winds, which are demons from water
and fire and darkness and light, had intercourse unto perdition.
And through this intercourse the winds received in their womb
foam from the penis of the demons. They conceived a power in
their vagina. From the breathing the wombs of the winds girded
each other until the times of the birth came. … They gave birth to
all kinds of unchastity (Par. Shem VII.21.22–23.30, NHL, p. 318).

Alienation, Sleep, and Drunkenness

This final section describes the state of being in this world of the
body: a state of alienation from the soul’s true home in which the soul
is described as either being asleep or drunk. Many moving passages are
found in the Gnostic literature. We begin with the theme of alienation.
The Gnostics recognize that this world is not their home, for the
material universe is totally alien to the spiritual world which is their
origin. As Jonas summarizes the situation: the world
is just as incomprehensible to the alien that comes to dwell here,
and like a foreign land where it is far from home. Then it suffers the
lot of the stranger who is lonely, unprotected, uncomprehended, and
uncomprehending in a situation full of danger. Anguish and home-
sickness are a part of the stranger’s lot. The stranger who does not
know the ways of the foreign land wanders about lost; if he learns
its ways too well, he forgets that he is a stranger and gets lost in a
different sense by succumbing to the lure of the alien world and be-
coming estranged from his own origin. Then he has become a “son
of the house.” This too is part of the alien’s fate. In his alienation
from himself the distress has gone, but this very fact is the culmina-
tion of the stranger’s tragedy (Jonas, pp. 49-50).

270
 Alienation, Sleep, and Drunkenness

The most radical of all the Gnostic treatments of this theme is found
in Marcion’s system, where it receives an interesting twist, which we
have already examined. It is radical because the alienation of humanity
is not from this world, but from God. Humanity is at home here because
man in his complete constitution like all nature is a creature of the
world-god and prior to the advent of Christ his rightful and unre-
stricted property, body and soul alike. “Naturally,” therefore, no part
of him is alien in the world, while the Good God is alien in the abso-
lute sense to him as to everything created (Jonas, p. 138, my italics).
Returning to the mainstream Gnostic tradition we find that concom-
itant to this state of alienation are the themes of the sleeping and intox-
icated soul, numbed into forgetfulness by its fall. We shall see presently
how this state is the result of an active plan on the part of the world to
keep the entrapped soul a prisoner. Upon the awakening of the soul and
removal from the world of matter, the powers of the world are dimin-
ished. We shall explore these in the context of the following excerpts.
We begin with one of the most famous Gnostic myths, “The Hymn
of the Pearl” which, as we have seen, tells the tale of a prince sent
down to Egypt to retrieve the missing pearl from the clutches of the de-
vouring dragon. The alienation of this celestial sojourner in the land of
matter is expressed thus:
And I was alone and foreign in appearance, and I looked strange
even to my own (household companions). … I put on their [Egyptian]
clothes, so that I might not appear foreign, as one from abroad … .
While there, however, the prince’s identity is discovered:
But I do not know how they discovered that I was not from their
land. But they cunningly devised a trap for me, and I tasted their
food. I ceased to know that I was a king’s son, and I served their
king. I forgot the pearl for which my parents had sent me, and un-
der the weight of their food I sank into deep sleep (ATh 109, in F I,
p. 356).
The fate of the prince mirrors that of the pearl itself which has be-
come trapped in the world of matter: the one guarded by the dragon,
symbol of the evil world of matter, the other weighted down by the food
of the world (matter) and fallen into a sleep of forgetfulness. This is the
result of the active intervention on the part of the world and its evil, dark
powers. A Manichean fragment offers the following parallel passage:

271
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

(Ahriman), [King of Darkness] captured the fair Soul and fettered

it within the impurity. Since he had made it blind and deaf, it was
unconscious and confused, so that (at first) it did not know its true
origin (in Jonas, p. 69n).
From this Manichean psalm we find a poetic expression of the soul’s
existential condition of finding itself caught in the body:
Since I went forth into the darkness I was given a water to drink …
I bear up beneath a burden which is not my own. I am in the midst
of my enemies, the beasts surrounding me; the burden which I bear
is of the powers and principalities. They burned in their wrath, they
rose up against me … Matter and her sons divided me up amongst
them, they burnt me in their fire, they gave me a bitter likeness.
The strangers with whom I mixed, me they know not; they tasted
my sweetness, they desired to keep me with them. I was life to
them, but they were death to me; I bore up beneath them, they wore
me as a garment upon them (in Jonas, p. 229).
The richest segment of the Gnostic corpus in terms of expressing
the Gnostic awareness of the existential predicament of alienation is
found in the Mandeans, and we cite several examples of their horror
and pain of being removed from their spiritual home:
I (the soul) will speak to the uthras, my brothers: … “What sin have
I committed among you, that you beguiled me and have removed
me from your midst? You have taken me prisoner from my
dwelling” … (GL III.1 in F II, p. 222).
The Mandeans compiled a book of funeral dirges, from which the fol-
lowing are examples of the plaintive cry of the entrapped spiritual sub-
stance (the mana):
A mana I am of the Great Life: who has made me dwell in the Tibil
[the world of matter]? … Who has cast me into the bodily
trunk … which has no hands or feet? … and knows not how it
should walk. It lies there and crawls, and has no strength. Why did
they call me from my place and bring me hither and cast me into
the trunk? My feet are feet of radiance, now they must serve the
trunk for walking. … Who cast me to the misery of the angels, to
the hideous ones, whose smell is odious and whose form is hid-
eous and unsightly? … How shall I grow up in their midst, for their
dwellings are unsightly to me? … How shall I put on their garment
and live where they live? (GL sect. 1; GL II.7, in F II, pp. 253,256)

272
 Alienation, Sleep, and Drunkenness

In these next two excerpts we see the plotting of the world (the
“wicked”) to keep the being of light (perhaps the Mandean Savior
Manda dHaiye) prisoner:
Let us unleash lust upon him. … and detain him with us in the
world! He shall go astray and his heart shall take fright, and he
shall forget what his lord charged him. He shall forget the calm,
and revolt shall dwell in him. He shall forget the gentle path and he
shall follow at our heels with sinners (GR XVI.8, in F II, p. 226).
Elsewhere the Mandean texts speak of the plan of the evil Ruha and
the planets:
“Arise, let us make a drinking-feast. Let us practise the mysteries
of love and seduce the whole world! … The call of Life we will
silence, we will cast strife into the house, which shall not be set-
tled in all eternity. We will kill the Stranger.” … They took the head
of the tribe and practised on him the mystery of love and of lust,
through which all the worlds are inflamed. They practised on him
seduction, by which all the worlds are seduced. They practised on
him the mystery of drunkenness, by which all the worlds are made
drunken (in Jonas, p. 72).
And in a passage reminiscent of “The Hymn of the Pearl” we read of
the alien nature of the spiritual one thrown into the evil world of matter:
A poor one am I from the Fruit [the Pleroma], a removed one am I,
who (is) from afar. … They brought me from the dwelling of the
good ones … . Yea, they installed me in the abode of the wicked,
which is completely full of malice. … and full of consuming fire. I
did not wish it and do not wish to dwell in the worthless place. …
By my illumination and my praise have I kept myself a stranger
from the world. I have stood among them (the wicked), like a child
who has no father. … I hear the voice of the Seven [the planets],
who whisper to each other and say: “Where does this alien Man
come from, whose speech is not like our speech?” I did not listen to
their talk, and they were filled with evil rage against me (ML Oxf.
I.56, in F II, pp. 243-44).
The “Pistis Sophia” is a relatively late Gnostic document—dating
from at least the third century—that was discovered in the middle of
the nineteenth century. For many years it remained one of the few pri-
mary sources of Gnostic material. Since the discovery of the Nag
Hammadi library, the inferior quality of the “Pistis” has become even

273
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

clearer relative to the higher level of the “Sophia” branch of Gnostic

thought we have seen in the work of the Valentinians. In this excerpt
we hear the lamentations of the fallen Sophia:
Deliver me, O Light, for evil thoughts have entered into me. … I
went, and found myself in the darkness which is in the chaos be-
neath, and I was powerless to hasten away and to return to my
place, for I was afflicted by all the Emanations of the Authades
(the Arrogant One) (in Jonas, p. 68).
The Nag Hammadi texts present several clear examples of these
themes of alienation, sleep, and drunkenness. We begin with “The
Apocryphon of James,” where the risen though angry Lord says:
You have received mercy. … Do you not, then, desire to be filled?
And your heart is drunken; do you not, then, desire to be sober?
Therefore be ashamed! … O you pretenders to the truth; O you
falsifiers of knowledge; O you sinners against the Spirit: can you
still bear to listen when it behooved you to speak from the first?
Can you still bear to sleep, when it behooved you to be awake from
the first, so that the kingdom of heaven might receive you? Verily I
say unto you, it is easier for a pure one to fall into defilement, and
for a man of light to fall into darkness, than for you to reign or not
reign (ApocryJs I. 2.40–3.11; 9.25–10.6, in NHL, pp. 30,33).
“The Hypostasis of the Archons” continues the now familiar Gnostic
theme of the sleep of ignorance:
The Rulers took counsel with one another and said, “Come, let
us cause a deep sleep to fall upon Adam.” And he slept.—Now
the deep sleep that they “caused to fall upon him, and he slept” is
Ignorance (Hypos. Arch. II.89.2-7, in NHL, p. 154).
In “Authoritative Teaching” we find the following comparison be-
tween the Gnostic, who knows this world is not his own, and the un-
knowing ones:
We [the Gnostics] have nothing in this world, lest the authority of
the world that has come into being should detain us in the worlds
that are in the heavens, those in which universal death exists … . we
are ashamed of the worlds, though we take no interest in them
when they malign us. And we ignore them when they curse us.
When they cast shame in our face, look at them and do not
speak. … Our soul indeed is ill, because she dwells in a house of

274
 Alienation, Sleep, and Drunkenness

poverty, while matter strikes blows at her eyes, wishing to make

her blind (Auth. Teach. VI.26.26–27.29, in NHL, p. 280).
“The Concept of Our Great Power” is a very late Christian Gnostic
document, dating from the latter part of the fourth century. We find here
the typical Gnostic exhortation to awaken from the dreams of this world:
Yet you are sleeping, dreaming dreams. Wake up and return,
taste and eat the true food! Hand out the word and the water of
life! Cease from the evil lusts and desires … (Conc. Great Power
VI.39.33–40.7, in NHL, p. 286).
“The Teachings of Silvanus” is considered by some scholars to be
the only true non-Gnostic text in the Nag Hammadi library, as it does
not share many of the core teachings found in other Gnostic writings,
as well as generally remaining within the orthodox doctrine. This belief
is not shared by all scholars, however, for the text does extol the salvific
role of knowledge from within. Its emphasis on reason as integrating
mind, body, and soul is also reflective of the Hellenistic influence, es-
pecially of the Middle Platonism of the second century, while its ex-
tolling wisdom expresses the influence of the Jewish Wisdom heritage.
It is probably dated from the turn of the third century, and the teacher
Silvanus is most likely either the New Testament figure who was
Peter’s associate (1 P 5:12) or Paul’s companion (2 Th 1:1). This pas-
sage could be taken from almost any Gnostic text.
My son, listen to my teaching which is good and useful, and end
the sleep which weighs heavy upon you. Depart from the forgetful-
ness which fills you with darkness … . Christ came in order to give
you this gift. Why do you pursue the darkness though the light is at
your disposal? … Wisdom summons you, yet you desire folly. Not
by your own desire do you do these things, but it is the animal na-
ture within you that does them.
Wisdom summons you in her goodness, saying, “Come to me,
all of you, O foolish ones, that you may receive a gift, the under-
standing which is good and excellent. I am giving to you a high-
priestly garment which is woven from every kind of wisdom.”
What else is evil death except ignorance? What else is evil dark-
ness except familiarity with forgetfulness? … clothe yourself with
wisdom like a robe, put knowledge upon you like a crown, and be
seated upon a throne of perception. … O soul, persistent one, be
sober and shake off your drunkenness, which is the work of

275
Chapter 7 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

ignorance. … If you do not know (yourself), you will not be able to

know all of these [the heavenly host] (Silv. VII.88.22–89.24;
94.19-22; 117.3-5, in NHL, pp. 349,351,360).
We conclude this section by considering the Valentinian treatise,
“The Gospel of Truth.” Our first excerpt reiterates for us the theme of
drunkenness, here having been overcome by the Gnostic:
Each one’s name comes to him. He who is to have knowledge in
this manner knows where he comes from and where he is going.
He knows as one who having become drunk has turned away from
his drunkenness, and having returned to himself, has set right what
are his own. He has brought many back from error (GT I.22.12-21,
in NHL, p. 40).
In emphasizing the illusory nature of our dreams, despite their seeming
reality, this final passage is remarkable for its parallels with A Course
in Miracles. In Part III we shall discuss the meaning of this passage as
well as its parallels with the Course.
Thus they were ignorant of the Father, he being the one whom
they did not see. Since it was terror and disturbance and instability
and doubt and division, there were many illusions at work by
means of these, and there were empty fictions, as if they were sunk
in sleep and found themselves in disturbing dreams. Either there is
a place to which they are fleeing, or without strength they come
from having chased after others, or they are involved in striking
blows, or they are receiving blows themselves … . Again, some-
times it is as if people were murdering them, though there is no one
even pursuing them, or they themselves are killing their neighbors,
for they have been stained with their blood. When those who are
going through all these things wake up, they see nothing, they who
were in the midst of all these disturbances, for they are nothing.
Such is the way of those who have cast ignorance aside from them
like sleep, not esteeming it as anything, nor do they esteem its
works as solid things either, but they leave them behind like a
dream in the night (ibid., 28.32-30.4, p. 43).
There is also a striking parallel in this passage to the dream metaphor
in the Timaeus, where Plato writes about space:
… we look at it indeed in a kind of dream and say that everything
that exists must be somewhere and occupy some space, and that
what is nowhere in heaven or earth is nothing at all. And because

276
 Alienation, Sleep, and Drunkenness

of this dream state we are not awake to the distinctions we have

drawn and others akin to them, and fail to state the truth about the
true and unsleeping reality … (Tim. 52b,c).

277
 Chapter 8

THE MEANING OF SALVATION

Introduction

In this chapter we shall be discussing the principles of salvation, re-

serving for Chapter 10 the more specific applications of these prin-
ciples to religious and ethical practice. The way that a problem (i.e.,
separation) is understood points the way to its solution (i.e., salvation).
While the Gnostic teachings on the separation and salvation are clear
and straightforward, as are their Platonic and Christian counterparts,
we yet find inconsistencies in the logic that leads from one to the other.
These inconsistencies have given rise to the God-world paradox that is
one of the principal themes of this book, and we continue to explore
this paradox in the present chapter.
For the traditional Christian the problem of the world is sin, traced
back symbolically (at least for the non-fundamentalist Christian) to the
disobedience of Adam. Redemption, or salvation from sin, is under-
stood through forgiveness, mediated by the death and resurrection of
Jesus. The savior Jesus, God’s only Son, is sent into this world for the
specific purpose of redeeming it through his suffering death. Thus are
the people vicariously offered salvation by the blood sacrifice that is
God’s plan of atonement:
Yes, God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so
that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have
eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn
the world, but so that through him the world might be saved
(Jn 3:16-18).
Salvation thus consists in confessing one’s faith in the Risen Lord, and
keeping his commandments as understood and carried out by his true
Church.
For the Neoplatonic Augustine, the soul is the “middle-man” be-
tween the Divine Intelligible world and the visible world of the body; yet
again, the soul cannot become free of its fallenness in the body without
the grace of God. Thus, near the close of that diatribe against the world
we excerpted from the City of God in Chapter 7, we find these words:

279
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

From this hell upon earth there is no escape, save through the grace
of the Savior Christ, our God and Lord. The very name Jesus
shows this, for it means Savior; and He saves us especially from
passing out of this life into a more wretched and eternal state,
which is rather a death than a life (City of God 22.22).
And in his famous and very moving prayer from the Confessions,
Augustine’s soul sings:
Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, late
have I loved Thee! And behold, thou wert within and I was with-
out. I was looking for Thee out there, and I threw myself, de-
formed as I was, upon those well-formed things which Thou hast
made. Thou wert with me, yet I was not with Thee. These things
held me far from Thee, things which would not have existed had
they not been in Thee. Thou didst call and cry out and burst in
upon my deafness; Thou didst shine forth and glow and drive away
my blindness; Thou didst send forth Thy fragrance, and I drew in
my breath and now I pant for Thee; I have tasted, and now I hun-
ger and thirst; Thou didst touch me, and I was inflamed with de-
sire for Thy peace (Conf. 10.27.38).
In distinction from the Gnostics, as we shall see presently, this tra-
ditional Christian notion of salvation does not logically follow from its
view of sin, for Adam’s choice to disobey God is never truly undone:
Humanity’s salvation requires the direct if not magical intervention of
God, freely given as an expression of His grace, independent of the
original source of the problem in Adam’s mind, where his wrong
choice was made. In its purest form, on the other hand, we can see the
Gnostic notion of salvation to be the direct counterthrust to the prob-
lem. The Christian notion of sin is replaced by ignorance, elevated to
an existential condition, and thus is undone through gnosis, or knowl-
edge. The Gnostic understanding of salvation received its classic state-
ment in the Valentinian formula, twice repeated in “The Gospel of
Truth”:
Since the deficiency came into being because the Father was not
known, therefore when the Father is known, from that moment on
the deficiency will no longer exist (GT I.24.28-32, in NHL, p. 41,
my italics).
The text explains further:

280
 Introduction

As with the ignorance of a person, when he comes to have knowl-

edge his ignorance vanishes of itself, as the darkness vanishes
when light appears, so also the deficiency vanishes in the perfec-
tion (ibid., 24.32–25.3).
We shall return to this statement when we discuss the Valentinian re-
demption in more depth.
In one way at least, the more orthodox Christian Gnostics, espe-
cially those who are within the Platonic tradition, integrated their
Platonism with the Christian revelation (as did Philo with the Jewish).
The non-Christian Platonists held that the knowledge of the Divine
was attainable through human effort, directed by reason and a life of
virtue, whereas the Christians believed that the vision of God could
come only through God’s grace, given through His Son and acquired
through the study of His holy Word, the Bible. Moreover, it was con-
sidered heretical by later Church Councils to believe that one could at-
tain such a state on one’s own (the Pelagian error). The Gnostic view
of salvation integrated both of these by holding to the Platonic tradi-
tion, yet also insisting on the need for a genuine gnosis (revelation).
Jean Guitton, a contemporary French Catholic writer, has presented
the general Gnostic view of redemption, as if spoken by a Gnostic:
That salvation toward which I am tending, which ordinary
Christians imagine to be far off, uncertain, elusive, and depending
on merit, is not outside of me but within me. I need not run the risk
of losing it, because I have it. All I need do is to become aware of
this eternal fact. Instead of the effort of hoping for salvation, I now
shall take my rest in recalling its possession. Instead of the effort
of faith, I now have a clear knowledge, gnosis (Guitton, p. 56).
Bultmann summarizes the Gnostic process of redemption as freeing
man from his prison by freeing him from himself. … Redemption
must be an absolutely eschatological event, a breach, a dissolution
or separation of the real Self from the body and the soul. It can only
be realized mythologically as the separation of the constituent ele-
ments in the human personality which ensues upon death. On leav-
ing the body and soul, the real Self, the pre-existent spark of light,
ascends to its home, the heavenly world of light. Both the real Self
and its redemption are objects of faith. Such redemption can only be
secured by the preaching of a word which comes as a message from
the other world, by a message brought by the emissary from the

281
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

world of light. In the last resort, this is the only way in which the
transcendent can become a present experience. … This faith in the
reality of the calling which comes to the individual through the me-
dium of the tradition is thus the true Gnostic existence. It is belief in
a message which combines cosmological information with a sum-
mons to repentance or a call to awake and detach oneself from this
world. It is a faith which at the same time includes the hope of an
eschatological deliverance and the ascent of the soul (Bultmann,
Primitive Christianity, p. 168).
Clearly, for the Gnostic, the problem is seen within the mind, the
seat of ignorance, which is where the correction must occur. The
world, the epiphenomenon of the mind’s error, must automatically dis-
appear when this error is corrected through knowledge. Salvation,
however, is not that clear-cut when we consider the full extent of the
Gnostic corpus. After a discussion of Gnostic salvation we will in turn
discuss the ascent of the soul, eschatology, and the Platonic under-
standing of redemption.

Gnosticism

We begin by discussing the nature of salvation for the Manicheans,

which shares much in common with other Gnostic traditions, espe-
cially regarding the role of the Messenger of Light sent to redeem the
fallen particles of light. We actually saw the beginning of the redemp-
tive process in Chapter 6 when we considered the origin of the world
which, for Mani, was part of the plan to redeem the particles of light
trapped in the forms of the darkness. As in other Gnostic systems, the
“plot” of the story consists of moves and countermoves, necessitating
the events that comprise what we call our history, not to mention pre-
history. We left off our narrative in the preceding chapter with the
Darkness’ brilliant foil to the plan of the Light to free the entrapped
light particles and deliver them to the Sun. The creation of Adam and
Eve and the introduction of sex as means to keep the light imprisoned
in the body set the stage for the conflict that now exists from the be-
ginning of history until the final victory. The battlefield is now Adam,
where the forces of Darkness and Light vie for his soul.
Horrified by the defilement of the light-soul of Adam through the
seduction by Eve, the angels appeal to the Living Spirit. This Being is

282
 Gnosticism

part of a chain whose preceding links were the Great Architect and the
second-creation Friend of Light, called forth by God to help in the
battle against the Darkness. The Living Spirit is thus asked to send
someone to awaken Adam from his sleep of death and deliver him
from the dark forces of evil. This divine Messenger is known as the
Luminous Jesus, distinguished from the historical figure who comes
later. The Luminous Jesus is a more specific expression or emanation
of the Messenger of Light mentioned earlier. This latter’s mission was
to the trapped Light; the former is sent to the first man. We quote from
the account of Theodore bar Konai, the eighth-century heresiologist:
Jesus the Luminous approached the innocent Adam. He awak-
ened him from the sleep of death, so that he might be delivered
from the many demons. … And Adam examined himself and dis-
covered who he was. Jesus showed him the Fathers on high and his
own Self [that of Jesus] cast into all things, to the teeth of panthers
and elephants, devoured by them that devour, consumed by them
that consume, eaten by the dogs, mingled and bound in all that is,
imprisoned in the stench of darkness. He raised him up and made
him eat of the tree of life (in Jonas, pp. 86-87).
The Manichean psalms are replete with ecstatic expressions of grat-
itude to the Luminous Jesus, an important part of the Manichean litur-
gical life. We cite only two of these:
Let us bless our Lord Jesus who has sent to us the Spirit of Truth
[the Paraclete; i.e., Mani]. He came and separated us from the Error
of the world, he brought us a mirror, we looked, we saw the
Universe in it (CCXXIII, in Allberry, p. 9).
Come, my Lord Jesus, the Savior of souls, who hast saved me from
the drunkenness and Error of the world. Thou art the Paraclete
whom I have loved since my youth: thy Light shines forth in me
like the lamp of light: thou hast driven away from me the oblivion
of Error: thou hast taught me to bless God and his Lights
(CCXLVIII, in Allberry, p. 56).
Thus, it is this Jesus who counsels Adam in the Garden of Eden to
eat of the tree of knowledge, a reversal of the Genesis story we have
referred to before, and which blasphemy clearly had the desired effect
of outraging the Church. This passage in addition reflects the import-
ant tenet of the Manichean creed known as the Jesus patibilis, or the
suffering Jesus. This doctrine remains one of the most original of

283
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

Mani’s teachings and, as we shall see in Chapter 10, had tremendous

consequences for the life of the individual Manichee. Jesus not only is
the divine Messenger from whom comes all subsequent revelations, he
is also the symbol of all the particles of light that have been trapped in
the dark world of matter and thus suffer until their deliverance. We
shall return to this theme also in Chapter 9 when we consider the
“Redeemed Redeemer.” This Jesus of the Light is the Self “cast into
all things,” and who
hangs from every tree … is served up bound in every dish … every
day is born, suffers and dies (in Jonas, p. 229).
The suffering Jesus—light trapped in matter—is found throughout
creation, but special emphasis is placed by the Manicheans on the pas-
sive world of the vegetables. Jonas quotes from an early source:
What is “the soul that is slaughtered, by being killed, oppressed,
murdered in the enemy”?—What has been called the “slaughtered,
killed, oppressed, murdered soul” is the (life) force of the fruits,
the cucumbers and seeds, which are beaten, plucked, torn to pieces,
and give nourishment to the worlds of flesh. Also the wood, when
drying up, and the garment, when getting old, will die: they too are
a part of the total “murdered, slaughtered soul” (in Jonas,
p. 229n.35).
This dual function of the Luminous Jesus—the Redeemer coming
into the world and the one to be redeemed from within the world—is
poetically expressed in this Manichean psalm—reminiscent of the
Hymn of Jesus from “The Acts of John”—the first half of which we
cited in the preceding chapter:
I am in everything, I bear the skies, I am the foundation, I support
the earths, I am the Light that shines forth, that gives joy to the
souls. I am the life of the world: I am the milk that is in all trees: I
am the sweet water that is beneath the sons of Matter. … I bore
these things until I had fulfilled the will of my Father; the First
Man is my father whose will I have carried out. Lo, the Darkness I
have subdued; lo, the fire of the fountains I have extinguished it, as
the Sphere turns hurrying round, as the sun receives the refined
part of life (CCXLVI, in Allberry, pp. 54-55).
The Luminous Jesus fulfills his function, part of which includes
warning the First Man of the seductive advances of Eve. Adam heeds

284
 Gnosticism

the warning for a while, but eventually succumbs to the attraction of

the flesh as the demons come to the “rescue.” Their sexual union be-
gins the process of reproduction and history begins. The Darkness
seemingly has won, having succeeded in scattering and burying the
particles of light in the myriad bodies of the world.
However, the Light counters with its final move, the introduction of
the great prophets who speak the message of the Luminous Jesus in the
religious language of the time period:
From aeon to aeon the apostles of God did not cease to bring
here the Wisdom and the Works. Thus in one age their coming …
was into the countries of India through the apostle that was the
Buddha; in another age, into the land of Persia through Zoroaster;
in another, into the land of the West through Jesus. After that, in
this last age, this revelation came down and this prophethood ar-
rived through myself, Mani, the apostle of the true God, into the
land of Babel (in Jonas, p. 230).
It is clear from other of Mani’s writings that he considered himself not
only as an equal to the historical Jesus, but even greater since his mes-
sage was universal and was the final chapter in salvation’s plan. He
saw himself as the culmination and consummation of the one
true Messenger who from the beginning of the world, altering his
forms with his names, courses through the Aeon [world] until he
shall have reached his time and, anointed by God’s mercy for his
labor, attained to eternal rest (in Jonas, p. 230).
Augustine quotes from what might be Mani’s own words, and then
makes this summarizing statement:
These are the words of salvation from the eternal and living
source. Whoever hears them and at first believes, then follows their
teachings, shall never be subject to death but shall enjoy eternal
and glorious life. For he shall verily be considered blessed who has
been instructed in this divine knowledge, and thereby saved, shall
dwell in eternal life (Contra. epist. fund. 11, in Haardt, p. 296).
From The Living Gospel, claimed to be the work of Mani himself,
only brief fragments are extant. As has been discussed in Part I, it is
difficult to deduce the contents and structure of the entire work. The
surviving text praises the Luminous Jesus and his emissary, Mani:

285
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

Praised is … the dear son of Love, the life-giver Jesus, the chief of
all these gifts. Praised is … the Virgin of Light, the chief of all ex-
cellences. Praised is … the holy religion through the power of the
Father, through the blessing of the Mother and through the good-
ness of the Son (Jesus). Salvation and blessing upon the sons of
salvation and upon the speakers and hearers of the renowned word!
Praise and glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the elect
Breath, the Holy Spirit. … I, Mani, the emissary of [the Luminous]
Jesus the friend, in the love of the Father, of God the renowned …
(in NTA I, p. 359).
The final stage of redemption is the appearance of the Great Thought,
which closes the reign of Darkness and history. We shall return to this
stage later in this chapter when we discuss eschatology.
We turn now to Marcion. We have briefly discussed his doctrine
of salvation in Chapter 6, but it now warrants our fuller attention.
Marcion’s thesis is that humanity is totally alien from God, and thus
salvation does not consist, as it does for almost every other Gnostic, of
a gnosis which causes the sleeping pneuma to awaken and remember
its home. Humanity’s home is this world. And thus it is saved from this
world by a “grace freely given” by the alien and true God who pur-
chases us from the creator God through the death of Jesus on the cross.
Here, Marcion cites Ga 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of
the Law by being cursed for our sake … .” As Jonas summarizes:
The purchase price was Christ’s blood, which was given not for the
remission of sins or the cleansing of mankind from guilt or as a vi-
carious atonement fulfilling the Law—not, in brief, for any recon-
ciliation of mankind with God—but for the cancellation of the
creator’s claim to his property (Jonas, p. 139).
Marcion’s radical view—so radical, as we have seen, that for many
scholars it places him outside the Gnostic category—led to an interest-
ing interpretation of redemption. What Jesus effected through his
death had no bearing on this world at all, since he came at the request
of the acosmic Deity who has absolutely nothing to do with this world.
Its effect and purpose is only regarding the future state of the soul.
Through faith in the redemptive work of Jesus, one can achieve the
peace of anticipating this future salvation, but this does not change the
existential condition of being in this world. Nor does it change the
course of world history. As a result, we find paradoxically (a word

286
 Gnosticism

often used to describe the Marcion system) that this great Gnostic
teacher is in agreement with the prevailing Jewish belief that the ex-
pected Messiah—son of the “Most High,” the earthly God—was still
to come to establish his kingdom on earth. However, since this figure
has only to do with the creator God, his messianic activity is totally
irrelevant to the redemptive work of Jesus, which is not of this world
and which in fact awaits the end of this world.
The true and Good God therefore has no relation to the cosmos, and
does not intervene in its workings at all. Marcion, in his biblical canon,
struck out all references to God’s caring for His children, such as is
found, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus teaches
about God’s providential care in the analogies about the birds in the air
and the lilies in the field. God’s only act is to send Jesus. As Tertullian
quotes Marcion, cited in Jonas:
Man, this work of the creator-god, that better God [i.e., Jesus]
chose to love, and for his sake he labored to descend from the
third heaven into these miserable elements, and on his account he
even was crucified in this puny cell of the creator [i.e., the body]
(Contra Marc. [= Adv. Marc.] I.14, in Jonas, p. 143).
We can see also how this idea affects the traditional Christian view
of sin. Since the Good God has no connection with humanity, and
never has had any, there could never have been a sin against Him.
God’s relationship to us has no past. Original sin thus has no meaning
for Marcion, and any idea of reconciliation or divine forgiveness must
also be meaningless, as indeed are related concepts such as atonement,
fear of God’s wrath and judgment, and God’s mercy in the face of our
sins against Him. Nonetheless, there is a kind of mysterious mercy that
is inherent in Marcion’s system. Jonas describes it as
… the paradox of a grace given inscrutably, unsolicited, with no an-
tecedents to prompt and to prepare it, an irreducible mystery of di-
vine goodness as such (Jonas, p. 144).
Despite the absence of any divine intervention in this world, which
must continue on the inexorable path begun by its creator, the ones who
are filled with faith in the redemptive activity of Jesus express this future
anticipation by a life of increased detachment (read: asceticism) from
the just and creator God who made this world. (As with our treatment of
Manicheism, we shall return to this aspect of Marcion’s theology in

287
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

Chapter 10.) This faith in a future redemption from the world of matter
reflects a decision made by each person whether to heed the call of the
Redeemer or to remain bound to the voice of the creator of this world.
We quote now from Irenaeus’ presentation of Marcion’s explanation
for why the “good people” of the Old Testament were not saved by
Jesus when he descended to the underworld, while the “bad people”
were. Here we see that Irenaeus has joined the world of polemic that
Marcion (along with many Gnostics) undoubtedly enjoyed playing in.
We can almost feel the perverse pleasure the Gnostics must have de-
rived from “egging” their opponents on by deliberately making state-
ments the orthodox Church could not have avoided seeing as
blasphemous. Jonas describes the following explanation of Marcion
(found in Irenaeus), part of which was quoted earlier (see p. 34), as
being “original if somewhat facetious” (Jonas, p. 140n), to which we
should certainly add the word provocative:
He [Marcion] says that there will be salvation only for souls which
have learned his doctrine; the body, doubtless because it was taken
from the earth … cannot participate in salvation. To this blas-
phemy against God he adds the following story, truly assuming the
role of the devil and saying everything contrary to the truth. When
the Lord descended to Hades, Cain and those like him, the
Sodomites, the Egyptians, and those like them, and in general all
the peoples who have walked in every compound of wickedness,
were saved by him; they ran to him and were taken up into his
kingdom. But Abel, Enoch, Noah, and the rest of the righteous,
and the patriarchs related to Abraham, along with all the prophets
and those who pleased God, did not participate in salvation. (The
serpent who was in Marcion proclaimed this!) For since they
knew … that their God was always testing them, and suspected that
he was testing them then, they did not run to Jesus nor did they be-
lieve his proclamation; and therefore … their souls remained in
Hades … (Adv. haer. I.27.3, in Grant, Gnosticism: A Source Book
of Heretical Writings … , p. 46).
As the knowledge of truth has no transformative power here,
Marcion’s notions of redemption cannot be truly classified as Gnostic.
The soul is not changed; the spirit or pneuma is not awakened or
released. All that has occurred is a “legal transaction” involving the
true God and the demiurgic creator, and the purchased souls have now
been saved by their belief and faith in the efficacy of the divine deal.

288
 Gnosticism

We now consider “The Gospel of Truth,” which, in its understand-

ing of salvation, provides us with perhaps the clearest and most sophis-
ticated Gnostic teaching. As the Gospel’s understanding directly
follows its notion of the problem we have considered in Chapter 5,
much of what we say here is a repetition. The plight from which we
must be saved is the ignorance of who we truly are and who created us.
The basic “formula” is repeated twice, evidence of the importance it
held in the Valentinian school. Here is its first appearance, near the be-
ginning of the gospel:
Oblivion did not come into existence under the Father … . But what
comes into existence in him is knowledge, which appeared in or-
der that oblivion might vanish and the Father might be known.
Since oblivion came into existence because the Father was not
known, then if the Father comes to be known, oblivion will not ex-
ist from that moment on (GT I.18.1-11, in NHL, p. 38, my italics).
Authority for this statement comes from Jesus himself:
This is the gospel of the one who is searched for, which was re-
vealed to those who are perfect through the mercies of the Father—
the hidden mystery, Jesus, the Christ (ibid., 18.11-16, in NHL, p. 38).
Its second appearance, virtually unchanged except “deficiency” re-
places “oblivion,” reads:
Since the deficiency came into being because the Father was not
known, therefore when the Father is known, from that moment on
the deficiency will no longer exist. As with the ignorance of a per-
son, when he comes to have knowledge his ignorance vanishes of
itself, as the darkness vanishes when light appears, so also defi-
ciency vanishes in the perfection (ibid., 24.28–25.2, in NHL, p. 41,
my italics).
There is, interestingly enough, a third mention of this formula in the
literature, this time in Irenaeus. The immediate context is discussion of
the Valentinian dismissal of sacraments as unnecessary for salvation:
… one ought not to celebrate the mystery of the ineffable and in-
visible power by means of visible and corruptible created things,
the inconceivable and incorporeal by means of what is sensually
tangible and corporeal. The perfect redemption is said to be the
knowledge of the ineffable “Greatness.” From ignorance both
deficiency and passion derived: through “knowledge” will the

289
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

entire substance derived from ignorance be destroyed. Therefore,

this “knowledge” is redemption of the inner man. And this is not
corporeal, since the body perishes, nor psychic, because the soul
also derives from the deficiency and is like a habitation of the spirit:
the redemption must therefore be spiritual. The inner, spiritual man
is redeemed through knowledge: sufficient for them is the knowl-
edge of all things, and this is the true redemption (Adv. haer. I.21.4,
in F I, p. 220, my italics).
“Deficiency” is used here as well, so that we may conclude that for
the Valentinians the concepts of deficiency and oblivion were identical.
Jonas has pointed out an important addition in the citation of Irenaeus.
Not only does the formula here state that ignorance is the cause of the
deficiency, which will be undone by knowledge, but it adds the phrase
“the entire substance” (Jonas translates the Greek as “the whole sys-
tem”) as having come from ignorance. This “substance” (or “system”)
refers to the entire cosmos. As Jonas summarizes:
… the “system” in question is nothing less than this world, the cos-
mos, the whole realm of matter in all its elements, fire, air, water,
earth, which only seem to be substances in their own right but are in
truth by-products and expressions of spiritual [i.e., psychological]
processes or states … (Jonas, p. 312).
Furthermore, it is clear from the entire Valentinian system that Irenaeus
presents, that ignorance, deficiency, and passion are ontological states,
not mere psychological dynamics. To emphasize this, Jonas writes
them with capital letters:
… the Ignorance and Passion here named are not ordinary igno-
rance and ordinary passion as in us, but Ignorance and Passion writ
large, on a metaphysical scale and at the origin of things: that far
from being mere abstracts they denote concrete events and entities
of the cosmogonic myth: that the subjective states they apparently
name, being those of divine powers, have objective efficacy, and
an efficacy on the scale of the inner life whereof they are states—
the inner life of divinity—and therefore can be the ground of such
substantive, total realities as cosmos and matter (Jonas, pp. 312-13).
This Valentinian teaching is more than abstract philosophical
speculation, for it reflects here in this second-century Gnostic tractate
the same profundity we find eighteen centuries later in A Course in
Miracles, integrating metaphysics with our personal experience in the

290
 Gnosticism

ego’s world and salvation from it. The ontological state of separation
is fully present within the mind of each of us, just as our individual
spiritual identity is part of the oneness of Christ. Thus, the salvation of
the one is at the same time the salvation of the One, or better, its awak-
ening. We quote “The Gospel of Truth” again, from the paragraph con-
taining the second mention of the formula. The emphasis in this
passage suddenly shifts from the macrocosmic view of salvation of the
universal Sonship—i.e., the fate of the aeons still within the realm of
the spirit or the Pleroma: “… through the mercies of the Father the
aeons may know him …”—to the microcosmic salvation of the indi-
vidual: “It is within Unity that each one will attain himself.” It is the
same shift we see occurring in the Course, reflecting the inherent
atemporal, though still illusory, relationship between the One and the
many, the universal and individual, the inner and outer:
The Father reveals his bosom [the Holy Spirit] … . so that
through the mercies of the Father the aeons may know him and
cease laboring in search of the Father … . So from that moment on
the form is not apparent, but it will vanish in the fusion of Unity,
for now their works lie scattered. In time Unity will perfect the
spaces [i.e., the gaps between the separated individuals]. It is
within Unity that each one will attain himself [Jonas translates
thus: “through Unity shall each one of us receive himself back”];
within knowledge he will purify himself from multiplicity into
Unity, consuming matter within himself like fire, and darkness by
light, death by life (GT I.24.9–25.19, in NHL, p. 41).
As Jonas summarizes:
… the human-individual event of pneumatic [i.e., spiritual] knowl-
edge is the inverse equivalent of the pre-cosmic universal event
of divine ignorance, and in its redeeming effect of the same onto-
logical order; and that thus the actualization of knowledge in the
person is at the same time an act in the general ground of being
(Jonas, pp. 318-19).
Jonas has made the interesting observation that “The Gospel of
Truth” is basically an elliptical summary—“a mere condensed repetition
of well-known doctrine” (p. 316)—that presumes a prior acquaintance
with, and understanding of Valentinianism by the reader. One coming
to Gnosticism for the first time through this tractate would be totally
lost. Key terms such as “Error,” “Anguish,” “Deficiency,” etc., are

291
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

merely presented without explanation. It is only through reading the

far more extensive Valentinian treatment in Irenaeus or Hippolytus,
not to mention a familiarity with the general tenor of second-century
Gnostic thought, that a contemporary reader could make sense of this
otherwise strange language. The extensive mythological system found
in these other Valentinian accounts, replete with a full cast of charac-
ters, provides the explanatory background to the otherwise enigmatic
“Gospel of Truth.” We quote this summary from Jonas:
For the speculative passages of the GT [“The Gospel of Truth”] are
not merely an abridgment or summary of some fuller version: they
point up, in their symbolic contraction, the essence of the doctrine,
stripped of its vast mythological accessories and reduced to its
philosophical core. Thus, as the GT can only be read with the help
of the circumstantial myth, so the myth receives back from such
reading a transparency as to its basic spiritual meaning which the
density of its sensuous and necessarily equivocal imagery some-
how disguises. In this role the GT acts like a pneumatic transcrip-
tion of the symbolic myth. And what is truly inestimable: since its
discovery we have it on their own authority what the Valentinians
themselves considered as the heart of their doctrine: and that the
heart of that heart was the proposition expressed in the “formula”
(Jonas, pp. 317-18).
Interestingly, this ignorance (deficiency)-knowledge “formula,”
which was obviously important to the Valentinians by virtue of its
repetition in “The Gospel of Truth,” seems to have been “stuck in”
by Irenaeus who, it seemed, did not appreciate its importance. It is
found near the end of his lengthy report on Valentinianism, and
among tangential information. It is like a shining jewel discovered
midst ordinary baubles.
We find another statement in the tractate that nicely summarizes the
ontological situation of the deficiency and its undoing. Most interest-
ing is the use of “forgiveness,” a word not commonly found in the
Gnostic literature:
For this reason incorruptibility breathed forth; it pursued the one
who had sinned in order that he might rest. For forgiveness is what
remains for the light in the deficiency, the word of the pleroma. For
the physician runs to the place where a sickness is because that is
his will that is in him. He who has a deficiency, then, does not hide
it, because one has what the other lacks. So with the pleroma,

292
 The Ascent of the Soul

which has no deficiency; it fills up his deficiency—it is that which

he provided for filling up what he lacks, in order that therefore he
might receive the grace (GT I.35.24–36.3, in NHL, pp. 45-46).
This teaching is parallel to A Course in Miracles, where it is taught that
God placed the remedy (the Holy Spirit’s Atonement) in the place (the
mind) wherein the sickness (the belief in separation) is found.

The Ascent of the Soul

For the Gnostic, the ultimate release from the prison of the body
and the material world, set up by the experience of gnosis in his or her
lifetime, came at the moment of death, when
[the Gnostic] encounters the everlasting, reawakening fact of re-
lease from the fetters of the body, and is able to set out on the way
to his true home (Rudolph, p. 171).
This setting out is frequently known as the ascent of the soul. In many
ways it can be seen as the retracing of the steps of the fall from the
Pleroma, in the end restoring the soul to the integrity it had at the be-
ginning. The Gnostic eschatological emphasis is alternately on the in-
dividual and the collective. In this section we shall address the fate of
the individual soul. Later in the chapter we shall examine the Gnostic
view of the end of the world.
The Gnostic ascent, while treated mythologically quasi literally, is
in fact a depiction of an inward, psychological process; not that any
given Gnostic writer believed that necessarily, but our more psycho-
logically sophisticated age would recognize this process. Jung, for
example, has written about the medieval alchemists who sought to turn
base metal into gold, spending a lifetime in the attempt to extract the
quintessence (“fifth essence”) from matter. These men, he described,
were really projecting their own internal spiritual journey onto the al-
chemical process. Likewise one can denote in the music of Beethoven
all the stages of the spiritual journey. Some commentators have spoken
of three stages in his music, which roughly correspond to the three
stages many see as comprising the spiritual path: awakening, illumina-
tion, union. The soul’s ascent, returning to its origin and Source, is
likewise treated spiritually in Plotinus, for example, as we shall see be-
low. Jonas has described this evolutionary spiritual process:

293
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

Historically there is an even more far-reaching aspect to the ascent

doctrines than their literal meaning. In a later stage of “gnostic”
development (though no longer passing under the name of
Gnosticism) the external topology of the ascent through the
spheres, with the successive divesting of the soul of its worldly en-
velopments and the regaining of its original acosmic nature, could
be “internalized” and find its analogue in a psychological tech-
nique of inner transformations by which the self, while still in the
body, might attain the Absolute as an immanent, if temporary, con-
dition: an ascending scale of mental states replaces the stations of
the mythical itinerary: the dynamics of progressive spiritual self-
transformation, the spatial thrust through the heavenly spheres.
Thus could transcendence itself be turned into immanence, the
whole process become spiritualized and put within the power and
the orbit of the subject. With this transposition of a mythological
scheme into the inwardness of this person, with the translation of
its objective stages into subjective phases of self-performable ex-
perience whose culmination has the form of ecstasis, gnostic myth
has passed into mysticism … and in this new medium it lives on
long after the disappearance of the original mythological beliefs
(Jonas, pp. 165-66).
In the third-century Sethian document “The Three Steles of Seth” it
is written: “The way of ascent is the way of descent” (3 St. Seth
VII.127.20-21, in NHL, p. 367), paralleling the Plotinian formulation.
We recall from our discussions of the creation of the world that the de-
scent followed a logical path, involving the creation of the various ar-
chons in whose image the world was formed by the Demiurge. It is thus
these rulers that the soul must get past in order to return to its starting
point. And it is not an easy task. We have already seen that the archons
—the mythological rulers of darkness, here anthropomorphized—have
very strong interest in maintaining the soul a prisoner, thereby helping
to perpetuate the material world and their own existence. It is as
preparation for this journey that the full significance of the experience
of gnosis, not to mention correlative aspects such as ritual, ethical,
and instructional teachings, can be more properly understood and ap-
preciated. The Gnostic treatment of the ascent, therefore, is filled with
accounts of danger, frequently surmounted by recourse to magic for-
mulas, incantations, and elaborate ceremonies at the time of death.
Again, these accounts are merely externalizations of the internal pro-
cess of confronting the guilt and fear within the mind. This will be

294
 The Ascent of the Soul

discussed more fully in Part III. There are illustrative examples from
many traditions, and we shall present some of them now, beginning
with the Poimandres from the Corpus Hermeticum.
The process begins with the dissolution of the material body and,
as the soul ascends through each circle (corresponding to the seven
planets), another part of its accretion returns to its source, what Jonas
has termed “a series of progressive subtractions which leaves the
‘naked’ true self ” (Jonas, p. 166).
First, at the dissolution of the material body you surrender the body
to change, and the form you have disappears, and you surrender
your character to the demon as ineffectual. … And so he [the soul]
then goes upwards through the Harmony, and to the first circle he
gives the capacity to grow or to diminish, to the second his evil
machinations, guile, unexercised, to the third the deceit of lust, un-
exercised, to the fourth the ostentation of command not exploited,
and to the fifth impious boldness and the rashness of audacity, to
the sixth the evil urges for riches, unexercised, and to the seventh
circle the lurking lie. And then, freed of all the activities of the
Harmony, he reaches the nature of the Ogdoad with his own power,
and with those who are there he praises the Father. Those who are
present rejoice together that this one has come, and becoming like
those with him he hears also certain powers above the nature of the
Ogdoad praising God with a sweet sound. And then in order they
go up to the Father, change themselves into powers, and having be-
come powers they come to be in God. This is the good end of those
who have obtained knowledge, to become God (Corp. Herm. I.24-
26, in F I, pp. 333-34).
In “The Gospel of Mary,” which was part of the “Berlin Codex”
purchased in Egypt at the close of the nineteenth century, we find a
graphic description of the soul’s ascent after death. Unfortunately, the
beginning description—some four pages—is missing from the manu-
script. The theme of the Gospel is the revelation to Mary Magdalene
from Jesus, explaining the soul’s confrontation with the hypostasized
“seven powers of wrath”:
They ask the soul, “Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where
are you going, conqueror of space?” The soul answered and said,
“What binds me has been slain, and what turns me about has been
overcome, and my desire has been ended, and ignorance has died.
In a world I was released from a world … and from the fetter of

295
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

oblivion which is transient. From this time on will I attain to the

rest of the time … of the aeon, in silence” (GM BG 16.13–17.7,
in NHL, p. 473).
To the Mandeans belong the richest collection of excerpts relating
to the soul’s ascent, since this aspect was the predominant element in
the Mandean doctrine of redemption. Supported by the prayers and rit-
uals of the surviving Mandean community, the soul makes its way,
guided by its “helper.” The soul’s ascent is greatly facilitated by its
past life of good works, which seem in Mandean mythology to have
almost become hypostasized entities. It is an arduous and dangerous
path:
When spirit and soul came forth from the body, from the garb of
blood and flesh, from the boiling cauldron, from the glowing oven,
from the tombs, the rocky places, and pitfalls, this soul hastened
away and came upon a watchhouse, where instruments of torture,
torment, and affliction are deposited and where sinful souls are
judged with unjust judgement. … As it stood there, this soul trem-
bled and shook, and its whole form trembled in its raiments, and it
cried to the great and sublime Life … (GL I.4, in F II, pp. 246-47).
One hymn traces the treacherous ascent through the seven planets, and
we excerpt it here:
My soul yearned in me for the Life … and I set my course for the
Place of Life. I flew and went on, until I arrived at the First (of the
planets). The slaves of the First came forth to meet me: …
“Friend, whence have you come and where are you going?” “I
come from the Tibil [earth], from the house which the planets
built” (GL III.51, in F II, p. 251).
The planet tries to tempt him to stay, but to no avail. The hymn contin-
ues through the remaining six planets,
until I arrived at the House of Life. … the Life came forth to meet
me … . he clothed me with radiance and brought light (and) cov-
ered me (with it). He reckoned me with his number, and indeed:
the good ones came forth from its midst: “Among the lamps of
light shall your lamps be drawn aloft and shine (there)” (ibid.,
p. 252).
The ascent is thus the return to the world of Light from which the
soul fell. Unlike other Gnostic systems, notably the Valentinian

296
 The Ascent of the Soul

schools, this system has the fall occurring through no fault of the soul.
For the journey it receives the assistance it needs from its “helper” or
“planter.” In one text, the helper states:
You belong to me here; I shall take you out of the world and cause
you to ascend. … and shall leave all behind. … You are my counter-
part, I shall … keep you safe in my garment. … which the Great Life
gave to me, and in the pure fragrance which is entrusted to me. This
garment in which you lived I shall cast at the head of its maker, for
the men who made it shall disappear and perish (GL II.5, in F II,
pp. 255-56).
These words are addressed to the mana in the soul, the particle of
light that is divine, and thus the helper is the counterpart to the
Messenger of Light who comes at the moment of death to assist the
soul on its journey. In another context we may think of the Messenger
as being the spiritual Self of the soul that has been trapped in the body.
This notion carries with it some profound metaphysical implications,
as we shall see later when we consider “The Hymn of the Pearl.”
The soul must escape the clutches of the dark and evil forces which
are like an iron wall encircling the world, not to mention the “super-
terrestrial penal stations” which detain and punish those who have
sinned. The soul could not overcome these obstacles and successfully
complete its journey without the helper, sent to it by the Light:
If you, soul, hear what I say to you and do not act contrary to my
word, a bridge shall be thrown across that great sea for you. … I
shall guide you past the watch-house, at which the rebels stand. I
shall guide you past the flames of fire the smoke of which rises up
and reaches the firmament. I shall guide you past the double pits
which Ruha has dug on the way. Over that high mountain I shall
smooth out a path for you. In this wall, this wall of iron [another
source adds: “which encircles the world like a wreath”], I shall
hack a breach for you. I shall hold you with all my strength and take
you with me to the Place of Light (GL III.25, in F II, pp. 268-69).14
Church Father Epiphanius quotes from the “heresy of the Archon-
tics” in a passage that expresses a similar theme. We find here as well
the reason behind the archons’ refusal to let the ascending soul pass:

14. For a more extensive expression of the soul’s journey through the various watch-
houses of judgment, see F II, pp. 247-50.

297
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

And they say that the soul is food for the authorities and powers
[the archons], without which they cannot live, since it derives from
the dew which comes from above and gives them strength. And
when it acquires knowledge … it ascends from heaven to heaven
and speaks its defense before each power and so attains to the
higher power, the Mother and (to the) Father of all, from whom it
has come down into this world … (Panar. XL.2.7-8, in F I, p. 297).
Epiphanius also reports a Gnostic sect whose libertinism (see
Chapter 10, pp. 399-405) served the purpose of eluding the evil archons
whose moral code served as a prison to those souls adhering to it.
In the following passage from this heresiologist, we also find the
characteristic Gnostic denigration of the Old Testament deity, here
identified, as in other Gnostic systems, with the chief Archon called
Sabaoth.
And some say that Sabaoth has the face of an ass, others, that of a
swine; for this reason … he commanded the Jews not to eat swine.
And he is the maker of heaven and earth and of the heavens after
him and of his own angels. And the soul as it leaves this world
passes by these Archons but cannot pass through unless it is in full
possession of this knowledge, or rather condemnation, and being
carried past escapes the hands of the Archons and authorities (ibid.,
XXVI.10.6-7, pp. 322-23).
We find a graphic account of a soul’s ascent in the Nag Hammadi
“Apocalypse of Paul,” where the protagonist-soul is St. Paul’s. The
biblical basis for this text is Paul’s famous “out of body” experience
recounted in 2 Corinthians 12:1-4. The text seems to date from the sec-
ond century and to reflect strong Jewish apocalyptic influences, not to
mention Gnostic ones. The setting is Paul’s meeting a heavenly child
who is the source of the revelation:
“Let your mind awaken, Paul, and see that this mountain upon
which you are standing is the mountain of Jericho, so that you may
know the hidden things in those that are visible. …” Then the Holy
Spirit who was speaking with him caught him up on high to the
third heaven, and he passed beyond to the fourth heaven. … I saw
the angels resembling gods, the angels bringing a soul out of the
land of the dead. They placed it at the gate of the fourth heaven.
And the angels were whipping it (ApocPaul V.19.10–20.12, in NHL,
p. 240).

298
 The Ascent of the Soul

Under the guidance of the Spirit, Paul continues through the various
gates of judgment until he reaches the seventh heaven.
… and I saw an old man [the Old Testament creator God—the
Demiurge] … whose garment was white. … The old man spoke,
saying to me, “Where are you going, Paul, O blessed one and the
one who was set apart from his mother’s womb?” … And I replied
… “I am going to the place from which I came.” … The old man
replied to me, saying, “How will you be able to get away from me?
Look and see the principalities and authorities.” The Spirit spoke,
saying, “Give him the sign that you have, and he will open for
you.” And then I gave him the sign. He turned his face downwards
to his creation and to those who are his own authorities. 
And then the seventh heaven opened and we went up to the
Ogdoad [the eighth heaven]. And I saw the twelve apostles. They
greeted me, and we went up to the ninth heaven. I greeted all those
who were in the ninth heaven, and we went up to the tenth heaven.
And I greeted my fellow spirits (ibid., 22.25–24.8, p. 241).
In “The Hymn of the Pearl” we see how differently the motif of the
Messenger is treated, combined with the important idea of the
redeemed redeemer. In Chapter 7 we left our princely hero drugged
asleep by the food of the Egyptians. His state is noticed by his parents
in the East who decide to send help via a letter (i.e., the Messenger).
This letter is yet another example of the Call from the world of Light.
The letter symbolism is found also in another Gnostic document,
“The Odes of Solomon,” dating from roughly the same time period:
the late second century. Like the Hymn, the Odes provide an import-
ant example of the close connection that existed between the Gnostic
world and the traditional Church. We quote from one stanza of the
twenty-third Ode:
And His thought was like a letter;
His will descended from on high, and it was sent like
an arrow which is violently shot from the bow:
And many hands rushed to the letter to seize it and to
take and read it:
And it escaped their fingers and they were affrighted
at it and at the seal that was upon it.
Because it was not permitted to them to loose its seal:
for the power that was over the seal was greater than they.
(Eden, pp. 131-32)

299
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

Returning to the Hymn, this is the content of the letter:

From the father, the king of kings, and the mother who possesses
the East, and the brother who is the second beside us, to our son in
Egypt, greetings. Get up and sober up out of your sleep, and listen
to the words of this letter. Remember that you are a king’s son. You
have come under a servile yoke. Think of your suit shot with gold;
think of the pearl on account of which you were sent to Egypt, so
that your name may be mentioned in the book of the valiant, and
you may be an heir with your brother in our kingdom (ATh 110,
in F I, p. 357).
To guard against interception by the wicked, the letter flew to the
prince in the form of an eagle, “the king of all birds,” calling the sleep-
ing soul to awaken. The passage has many Gnostic counterparts, many
of which we shall consider elsewhere, but one from the “Acts of John”
can be cited here. John is exhorting Lycomedes, whose faith has been
weakened by his paralytic wife: “You too must wake up and open your
soul. Cast off this heavy sleep of yours!” (AJ 21, in NTA II, p. 217).
One non-Gnostic citation may be mentioned here as well. It is what
amounts almost to a formula of awakening from the sleep of forgetful-
ness or death, found in deutero-Paul’s letter to the Ephesians where it
is quoted anonymously: “Wake up from your sleep, rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you” (Ep 5:14).
We find in the letter sent to the prince the curious fact that the letter
—in the role of the messenger or savior—duplicates the role of the
Prince, who was himself the messenger. He is the savior of the lost pearl
(also asleep within the prison of the world, as the clam is the prison of
the pearl within it, sunken and buried at the bottom of the sea). We shall
return to this paradox presently when the hero returns home.
When it landed by the sleeping prince’s side the letter “became en-
tirely speech” and wakens him:
And at the sound and sight of it I started up from sleep, took it,
kissed it tenderly, and read. And it had written in it just what was
written down in my heart. And immediately I remembered that I
was a son of kings, and my freedom longed for its kind. And I re-
membered also the pearl for which I had been dispatched to Egypt
(ATh 111, in F I, p. 357).
The narrative moves quickly now; within two quick sentences the prince
disposes of the dragon, regains the pearl, and begins his journey home:

300
 The Ascent of the Soul

I began to charm the terrible dragon with spells and put him to
sleep by uttering the name of my father the names of our second
[son] and of my mother, the queen of the East. I stole the pearl,
took it away, and … [began the return] to my parents (ibid.).
The charms and spells, barely mentioned here, are given much
more elaboration in other texts, depicting the soul’s overcoming of the
powers of darkness. The soul’s power is inherent in what it is; i.e., light
can always shine away darkness, if the light is allowed to be what it is.
Recalling one’s true Identity (awakening to the call of truth) is a psy-
chological experience which is here mythologically depicted. Stated
another way, the Light is literally poison to the Darkness (as darkness
disappears when in the presence of light), just as the darkness can be a
poison to the light, acting as a soporific and agent of amnesia. We have
already seen, for example, that the prince fell into a deep sleep when
he tasted the Egyptians’ food, and that the Manichean Primal Man—
a being of Light—gave himself and his five Sons as a sacrifice to the
devouring Darkness, thereby poisoning him.
This sacrifice of the savior-figure, giving himself to the power of
darkness in order to vanquish it—is a soteriological theme common to
most mythologies, and obviously it found its way into the mythology of
the early Church wherein Jesus descended into the bowels of hell to free
the trapped souls and defeat the evil powers. The connection between
the Christian borrowing of this motif with older, less sophisticated
forms is seen when we consider again “The Odes of Solomon,” from
the forty-second:
Sheol [hell] saw me and was made miserable:
Death cast me up and many along with me.
I had gall and bitterness, and I went down with him to
the utmost of his depth:
And the feet and the head he let go, for they were not
able to endure my face … .
(Eden, p. 140)
In the Mandeans we find another and more primitive rendering of
this same mythological idea. Hibil, the savior-god, describes his rather
harrowing descent into the hell. Here, it is interesting to note, the de-
scent occurs before the creation of the world; the theme of sacrificial
redemption of the savior, however, remains clear. Hibil confronts
Krun, lord of the underworld, who speaks to the Messenger of Light:

301
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

“Be off with you before I swallow you!” When he thus spoke to
me, I Hibil-Ziwa stood fast girt about with the array of swords,
sabres, spears, knives, and blades, and I said to him: “Swallow
me!” Then he said: “Now I will swallow you,” and he swallowed
me up to the middle. Then he spewed me up and brought me forth.
He spat venom from his mouth: his intestines, liver, and kidneys
were cut off. He cried: “What shall I do to the man who came to
me, whom the Life sent?” Then he spoke and addressed me: “You
are giants and we are weaklings, you are gods and we are men, you
are mighty and we are puny” (GR V.1, in F II, p. 216).
Returning again to our prince, he continues his journey home:
… at once I directed my course towards the light of the homeland
in the East. And I found on the way (the letter) that had roused me.
And this, just as it had by its sound raised me up when I slept, also
showed me the way by the light (shining) from it … (ATh 111, in
F I, p. 357).
We find the same ideas expressed in the thirty-eighth Ode of Solomon
where, however, the letter as the hero’s guide is replaced by Truth:
I went up to the light of truth as if into a chariot:
And the Truth took me and led me: and carried me across
pits and gulleys; and from the rocks and the waves it
preserved me:
And it became to me a haven of Salvation: and set me on
the arms of immortal life … .
(Eden, p. 137)
We have seen in the Mandean literature how the Life greets the re-
turning soul (mana), and now we find another Mandean description of
the soul’s return, even using the word “pearl” at one point:
Go, soul, in victory to the place from which you were
transplanted … . The soul has loosened its chain and broken its fet-
ters. It shed its bodily coat, then it turned about, saw it, and shud-
dered. The call of the soul is the call of life which departs from
the body of refuse [the stinking body]. … Come in peace, you pure
pearl, who were brought from the Treasure of Life. … The soul
flies and proceeds thither, until it reached the gate of the House of
Life. … the escort comes to meet it. He bears … a garment in both
his arms. “Bestir yourself, soul, put on your garment … . Rise up,
go to the skina” … . The Life stretched out his hand, and joined in

302
 The Ascent of the Soul

communion with it, just as the elect join in communion in the

Place of Light (GL III.5,6, in F II, pp. 262-63).
This meeting of the returning soul with its Self finds perhaps its fin-
est and most profound expression in “The Hymn of the Pearl,” where
the Prince’s Self is symbolized by his garment, which he puts on when
he returns to Heaven. This interesting detail, as well as illustrating an
important Gnostic theme, has important implications for this study. It
parallels the central teaching of A Course in Miracles that the seem-
ingly fragmented parts of the Sonship reunite, thus returning to their
awareness the inherent unity of Christ. The Course reinterprets the tra-
ditional Christian concept of the Second Coming to denote this pro-
cess. We quote from the final portion of the Hymn now, and will return
to it in Part III.
My parents sent me by their treasurers my shining suit and my
long robe. And I did not remember any more my brightness. For
when I was still a child and quite young I had left it behind in my
father’s palaces. And suddenly I saw the suit which resembled me
as it were in a mirror, and I spied my whole self in it, and I knew
and saw myself through it; for we were partially separated from
each other, though we were from the same, and again we are one
through one form. … they [the royal treasurers] gave me precious
things, the gorgeous suit which had been skillfully worked in
bright colors with gold and precious stones and pearls of brilliant
hues. … And the image of the king of kings was fully present
through the whole suit. … I heard it speak: “I am the property of
him who is bravest of all men, for whose sake I was engraved by
the father himself.” And I myself noticed my stature, which in-
creased in accordance with its impulse. … It made haste, straining
towards him who should take it from his hand. And love roused me
to rush to meet him and receive it. And I reached out, adorned my-
self with the beauty of its colors, and drew my brilliant garment
entirely over me.
But when I had put it on I was lifted up to the gate of acknowl-
edgment and worship. And I bowed my head and acknowledged
the radiance of the father who had sent this to me; for I had done
what had been commanded, and he likewise, what he had prom-
ised. And in the gates of the palace I mingled with those of his
dominion. … And he promised me that I would also be sent with
him to the gates of the king, so that with my gifts and my pearl I

303
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

might together with him appear before the king (ATh 112-113,
in F I, pp. 357-58).
In a Mandean text we read: “I go to meet my image and my image
comes to meet me: it caresses and embraces me as if I were returning
from captivity” (quoted in Jonas, p. 122).
Jonas has traced this doctrine of the Self reuniting with its split-off
self to Zoroastrian times, where the Avesta, part of the Zoroastrian
canon, states that the departed soul of a believer is confronted by the
Self (“religious conscience”), who responds to its question of her
identity:
I am, O youth of good thoughts, good words, good deeds, good
conscience, none other than thine own personal conscience. …
Thou hast loved me … in this sublimity, goodness, beauty … in
which I now appear unto thee (quoted in Jonas, p. 122).
We have already seen the Persian influence on Manicheism, and it is
present here as well. The Manichean soul returns to its home after
death and is met by a garment, among other things, and “the virgin like
unto the soul of the truthful one” (quoted by Jonas, p. 122). In the lan-
guage of A Course in Miracles the joining of the soul with its Self cor-
responds to the return of the self to the home it never truly left; the
union of what never was truly separated. One also finds a similar idea
in the Course when it describes the creations of Christ—part of the
Self—rushing to meet the returning self (T-16.III.8-9).
This reunion of self with Self is the culmination of salvation, pre-
supposing the idea that what has to be saved, or better, corrected, is this
splitting off, or separation. In many Gnostic texts, as we shall presently
see, there is a double or twin brother in heaven who awaits the return
of the one who has been dispatched to earth in the role of savior. In one
Mandean text it is stated of the savior who descends that “his image is
kept safe in its place [i.e., above]” (in Jonas, p. 122). In what Jonas has
referred to as the reversal of the situation in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture
of Dorian Gray, the Self that has remained grows, is made perfect and
full as the self completes its tasks below.
In the Hymn there is a brother to the prince who remains with his par-
ents, and who is to claim joint inheritance of the King’s house—“with
your brother, our second, become an heir in our kingdom” (ATh 108,
in F I, p. 356). Interestingly, the brother is no longer mentioned upon the

304
 The Ascent of the Soul

prince’s return. As Jonas has discussed, this is because his identity has
become fused with the garment, with which the prince himself becomes
one.
One of the common Gnostic terms is “rest,” which signifies the end
of the ascent. It is a term found frequently in A Course in Miracles as
well, as we shall see in Chapter 15. The “rest” is the goal of every
Gnostic’s journey, the yearned-for end of the stressful sojourn in the
wretched body. In the vision of the Last Judgment in “The Concept of
Our Great Power” we read:
Then the souls will appear, who are holy through the light of the
Power, who is exalted above all powers … . And they all have be-
come as reflections in his light. They all have shone, and they have
found rest in his rest (Conc. Great Power VI.47.9-26, in NHL,
p. 289).
In the “Acts of Thomas” the apostle exclaims: “Behold, I become
carefree and unpained, dwelling in rest,” and he exhorts some of the
faithful: “Be thou their rest in a land of the weary … ” (ATh 142,156,
in NTA II, pp. 518,525). And finally in “The Gospel of the Hebrews”
we read of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, where the Holy Spirit
rests upon him and the Lord hears:
My Son, in all the prophets was I waiting for thee that thou
shouldest come and I might rest in thee. For thou art my rest …
(GH Fragment 2, in NTA I, p. 164).
The “rest” has a different meaning from that found in the Bible, for here
it has an eschatological connotation; i.e., the final union of the Spirit of
God with Jesus. Thus the coming of Christ in Jesus, “resting upon him,”
ushers in the End Times. The “rest” is the end-product of salvation, as
seen in the continuation of this quotation from the Gospel:
He that seeks will not rest until he finds; and he that has found
shall marvel; and he that has marvelled shall reign; and he that has
reigned shall rest (ibid., Frag. 4b).
We turn our attention now to the End Times, the collective conclu-
sion of the journey.

305
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

Eschatology: Gnosticism

Eschatology during the early Christian period is a subject properly

deserving book-length treatment, since its influences trace back to the
Old Testament and inter-testamental periods. We concern ourselves
here only with the specific Gnostic elements as they emerged in the
early Christian centuries.
As is the case with the general apocalyptic literature, we find in
Gnostic eschatology the strong influence of Persian dualism. The
Gnostic contrasts the divine spiritual world of the Pleroma with the
material world of the present age. The former is eternal and becomes
realized as the latter disappears. Thus no hope is possible within the
current world, which is the home of the demonic elements that seek to
keep us from God. Unlike the traditional Jewish vision of the End, the
late-biblical, post-biblical, and Gnostic apocalyptic eschatologies do
not convert or transform the current age into a “New Jerusalem”: The
world’s moral regeneration cannot be healed or fulfilled; only de-
stroyed in the final conflagration. Thus, as we have already seen, the
Gnostic is no longer concerned with history, let alone God’s activity in
it, for the only importance is the truth of eternity and its immanent
realization in the Gnostic.
First we consider the “Megale Apophasis” (“Great Proclamation”),
dating from the second century and attributed to Simon Magus. It is
known only by the excerpts found in Hippolytus, which we summarize
here. Within every person, the “Megale” teaches, is found a “potential”
divine power which is infinite. It is “him that stands, took his stand, and
will stand.” The author equates it with the spirit of God that hovered
over the deep at the creation of the world in Genesis, and is analogous
to the Middle Platonic Logos that created the world. It is
the spirit who contains all things in himself, the image of the in-
finite power … an image of an incorruptible form, which alone
gives order to all things (Ref. VI.14.4, in F I, p. 255).
It is this power that, if it is not fully actualized at death, becomes like a
tree bearing no fruit and which is then cut down and burned in the fire:
… if he remain only as a potentiality … and be not fully formed,
then he disappears (he says) and is lost… and just as if it never ex-
isted, it perishes with the man at his death [and will perish with the
world] (ibid., 12.4, p. 254).

306
 Eschatology: Gnosticism

If, however, it is realized and fully formed, it

comes into being from an indivisible point … then what is little will
become great; but this great thing will become the infinite and un-
alterable Aeon, which no longer enters into becoming. … [Like]
perfect fruit fully formed … resembling the unoriginate and infinite
power (ibid., 14.6, 16.5, pp. 256, 258).
This “blessed and incorruptible being” is within all of us, yet must be
developed in the course of one’s life. It is the spark of light we have
seen described in other Gnostic systems.
We turn now to the Nag Hammadi texts to see how these authors
view the nature of the soul’s final redemption. As a general statement
to introduce this section we begin with the Valentinian “Tripartite
Tractate,” which discusses the commonly expressed Gnostic theme of
the redemption of the three types of people: spiritual, psychic, and
material. The spiritual obviously need no salvation; the material are
beyond redemption; while the psychic become the focus of redemptive
efforts. We find here, of course, the inevitable ego projection of its own
internal split onto the world: the good are rewarded, the bad are pun-
ished. Be it ever thus.
The spiritual race will receive complete salvation in every way.
The material will receive destruction in every way, just as one who
resists him. The psychic race, since it is in the middle when it is
brought forth and also when it is established, is double in its deter-
mination for both good and evil. … Those … who are from the
thought of lust for power … they will receive their end suddenly.
Those who will be brought forth from the lust for power … they
will receive the reward for their humility, which is to remain for-
ever. Those, however, who are proud because of the desire of am-
bition, and who love temporary glory … they will receive judgment
for their ignorance and their senselessness … they (will be judged
for their) wickedness. … the perfect man received knowledge im-
mediately so as to return in haste to his unitary state, to the place
from which he came … . [The psychics], however, needed a place
of instruction … until all the members of the body of the church are
in a single place and receive the restoration at one time, when they
have been manifested as the sound body—the restoration is into
the Pleroma. … [coming] at the end, after the Totality reveals what
it is … (Tri. Tract. I.119.16-24; 120.15–121.10; 123.4-29, in NHL,
pp. 89-91).

307
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

In “The Apocryphon of John,” that important text considered earlier,

we find a similar description of groups:
And I said to the savior, “Lord, will all the souls then be brought
safely into the pure light?” He answered and said to me, “Great
things have arisen in your mind, for it is difficult to explain them to
others except to those who are from the immovable race. Those on
whom the Spirit of life will descend and with whom he will be
with the power, they will be saved and become perfect and be wor-
thy of the greatnesses and be purified in that place from all wicked-
ness and the involvements in evil. …” I said to him, “Lord, the
souls of those who did not do these works, but on whom the power
and Spirit of life descended, will they be rejected?” He answered
and said to me, “If the Spirit descended upon them, they will in
any case be saved and they will change for the better. … no one can
lead it astray with works of evil. But those on whom the opposing
spirit descends are drawn by him and they go astray” (ApocryJohn
II.25.16-28; 26.7-22, in NHL, pp. 112-13).
The Savior is then asked where the souls go of those who are saved and
those who are yet to be saved:
The soul in which the power will become superior to the despicable
[“counterfeit” in other translations] spirit … she is taken up to the
rest of the aeons. … [Those in whom] the despicable spirit has
gained strength … [are cast] down into forgetfulness. And after she
comes out of the body, she is handed over to the authorities … they
bind her with chains and cast her into prison … until she is liberated
from the forgetfulness and acquires knowledge (ibid., 26.26-32;
26.36–27.10, p. 113).
As for those “who have turned away, where will their souls go?”
To that place where the angels of poverty go they will be taken, the
place where there is no repentance. And they will be kept for the
day on which those who have blasphemed the spirit will be tor-
tured, and they will be punished with eternal punishment (ibid.,
27.24-30, p. 114).
The third-century Valentinian “Gospel of Philip” compares undo-
ing the source of wickedness with ending a tree’s life by exposing its
root, teaching that it is only by exposing the root of wickedness (i.e.,
ignorance) that it will disappear:

308
 Eschatology: Gnosticism

For so long as the root of wickedness is hidden, it is strong. But

when it is recognized it is dissolved. When it is revealed it perishes
(GPh II.83.8-11, in NHL, p. 149).
On a psychological level we understand this to mean that the problem
is not the root itself, but the concealment of it. When we undo the re-
pression and expose the problem to the light of truth it simply disap-
pears. As A Course in Miracles advocates, we bring the darkness to the
light, illusions to the truth. The Gnostic would bring the ignorance to
knowledge:
Jesus pulled out the root of the whole place, while others did it
only partially. As for ourselves, let each one of us dig down after
the root of evil which is within one, and let one pluck it out of
one’s heart from the root. It will be plucked out if we recognize it.
But if we are ignorant of it, it takes root in us and produces its fruit
in our heart. It masters us. We are its slaves. It takes us captive, to
make us do what we do not want; and what we do want we do not
do [see Romans 7:18-23]. It is powerful because we have not rec-
ognized it. While it exists it is active. Ignorance is the mother of all
evil. Ignorance will eventuate in death, because those that come
from ignorance neither were nor are nor shall be. But those who
are in the truth will be perfect when all the truth is revealed. For
truth is like ignorance: while it is hidden it rests in itself, but when
it is revealed and is recognized, it is praised inasmuch as it is stron-
ger than ignorance and error. It gives freedom … . Ignorance is a
slave. Knowledge is freedom … (ibid., 83.16–84.11, pp. 149-50,
my italics).
“On the Origin of the World” provides this eschatological vision:
Before the consummation (of the aeon) [world], the whole place
will be shaken by a great thunder. Then the rulers will lament, (cry-
ing out on account of their) death [as will angels, demons and other
men]. … Its kings will be drunk from the flaming sword and they
will make war against one another, so that the earth will be drunk
from the blood which is poured out (Orig. Wld. II.125.32–126.9,
in NHL, p. 178).
The great cosmic disruption continues, in typical fashion, with the
darkening of the sun and moon, the upheavals of the seas, stars, etc.
Sophia then

309
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

put on a senseless wrath. … [and] will drive out the gods of Chaos
whom she had created together with the First Father [Ialdabaoth].
She will cast them down to the abyss. They will be wiped out by
their own injustice (ibid., 126.19-23).
The angry and obviously insane Demiurge first destroys the gods, and
then himself:
… their heavens will fall upon one another and their powers will
burn. … And his (the First Father’s) heaven will fall and it will
split in two. … They will fall down to the abyss and the abyss will
be overthrown (ibid., 126.29-35, p. 179).
The darkness of the deficiency is now totally undone:
The light will cover the darkness, and it will wipe it out. It will
become like one which had not come into being. And the work
which the darkness followed will be dissolved. And the deficiency
will be plucked out at its root and thrown down to the darkness.
And the light will withdraw up to its root. And the glory of the un-
begotten will appear, and it will fill all of the aeons, when the pro-
phetic utterance and the report of those who are kings are revealed
and are fulfilled by those who are called perfect [i.e., the Gnostics]
(ibid., 126.35–127.10).
There remains, however, a form of divine justice: each one must reap
the fruits of his or her own choices:
Those who were not perfected in the unbegotten Father will re-
ceive their glories … in the kingdoms of immortals. But they will
not ever enter the kingless realm.
For it is necessary that every one enter the place from whence he
came. For each one by his deed and his knowledge will reveal his
nature (ibid., 127.10-17).
The Hermetic “Asclepius” consists of a dialogue between the
mystagogue (spiritual master) Hermes Trismegistus and his disciple
Asclepius. It is a mixed document, yet shows decidedly Gnostic char-
acteristics in the salvific power granted to knowledge and, as we see
here, in its views on death. It vividly depicts the punishment of those
who remain rooted in ignorance and evil.
And this is death: the dissolution of the body and the destruction
of the sensation of the body. And it is not necessary to be afraid
of this … . Now, when the soul comes forth from the body, it is

310
 Eschatology: Gnosticism

necessary that it meet … [a great] demon [i.e., a judge appointed by

God]. Immediately he (the demon) will surround this one, and he
will examine him in regard to the character that he has developed
in his life. … [If the soul] brought his life into evil deeds, he grasps
him … and throws him down so that he is suspended between
heaven and earth and is punished with a great punishment. And he
will be deprived of his hope … put in the places of the demons,
which are filled with pain, and which are always filled with blood
and slaughter. And … [his] food is weeping, mourning, and groan-
ing (Ascl. VI.76.13-33; 77.4-11; 78.26-31, in NHL, pp. 305-306).
In the Manichean eschatology, when the great cosmic fire has
purged all the good souls and their light is purified of the darkness, the
remaining unpurified light together with the darkness are assembled
into what is called the “mass” or “lump.” This heap of darkness is
sealed forever and can nevermore be a threat to the Kingdom of Light,
invading it as occurred at the Beginning. These recalcitrant souls, as-
signed to “this terrible ‘mass’ of darkness,” now must pay the price of
their own misdeeds, because they made no effort to understand
these teachings concerning the future, and when they were granted
time to do so, distanced themselves from it (Evodius, de fide contra
Manichaeos, in Haardt, p. 301).
These souls are inherently good, but were unable to “be cleansed of
their contact with the vile nature” (Augustine, de haer. 46.6, in Haardt,
p. 349).
In the Kephalaia, Mani speaks of this End time in three stages,
where the fallen souls and demons of the dark receive three hard
blows. In the first of these the Darkness is defeated by the Living Soul
and separated from the Land of Darkness. Next comes the “great Fire”
where the Darkness is “dissolved and melted away … destroyed and
annihilated.” Finally the male and female members of the Darkness are
separated out, one chained to the mass, the other cast into the grave:
In this manner the Enemy shall be bound, in heavy and painful
bondage, from which there is no way out, ever, but they have suc-
ceeded in binding him and have bound him in eternity, they have
succeeded in separating him off and have separated him off for
eternity (Kephalaia 41, in Haardt, p. 326).
Thus the world of matter (the Hyle) is consumed, leaving only the now
protected Kingdom of Light and the eternally chained Darkness.

311
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

Augustine has described this same Manichean process, allowing us

to see even more clearly how the mass came to symbolize the projec-
tion of unconscious guilt.
[They say that] the substance of evil shall be separated from us and
imprisoned in a lump when the end of the world has come follow-
ing the universal fire, and it shall live as in an eternal prison
(Augustine, de haer. 46, in Haardt, p. 349).
In the Mandean literature we find ample examples of the Last
Judgment, in which the good are rewarded and the evil are destroyed
in horror. In one powerful passage, Manda dHaiye addresses a soul
who has obviously been led astray by fascination with worldly trea-
sures, contaminated by the evil of the world:
O soul! When I cried to you, you gave me no answer, now, when
you cry, who shall give you an answer? Because you loved gold
and silver, you will be locked up in the innermost Sheol. Because
you loved dreams and phantoms, you will sink into the cauldron,
as it seethes (GL III.57, in F II, p. 272).
The soul, however, is given a second chance, but if it fails, its “eyes
will not see the light” (ibid.).
The body, as we have seen, is hated and despised by the Mandeans,
and any attraction to it is sufficient to condemn the soul forever. At
Adam’s death the Messenger comes by his bed and awakens him from
his sleep:
Arise … throw off this stinking body, the clay coat in which you
lived. Cast off the bodily coat, the rotting body … and smite the
Seven and the Twelve, the men who created it, on the head … . Set
your course to the Place of Light, the place where you once
lived … . In the House of Life there is no body, and the body does
not ascend to the House of Life (GL I.2,12 in F II, p. 274-75).
Having left the body, the soul then ascends, a process we have already
considered. The end of the world is then described in this way:
Then all generations (or: ages) will come to an end, and all creatures
will pass away. All fountains and oceans will dry up, and canals and
rivers will run dry. The mountains and hills will split asunder, fall,
and cave in … . The Tibil [the earth] will be destroyed for ever, and
the works of the House will be razed to the ground. The wheels of
heaven will fall into disorder, the chains of the dark, unlit earth will

312
 Eschatology: Traditional Christianity and Origen

be torn apart. When … the spirit of the Seven meets its end, the form
of the Twelve will be ruined, which persecuted this family of life. …
Then Yosamin, Abathur, and Ptahil [three fallen beings of light]
come and see this world. Groaning seizes their heart, and they strike
themselves on their breast. They behold the container of souls,
which lies completely degraded on the ground. On that great day of
judgment sentence will be pronounced on [them]. Then Hibil-Ziwa
[the Redeemer] comes and lifts them from this world (GL I.2,16;
GR XV.3, in F II, pp. 275-76).
The soul is thus returned to its world of Light.

Eschatology: Traditional Christianity and Origen

The traditional Christian eschatology is remarkably similar to the

Gnostic. As it is generally more than familiar to most readers it will not
be discussed at length. Its general theme is the reward of the just in
heaven and the corresponding punishment of the wicked in hell, and
its most famous expression is the parable of “The Last Judgment” in
Matthew 25:
When the Son of Man comes in his glory … he will take his seat on
his throne of glory. All the nations will be assembled before him
and he will separate men one from another as the shepherd sepa-
rates sheep from goats. He will place the sheep on his right hand
and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his
right hand, “Come, you whom my Father has blessed, take for your
heritage the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the
world. …” Next he will say to those on his left hand, “Go away
from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for
the devil and his angels. …” And they will go away to eternal pun-
ishment, and the virtuous to eternal life (Mt 25:31-34,41,46).
In sharp contrast to this harshness is Origen’s totally benign view.
We have already seen that while Origen does speak of a Last Judgment,
his concept has no place for a final condemnation or conflagration in
which the evil sinners are destroyed. Rather the End is the culmination
of the soul’s education, its final graduation as it were. It is the return of
the wandering souls to their original status as rational beings, but on a
higher level so that a future fall is impossible. There are passages in
Origen that suggest that at this End, God remains the teacher and the

313
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

rational beings continue to learn. This learning appears commensurate

with the degree to which each being had fallen at the Beginning. How-
ever, there is no question at this point of a failure to learn. In a sense,
there can be only an ongoing perfectibility of perfection, in which the
concept of a permanent hell does not exist.
Thus what appears to the world as retribution or punishment is
really to Origen educational. Regardless of how low a soul may have
fallen, there is always the potential (and ultimately the inevitability) of
returning. There is no limit on the power of God’s love to recall His
creations, in the words of St. Paul that Origen was fond of quoting, “so
that God may be all in all” (1 Co 15:28). Thus, in principle, the devil,
the fallen angel, will also return to the unity and perfection of Heaven,
along with all rational beings. St. Paul’s “destruction” of the last
enemy (death or the devil) is understood by Origen not as a material
destruction, but rather as the undoing of the purpose for which the ma-
terial was wrongly used:
… not that its substance which was made by God shall perish, but
that the hostile purpose and will which proceeded not from God
but from itself will come to an end. It will be destroyed, therefore,
not in the sense of ceasing to exist, but of being no longer an en-
emy and no longer death (First Princ. III.6.5).
One could well imagine that this was a teaching upon which the ortho-
dox Church did not look kindly. St. Jerome sarcastically states that
Origen taught
after many ages and the one restoration of all things Gabriel will be
in the same state as the devil, Paul as Caiaphas and virgins as pros-
titutes (St. Jerome in First Princ., p. 57n.1).
The Second Council of Constantinople, convened by the emperor
Justinian in the sixth century to combat heresies, issued the following
anathemas (literally: curses; i.e., a series of heretical charges) which
clearly point to Origen:
That the heavenly powers and all men and the devil and spiritual
hosts of wickedness are as unchangeably united to the Word of
God as the Mind itself which is by them called Christ … . That all
rational creatures will form one unity, hypostases and numbers
alike being destroyed when bodies are destroyed. … That the life of
spirits will be the same as it formerly was, when they had not yet

314
 Eschatology: Traditional Christianity and Origen

descended or fallen, so that the beginning is the same as the end,

and the end is the measure of the beginning (in First Princ.,
p. 250n.3).
Bodies as we know them will fall away gradually as the ascent pro-
gresses, until they become totally spiritualized in a process Origen can
only speculate about. As negative as he feels about the body, and de-
spite his assertion elsewhere that rational beings are incorporeal in
their pre-fall essence, Origen still cannot conceive
how beings so numerous and mighty can exist and live their life
without bodies; since we believe that to exist without material sub-
stance and apart from any association with a bodily element is a
thing that belongs only to the nature of … the Father, the Son and
the Holy Spirit. Perhaps … in the end every bodily substance will
be so pure and refined that we must think of it as being like the
ether, as it were of a heavenly purity and clearness (ibid., I.6.4).
Origen of course is referring to St. Paul’s spiritual body (1 Co 15:44).
It is in effect the same body as before, but
having cast off the weaknesses of its present existence … [and]
transformed into a thing of glory … with the result that what was a
vessel of dishonor shall itself be purified and become a vessel of
honor and a habitation of blessedness (First Princ. III.6.6).
Origen had no illusions about the great span of time in which such
return would occur. Thus he posited successive worlds (preceding as
well as following our own) in the manner of grades in a school, in
which the souls could achieve their education and ultimately
“graduate.” The end of the world, therefore, far from being the final
judgment foreseen in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, marked for
Origen the consummation of the ascent of the soul, the time
when every soul shall be visited with the penalties due for its
sins. … when everyone shall pay what he owes … . even his [God’s]
enemies being conquered and subdued. … it is the same subjection
by which we too desire to be subjected to him, and by which the
apostles and all the saints who have followed Christ were subject to
him. … [And] so from one beginning arise many differences and va-
rieties, which in their turn are restored, through God’s goodness,
through their subjection to Christ and their unity with the Holy
Spirit, to one end, which is like the beginning (ibid., I.6.1,2).

315
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

The “outer darkness” spoken of in Jesus’ warning about the Jews

(Mt 8:12) is also given a more benevolent, if not partially Gnostic in-
terpretation, focusing on the psychological rather than material reality.
It is
not to be understood as a place with a murky atmosphere and no
light at all, but rather as a description of those who through their
immersion in the darkness of deep ignorance have become sepa-
rated from every gleam of reason and intelligence (ibid., II.10.8).
Thus these ignorant ones would take on heavier and murkier garments,
reflecting the “gloom of ignorance,” until they complete their learning
in other worlds. Once again, Origen explicitly denies an everlasting
punishment:
There is a resurrection of the dead, and there is punishment, but not
everlasting. For when the body is punished the soul is gradually
purified, and so is restored to its ancient rank … . For all wicked
men, and for daemons, too, punishment has an end, and both …
shall be restored to their former rank (ibid.).
Evil is banished, for all that remains is God and thoughts that are like
God:
The mind will no longer be conscious of anything besides … God,
but will think God and see God and hold God and God will be the
mode and measure of its every movement; and in this way God
will be all to it. For there will no longer be any contrast of good
and evil, since evil nowhere exists … . all consciousness of evil has
departed and given place to what is sincere and pure … (ibid.,
III.6.3).

Spiritual Specialness: Gnosticism

It is obvious from the foregoing material that Gnostic and orthodox

Christians alike, whether implicit or explicit, shared the belief that
their group was ontologically better than others. Indeed, there can be
no more insidious nor contradictory characteristic of religious groups
than the belief that they are somehow “special”—i.e., better, holier,
more beloved of God than other groups. The paradox of such belief in
a movement that purports to be rooted in God and His revelation is ob-
vious, when one recalls the unity that is the condition of the creation

316
 Spiritual Specialness: Gnosticism

of Christ. It is but another example of what A Course in Miracles refers

to as the attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable, and unite mutually ex-
clusive ideas.
If one can point to a common element in all religious forms and in-
stitutions that has contributed to their descent from an authentic spiritu-
ality, it would be this belief in specialness. In our Western tradition we
see it from the beginning, and it has continued to the present day. In this
next section, we shall primarily consider its expression in Gnosticism,
reserving for Part III a discussion of the spiritual specialness arising
within students of A Course in Miracles. We begin, however, with the
first-century Christian teaching and, as this cannot be understood apart
from its historical roots, we make brief mention of Judaism, where the
concept of the “chosen people” finds a prominent place.
While it is true that this notion of “chosenness” can be interpreted in
ways other than the obvious, it nonetheless remains as a concept of sep-
aration that is based upon a spiritual arrogance that places oneself and
one’s group somehow closer to the Creator than others, a conclusion
reached only by interpretations of data mediated through the narrow
eyes (and mind) of one’s personal and special universe. This “chosen-
ness” was taken over by Christianity, which unabashedly saw itself as
the heir to the throne of the beloved people, the throne vacated by the
recalcitrant Jews. St. Paul provided the foundation for this belief in his
famous image of the olive tree and its branches, written to the Romans:
… have the Jews fallen for ever, or have they just stumbled? Obvi-
ously they have not fallen for ever: their fall, though, has saved the
pagans in a way the Jews may now well emulate. … all the
branches are holy if the root is holy. No doubt some of the
branches [the Jews] have been cut off, and, like shoots of wild
olive you [non-Jewish Roman Christians] have been grafted among
the rest to share with them the rich sap provided by the olive tree
itself … (Rm 11:11,16-17).
They—first the Jews who accepted Jesus as the promised Messiah,
joined later with the Gentiles—were now God’s chosen, witnessed to
by their confession of faith in the risen Lord Jesus. This group, as we
have seen, became more rigorously (if not rigidly) defined as the de-
cades and centuries passed, and emerged as a narrowing exclusive
Church which self-righteously proclaimed itself as the true heir to Jesus
and the apostles. A small hierarchy defined this Church and became the

317
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

arbiter of those who belonged within its special circle and those who
did not. Moreover, without this Church, the hierarchy claimed, salva-
tion was impossible.
The Gnostic Christians were excluded from this circle and so, in
true ego fashion, set up their own criteria for membership in the escha-
tological circles of the saved and the damned. This membership, con-
sidered previously, was born out of the Gnostics’ own sense of
spiritual specialness. They believed that they were the special recipi-
ents of gnosis, which set them apart from the rest of humanity who
clearly were not as privileged. In the Christian forms of Gnosticism,
our principal interest in this book, this specialness obviously was
meant, at least in part, as a defensive position against the specialness
of the more orthodox Church. Thus in many of the following excerpts
we find the Gnostics proclaiming themselves to be chosen by God, as
opposed to the orthodox, to fulfill the special mission of bringing the
light of truth to the world of darkness.
“The Apocryphon of James” is a revelation dialogue between the
resurrected Jesus and James and Peter. It was probably composed in
the third century or slightly earlier. As in all such texts, including some
of the later books of the New Testament, the authors seek to derive
legitimacy from identification with the apostles. Furthermore, the re-
cipients of the document are singled out as having been specially cho-
sen. Thus, we find this statement:
Since you asked that I [James] send you a secret book [apocry-
phon] which was revealed to me and Peter by the Lord, I could not
turn you away or gainsay you; but I … sent it to you, and you alone.
But since you are a minister of the salvation of the saints … take
care not to rehearse this text to many—this that the Savior did not
wish to tell to all of us, his twelve disciples (ApocryJs I.1.8-25,
in NHL, p. 30).
The tractate closes after the ascension of Jesus in a “chariot of
spirit.” James and Peter, the chosen disciples, experience the beatific
vision and are called back by the other disciples, who wish to know the
content of the revelation from the Master:
He has ascended, and he has given us [James and Peter] a pledge
and promised life to us all and revealed to us children who are to
come after us … as we would be saved for their sakes (ibid.,
I.15.35-16.2, p. 36).

318
 Spiritual Specialness: Gnosticism

In order to appease the “resentment” of the other disciples, James sends

them out to different cities, while he reserves Jerusalem for himself:
And I pray that the beginning may come from you [the readers
of this text], for thus I shall be capable of salvation, since they will
be enlightened through me, by my faith … (ibid., I.16.12-16).
In “The Gospel of Truth” we find the theme of Gnostic specialness
in the context of what seems to be a doctrine of predestination:
Since the perfection of the all is in the Father, and it is necessary
for the all to ascend to him. … and for each one to receive what are
his own, he enrolled them in advance, having prepared them to
give to those who came forth from him.
Those whose name he knew in advance were called at the end,
so that one who has knowledge is the one whose name the Father
has uttered. For he whose name has not been spoken is ignorant. …
Therefore if one has knowledge, he is from above. If he is called,
he hears, he answers, and he turns to him who is calling him, and
ascends to him. … Having knowledge, he does the will of the one
who called him, he wishes to be pleasing to him, he receives rest
(GT I.21.8–22.12, in NHL, p. 40).
These Valentinian Gnostics are thus urged to
speak of the truth with those who search for it, and of knowledge
to those who have committed sin in their error. Make firm the foot
of those who have stumbled and stretch out your hands to those
who are ill. … For you are the understanding that is drawn forth. If
strength acts thus, it becomes even stronger. Be concerned with
yourselves; do not be concerned with other things which you have
rejected from yourselves. … Do not strengthen those who are ob-
stacles to you who are collapsing, as though you were a support for
them. For the unjust one is someone to treat ill rather than the just
one. … So you, do the will of the Father, for you are from him
(ibid., I.32.35-33.32, pp. 44-45).
The Gnostic recipients of the revelations of “The Hypostasis of the
Archons” are told that they are protected from the evil power of the
“Authorities” (i.e., the archons):
You, together with your offspring, are from the Primeval Father;
from Above, out of the imperishable Light, their souls are come.
Thus the Authorities cannot approach them because of the Spirit of
Truth present within them; and all who have become acquainted

319
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

with this Way exist deathless in the midst of dying Mankind

(Hypos. Arch. II.96.19-27, in NHL, p. 159).
The parallel document, “On the Origin of the World,” reveals the
same:
Since the immortal Father knows that a deficiency came into be-
ing in the aeons and their worlds out of the truth, therefore when he
desired to bring to naught the rulers of destruction by means of
their molded bodies, he sent your likenesses, i.e. the blessed little
guileless spirits, down to the world of destruction (Orig. Wld. II.
124.5-10, in NHL, p. 177).
These “guileless spirits”—i.e., the Gnostics—have as their function to
“reveal the pattern of indestructibility for a condemnation of the rulers
and their powers” (ibid., 124.19-21).
In another tradition, the apostle Thomas is the chosen one by the
risen Lord, whose words are recorded by the apostle Matthew, written
down as he “was walking, listening to them [Jesus and Thomas] speak
with one another.”
Now since it has been said that you [Thomas] are my twin and
true companion, examine yourself that you may understand who
you are, in what way you exist, and how you will come to be.
Since you are called my brother, it is not fitting that you be igno-
rant of yourself. And I know that you have understood, because
you had already understood that I am the knowledge of the truth.
So while you accompany me, although you are uncomprehending,
you have in fact already come to know, and you will be called “the
one who knows himself ” (Th Cont. II.138.3,138.7-16, in NHL,
pp. 188-89).
To “know oneself ” of course means to know one’s spiritual self as
opposed to the physical. Indeed, as we have seen before, the Thomas
tradition is a strongly ascetic one. Thomas responds by asking Jesus to
explain to him about the “hidden things,” for these truths are “difficult
to perform before men.” The tractate essentially consists of the teach-
ings given to Thomas that he may share them with the ignorant world.
But just as the canonical gospels say of their teachings, the Gnostics
believe that the world will not understand their truth, hearing the
words as “ridiculous and contemptible.” Of these unbelievers the
Savior speaks these words of harsh and prophetic judgment:

320
 Spiritual Specialness: Gnosticism

I tell you that he who will listen to your word and turn away his
face … he will be handed over to the Ruler above … and he will
turn that one around and cast him from heaven down to the abyss,
and he will be imprisoned in a narrow dark place. … [pursued by]
fiery scourges that cast a shower of sparks … (ibid., 142.27–143.1,
p. 192).
In the Christianized “Sophia of Jesus Christ” we read of the im-
mortal nature of the Gnostics, whose true home is in the Father, unsul-
lied by the grossness of the sexual world of the body:
Now as for you, whatever is fitting for you to know … will be
given to them—whoever has been begotten not by the sowing of
the unclean rubbing but by the First who was sent, for he is an im-
mortal in the midst of mortal men (Sophia III.93.16-24, in NHL,
p. 209).
And these immortal ones are to
shine in the light more than these [the unknowing ones]. … [They
are to] tread upon their graves, humiliate their malicious intent, and
break their yoke, and arouse my own [Jesus’]. I have given you au-
thority over all things as sons of light, so that you might tread upon
their power with your feet (ibid., 114.7-8; 119.1-8, pp. 224,228).
Part of the specialness of the Gnostics—especially for the disciples
of Jesus—was manifest in their suffering as their Lord suffered. Thus
the tradition of martyrdom was not the exclusive domain of the ortho-
dox, as we have already seen. The special holiness of the Gnostics, be-
stowed upon them by the world of the Pleroma, is also expressed to the
Sethian Gnostics in the non-Christian “Apocalypse of Adam.” Here
Adam reveals to his son Seth what had been revealed to him about his
own downfall, how he fell under the power of the creator-god who,
among other things, tried to destroy the world with the Great Flood.
However,
those who reflect upon the knowledge of the eternal God in their
hearts will not perish (ApocAdam V.76.21-23, in NHL, p. 260).
Moreover,
the generation without a [worldly] king over it says that God chose
him from all the aeons. He caused a knowledge of the undefiled
one of truth to come to be in him. He said, “Out of a foreign air,

321
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

from a great aeon, the great illuminator came forth. And he made
the generation of those men whom he had chosen for himself shine,
so that they should shine upon the whole aeon” (ibid., 82.19–83.4,
p. 263).
Meanwhile, the unknowing ones
will cry out with a great voice, saying, “Blessed is the soul of those
men because they have known God with a knowledge of the truth!
They shall live forever, because they have not been corrupted by
their desire … they have stood in his presence in a knowledge of God
like light that has come forth from fire and blood” (ibid., 83.9-23).
They continue berating themselves, and then are answered by a voice:
And your thought is not like that of those men [the Gnostics]
whom you persecute … . Their fruit does not wither. But they will
be known up to the great aeons, because the words they have kept,
of the God of the aeons, were not committed to the book, nor were
they written. But (angelic) beings will bring them, whom all the
generations of men will not know (ibid., 84.23–85.9, pp. 263-64).
In “The Apocalypse of Peter” the apostle is told by the Savior,
“sitting in the temple”:
… from you I have established a base for the remnant whom I have
summoned to knowledge (ApocPt VII.71.19-21, in NHL, p. 340).
The revelation continues with the message of martyrdom that is the
fate of the Gnostic disciples of Jesus. Thus the Gnostic Peter is urged:
Be strong, for you are the one to whom these mysteries have been
given, to know them through revelation … . These things, then,
which you saw you shall present to those of another race who are
not of this age. For there will be … honor … only in those who were
chosen from an immortal substance … . therefore, be courageous
and do not fear at all. For I shall be with you in order that none of
your enemies may prevail over you (ibid., 82.18-20; 83.15-23;
84.7-10, pp. 344-45).
Derdekeas, the Gnostic redeemer of “The Paraphrase of Shem,”
says to Shem (Seth), the father of this Gnostic tradition:
You are blessed, Shem, for your race has been protected from the
dark wind … . O Shem, no one who wears the body will be able to
complete these things. But through remembrance he will be able to

322
 Spiritual Specialness: Gnosticism

grasp them … . They have been revealed to your race. … For none
will be able to open the forms of the door except the mind alone
who was entrusted with their likeness. … they will bear witness to
the universal testimony; they will strip off the burden of Darkness;
they will put on the Word of the Light … . For every power of light
and fire will be completed by me because of you. For without you
they will not be revealed until you speak them openly (Para. Shem
VII.34.16-32; 42.18-32; 48.32–49.3, in NHL, pp. 323,326,328).
Part of the Church Fathers’ denunciations of the Gnostics centered
on this self-perception of specialness. In the group Hippolytus called
the Docetists we find similar sentiments. Speaking of the thirty forms
put on by Jesus after his resurrection, corresponding to the thirty aeons
in the Valentinian Pleroma, Hippolytus presents the Docetists’ claims
that only they can know the full Savior:
But from each of the thirty Aeons all the forms are held fast here
below as souls, and each of them possesses a nature so as to know
Jesus who is according to their nature … . Now those who derive
from their nature from the places below cannot see the forms of the
Savior that are above them, but those who derive from above …
these men understand Jesus the Savior not in part but in full, and
they alone are the perfect ones from above: but all the rest under-
stand him only in part (Ref. VIII.10.9,11, in F I, pp. 311-12).
Of Carpocrates and his disciples, Irenaeus, certainly not an objective
witness, writes:
They say that the soul of Jesus was lawfully nurtured in the tradi-
tions of the Jews, but despised them and thereby obtained powers
by which he vanquished the passions which attach to men for pun-
ishment. The soul which like the soul of Jesus is able to despise the
creator archons likewise receives power to do the same things.
Hence they have come to such presumption that some say they are
like Jesus, actually affirm that they are even stronger than he, and
some declare that they are superior to his disciples, like Peter and
Paul and the other Apostles; they are in no way inferior to Jesus
himself (Adv. haer. I.25.1-2, in F I, p. 36).
According to Irenaeus, the “Valentinians” claimed to be perfect:
… it is impossible that the spiritual—and by that they mean
themselves—should succumb to decay, regardless of what kind
of actions it performs. … For it is not conduct that leads to the

323
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

Pleroma, but the seed, sent forth from there in an immature state,
but brought to perfection here (ibid., I.1.6.2, p. 139).
These perfect ones, of course, favorably compare themselves to the
rest of humanity who either remain forever outside of salvation, or
else, like the bishops of the Church, must labor to attain it. Against the
disciples of the Valentinian Marcus, who also passed themselves off as
perfect, Irenaeus levels the following charge, part of which was al-
ready quoted in Chapter 3:
… as if none could equal the extent of their knowledge, not even if
you were to mention Paul or Peter, or any other of the apostles.
They claim that they have more knowledge than all others, and that
they alone have attained the greatness of the knowledge of the inef-
fable power. They claim that they are in the heights beyond every
power … . [and] claim that they are unassailable by and invisible to
the judge (ibid., 13.6, p. 202).
The Gnostics recorded in Clement’s aforementioned Excerpta ex
Theodoto considered themselves to be the true Church, a chosen race
whose superior seeds have an “affinity with the light” that was brought
forth by the Christ in the person of Jesus. They were thus purified by
him as together they entered into the Pleroma: “Consequently, it is
rightly said of the Church that it was chosen before the foundation of
the world” (Excerpta I.41.2, in F I, p. 229).
In “The Kerygmata Petrou” we find this specialness expressed in
the context of the lineage of the “true prophet,” which begins with
Adam and continues through Moses to Jesus. This holy figure is prop-
erly Gnostic and is described as the one
[who] brings knowledge in place of error … . by knowledge [he]
slays ignorance, cutting and separating the living from the dead
(Ker. Pet. H XI.19.2, in NTA II, p. 116).
This specialness is first and foremost sexist. The prophet, always male,
is juxtaposed with his false counterpart, usually portrayed as female
and beginning of course with Eve:
If any one denies that the man (Adam) who came from the hands
of the Creator … possessed the great and holy Spirit of divine fore-
knowledge, but acknowledges that another did this who was begot-
ten of impure seed [Eve], how does he not commit a grievous
sin? … There are two kinds of prophecy, the one is male … . the

324
 Spiritual Specialness: Gnosticism

other is found amongst those who are born of women. Proclaiming

what pertains to the present world, female prophecy desires to be
considered male. On this account she steals the seed of the male,
envelops them with her own seed of the flesh and lets them … come
forth as her own creations (ibid., III.17.1; 23.1-3, pp. 115, 117).
And on and on the diatribe against women continues. However, the
specialness also includes Peter and his disciples, set off against Paul
who is seen as the representative of the female prophet. The author
(Peter) sets forth his theory of syzygies, wherein God assembled his
creation in pairs, with the weaker (feminine) coming first and the
stronger (male) second. Citing as examples Cain and Abel, Ishmael
and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Aaron and Moses, the author comes down
to Paul and Peter:
… there came as the first the one who was among those that are
born of women [Paul], and after that there appeared the one who
was among the sons of men. He who follows this order can dis-
cern by whom Simon [Paul], who as the first came before me
[Peter] to the Gentiles, was sent forth, and to whom I belong who
appeared later than he did and came in upon him as light upon
darkness, as knowledge upon ignorance, as healing upon sick-
ness (ibid., II.17.2-3, p. 122).
Of himself, the chosen apostle, Peter says:
[I] am his [Jesus’] confidant … a firm rock, the foundation stone of
the church. … I proclaim what I have heard in my own person from
the Lord … . God … revealed Christ to me … [and] called me blessed
on account of the revelation (ibid., XVII.19.4-6, p. 123).
In the “Acts of John” Jesus speaks of his chosen (Gnostic) race,
compared to the inferior nature of the non-believers:
The multitude around the Cross … is the inferior nature. … But
when human nature is taken up, and the race that comes to me and
obeys my voice, then he who now hears me shall be united with
this race and shall no longer be what he now is, but shall be above
them as I am now. … Therefore ignore the many and despise those
who are outside the mystery … (AJ 100, in NTA II, pp. 233-34).
Some Gnostic groups had hierarchies themselves, notably the
Manichean Church. Augustine refers to the Elect who considered
themselves to be “holier … and more splendid than that of their

325
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

congregations” (Haardt, pp. 342-43). Needless to say the Manicheans

in general considered themselves superior to all other groups.
Finally we consider Plotinus’ criticism of the Gnostics’ “spiritual
specialness.” He addresses the Gnostics who manage to talk themselves
and others into believing that they are better than all other people, if not
the gods (the greater cosmos), themselves, and their creator, “the
blessed Soul”:
But stupid men believe this sort of talk as soon as they hear “you
shall be better than all, not only men, but gods”—for there is a great
deal of arrogance among men—and the man who was once meek
and modest, an ordinary private person, if he hears “you are the son
of God, and the others whom you used to admire are not, nor the
beings they venerate according to the tradition received from their
fathers; but you are better than the heaven without having taken any
trouble to become so”—then are other people really going to join in
the chorus? It is just as if, in a great crowd of people who did not
know how to count, someone who did not know how to count heard
that he was a thousand cubits tall; what would happen if he
thought he was a thousand cubits, and heard that the others were
five cubits? He would only imagine that the “thousand” was a big
number (Enn. II.9.9).

Platonism

We turn now to the Platonic view that salvation or redemption

(words the non-Christian philosophers would never use) consists
merely in remembering the truth that is already present in us. In this
section we shall specifically discuss Plato, Origen, and Plotinus.
(Augustine’s views, already considered, tend more towards orthodoxy
—certainly more than the near-heretic Origen—for to him salvation
without Jesus is unthinkable. This of course was his principal criticism
of his much-admired though pagan Plotinus, who omits mention of
Jesus entirely.) If our problem is the forgetting of truth, covered over
by the attraction to the corporeal, then, for the Platonist, the remem-
bering comes by dislodging our attention, orienting it more towards
the sublimity of the light and truth of the Intelligible world beyond the
world of the senses.

326
 Platonism

1. Plato
The Allegory of the Cave in the Republic (VII 514-520) is one of the
most famous of all passages in Plato, indeed in all philosophy. Students
of A Course in Miracles will recognize allusions to the Cave Allegory
in three places in the text: T-20.III.9:1-2; T-25.VI.2:1-4; T-28.V.7:1-5.
The allegory specifically deals with the theme that preoccupied Plato
all of his life: the relationship between appearance and reality.
Simplifying Plato’s description, the setting is a cave with prisoners
fastened with chains, facing an interior wall:
In this chamber are men who have been prisoners there since they
were children, their legs and necks being so fastened that they can
only look straight ahead of them and cannot turn their heads.
In back of them is the entrance to the cave, and behind this is a road
along which passes the normal stream of everyday commerce. Behind
the road is a burning fire, whose light shines into the cave, casting
shadows of the passing traffic of the road onto the interior wall directly
in front of the chained prisoners. Finally, still farther behind the fire
shines the sun, the ultimate source of light. The prisoners, unable to see
behind them to the reality of the figures passing along the road, see
only their shadows, believing them to be what is real:
Do you think our prisoners could see anything of themselves or
their fellows except the shadows thrown by the fire on the wall of
the cave opposite them? … And would they see anything more of
the objects carried along the road? … Then if they were able to talk
to each other, would they not assume that the shadows they saw
were the real things? … And if the wall of their prison opposite
them reflected sound, don’t you think that they would suppose,
whenever one of the passers-by on the road spoke, that the voice
belonged to the shadow passing before them? … And so in every
way they would believe that the shadows of the objects we men-
tioned were the whole truth.
At some point one of the prisoners is freed (he later becomes the
philosopher-king) and walks toward the mouth of the cave and the fire.
He begins to realize that what he and the others have been knowing as
reality is merely an illusion of reality:

327
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

… what he used to see was so much empty nonsense and that he

was now nearer reality and seeing more correctly, because he was
turned towards objects that were more real … .
The freed prisoner continues on into the sunlight, with his eyes at first
hurting from the glare. Eventually he is able to gaze more and more
fixedly on the upper world outside the cave:
First he would find it easiest to look at shadows, next at the reflec-
tions of men and other objects in water, and later on at the objects
themselves. After that he would find it easier to observe the heav-
enly bodies and the sky itself at night, and to look at the light of the
moon and stars rather than at the sun and its light by day. … The
thing he would be able to do last would be to look directly at the
sun itself, and gaze at it without using reflections in water or any
other medium, but as it is in itself. … Later on he would come to
the conclusion that it is the sun that produces the changing seasons
and years and controls everything in the visible world, and is in a
sense responsible for everything that he and his fellow-prisoners
used to see.
Feeling sorry for his fellow-prisoners, the enlightened man would
return to the cave to share his newly acquired knowledge. However, he
would “make a fool of himself,” as his eyes would now have to re-
adjust to the cave’s world of darkness and shadows. And so the pris-
oners would say that
his visit to the upper world had ruined his sight, and that the as-
cent was not worth even attempting. And if anyone tried to release
them and lead them up, they would kill him if they could lay hands
on him.
Clearly the model for this freed prisoner who attains the knowledge of
the Good is Socrates, who was indeed killed by the Athenians because
he tried to awaken in them the truth of the difference between appear-
ance and reality. Later, Plato continues, with Socrates obviously in
mind:
Nor will you think it strange that anyone who descends from con-
templation of the divine to human life and its ills should blunder
and make a fool of himself, if, while still blinded and unaccus-
tomed to the surrounding darkness, he’s forcibly put on trial in the
law-courts or elsewhere about the shadows of justice … and made

328
 Platonism

to dispute about the notions of them held by men who have never
seen justice itself.
Plato now interprets the metaphor for us, referring back to what he
had written about the sun:
The realm revealed by sight corresponds to the prison, and the
light of the fire in the prison to the power of the sun. And you
won’t go wrong if you connect the ascent into the upper world and
the sight of the objects there with the upward progress of the mind
into the intelligible region. … the final thing to be perceived in the
intelligible region, and perceived only with difficulty, is the form
of the good; once seen, it is inferred to be responsible for what-
ever is right and valuable in anything, producing in the visible re-
gion light and the source of light, and being in the intelligible
region itself controlling source of truth and intelligence. And any-
one who is going to act rationally either in public or private life
must have sight of it.
Earlier Plato writes that
though the sun is not itself sight, it is the cause of sight and is seen
by the sight it causes. … that is what I called the child of the
good … [which] has begotten it in its own likeness, and it bears the
same relation to sight and visible objects in the visible realm that
the good bears to intelligence and intelligible objects in the intelli-
gible realms.
He continues by drawing an analogy to seeing dimly at night without
sunlight, and trying to understand without benefit of the reality of the
Good:
When the mind’s eye is fixed on objects illuminated by truth and
reality, it understands and knows them, and its possession of intelli-
gence is evident; but when it is fixed on the twilight world of change
and decay, it can only form opinions, its vision is confused and its
opinions shifting, and it seems to lack intelligence (VI 508b-d).
Paralleling the Allegory of the Cave to the bed analogy we dis-
cussed in Chapter 6 (p. 229), we find that the bed-in-itself corresponds
to the world of Ideas, the object of all knowledge; the bed made by the
carpenter represents the figures of the world walking along the road
outside the cave; while the copies of the bed by the painter correspond
to the shadows seen by the prisoners on the wall.

329
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

The task of the freed prisoner, now the philosopher-king, is to edu-

cate his fellow prisoners. This of course was the purpose of Plato’s
Academy, and the principal message of the Republic: how to develop
an educational and training program for the philosopher-kings, includ-
ing helping them to recognize their responsibilities to return to the
lower world to teach the others:
Then our job as lawgivers is to compel the best minds to attain
what we have called the highest form of knowledge, and to ascend
to the vision of the good as we have described, and when they have
achieved this and see well enough, prevent them behaving as they
are now allowed to. … [i.e.,] Remaining in the upper world, and re-
fusing to return again to the prisoners in the cave below and share
their labors and rewards, whether trivial or serious.
The philosopher-kings will be told:
You must therefore each descend in turn and live with your fel-
lows in the cave and get used to seeing in the dark; once you get
used to it you will see a thousand times better than they do and will
distinguish the various shadows, and know what they are shadows
of, because you have seen the truth about things admirable and just
and good.
In an earlier passage Plato speaks about these philosopher-kings—
the truly wise—who as saviors of our society no longer value the
appearance of the Good, but the Good itself; the reality illuminated by
the truth and not the shadows:
One trait in the philosopher’s character we can assume is his love
of any branch of learning that reveals eternal reality, the realm un-
affected by the vicissitudes of change and decay. … our true lover
of knowledge naturally strives for reality, and will not rest content
with each set of particulars which opinion takes for reality, but
soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the na-
ture of each thing as it is [i.e., the Ideas], with the mental
faculty … only released from travail when it has thus attained
knowledge and true life and fulfillment. … His eyes are turned to
contemplate fixed and immutable realities, a realm where there is
no injustice done or suffered, but all is reason and order, and
which is the model which he imitates and to which he assimilates
himself as far as he can. … So the philosopher whose dealings are
with the divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order
and divinity so far as a man may … (VI 485b; 490b; 500c-d).

330
 Platonism

Plato contrasts the popular theory that education consists in putting

into the mind knowledge that was not previously there, with his own
theory which teaches that knowledge is a capacity that
is innate in each man’s mind … [which] must be turned away from
the world of change until its eye can bear to look straight at reality,
and at the brightest of all realities which is what we call the good
(VII 518c).
The name given by Plato to the process of such education, is “dialec-
tic,” whose goal is to attain the vision of the Good, symbolized in the
Cave Allegory by the final ability to gaze directly at the sun. It can be
characterized by
the progress of sight from shadows to the real creatures them-
selves and then to the stars themselves, and finally to the sun it-
self. So when one tries to get at what each thing is in itself by the
exercise of dialectic, relying on reason without any aid from the
senses, and refuses to give up until one has grasped by pure
thought what the good is in itself, one is at the summit of the intel-
lectual realm, as the man who looked at the sun was of the visual
realm (VIII 532a-b).
This process of attaining the vision and experience of the truth is indi-
vidualized and occurs internally; it cannot be “put in” from outside.
The purpose of any external program, such as the Republic, is to pro-
vide structure and guidance that facilitates the individual’s interior
journey.
Returning to the tripartite mind discussed in the previous chapter,
we see that “salvation” for Plato rests with the soul. As he writes in the
Timaeus:
We should think of the most authoritative part of our soul as a
guardian spirit given by god, living in the summit of the body,
which can properly be said to lift us from the earth towards our
home in heaven … . and our divine part attaches us by the head to
heaven, like a plant by its roots, and keeps our body upright. If
therefore a man’s attention and effort is centered on appetite and
ambition, all his thoughts are bound to be mortal … . But a man
who has given his heart to learning and true wisdom … is surely
bound … to have immortal and divine thoughts, and cannot fail to
achieve immortality as fully as is permitted to human nature … .

331
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

To maintain such balance it is thus imperative that people align them-

selves with the harmony of the cosmos through education and contem-
plation:
And the motions that are akin to the divine in us are the thoughts
and revolutions of the universe. We should each therefore attend to
these motions and by learning about the harmonious circuits of the
universe repair the damage done at birth [when the soul forgot its
heavenly home] to the circuits in our head, and so restore under-
standing and what is understood to their original likeness to each
other. When that is done we shall have achieved the goal set us by
the gods, the life that is best for this present time and for all time to
come (Tim. 90a-d).

2. Origen
Origen, too, emphasizes the process within the mind, writing of two
motivating forces present in the rational being or soul. The first is the
soul’s free choice that led to its fall from spirit and continually choos-
ing to identify with the lower or physical self; the second is the soul’s
capacity to choose freely the return to God and the awareness of its
true spiritual identity. This “second” freedom unites with the Will of
God that continually calls the fallen soul back to it. It was this empha-
sis on the soul’s need and ability to choose God that led to the later de-
velopment of the Pelagian heresy, so opposed by Augustine, that
taught that salvation came from humanity’s choice and not God, who
was essentially unnecessary to the process.
However, Origen is equally emphatic on the role that God plays in
His call, teaching that God’s providence is the means by which every
fallen soul eventually will return. Redemption thus becomes the
framework through which the soul’s mistakes are eventually cor-
rected, according to the time span that it decides for itself. The fall and
its consequences, freely chosen by the soul, become the classroom
that the Divine Teacher uses to bring about salvation. We shall see in
Part II-B the similarities between Origen’s theory and A Course in
Miracles. Origen states in various places:
But it [what our soul has received] becomes evident through temp-
tations, so that we no longer escape the knowledge of what we are
like. … we give thanks for the good things that have been made evi-
dent to us through temptations. … For when we have accomplished

332
 Platonism

all we can by ourselves, God will fulfill what is lacking because of

human weakness (On Prayer XXIX.17,19).
For in no other way can the soul reach the perfection of knowl-
edge except by being inspired with the truth of the divine wisdom
(First Princ. IV.2.7).
Why is it that however great the progresses made by the soul none-
theless temptations are not taken away from it? Here it becomes
clear that temptations are brought to it as a kind of protection and
defense. … Temptation … is a kind of strength and defense for the
soul (Homily, in Origen, pp. 263,265).
Trials or temptations for Origen, therefore, are given by God, not as
punishment, but rather as means to return to Him.
Origen always returns to the basic premise, the very foundation of
his teaching, that the substance of the soul shares in the incorruptibility
and immortality of the Divine Trinity:
… it follows logically and of necessity that every existence which
has a share in that eternal nature must itself also remain forever in-
corruptible and eternal, in order that the eternity of the divine
goodness may be revealed in this additional fact, that they who ob-
tain its blessings are eternal too (First Princ. IV.4.9).
Nonetheless, each soul has the freedom to choose to have its vision of
this divine goodness obscured or heightened, though it
always possesses within some seeds … of restoration and recall to a
better state, which become operative whenever the inner man, who
is also termed the rational man, is recalled into the image and like-
ness of God who created him (ibid.).
These “marks of the divine image” are obviously not perceived
through the corruptible body, but rather through the “prudence of his
mind” along with all its virtues (ibid., 4.10). This perception is a grad-
ual one, accomplished little by little as the soul grows in virtue and is
weaned from the corporeal until its return to its original state.
In summary, therefore, though we may choose to hurt ourselves,
God, for Origen, uses such painful circumstances of sin to lead us
back to Him. In this respect, our freedom and God’s loving providence
combine to effect our salvation. Our bodies, the repository of sin and
distress, are, according to Origen, the result of our fall and serve to

333
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

hide the divine splendor from us. Yet this same body becomes God’s
vehicle for leading us through the darkness back to Him. God’s un-
shaking love makes such return inevitable in the end, even though the
choice remains our own as to how quickly this return occurs.

3. Plotinus
Plotinus’ notion of redemption is implicit in his teachings on the
fall and the making of the world, as we have already seen in Chapter 6
as well as in our discussion of Origen. If the problem is that the soul
has by its own choice become enmeshed in the world of materiality,
then it is redeemed by reversing its decision and, in effect, climbing up
the ladder its fall led it down. It is this change, brought about through
the cultivation of reason and conscious detachment from the body, that
constitutes the soul’s redemption. It is not brought about by any agents
—divine or otherwise—that are outside the soul, but rather simply by
the efforts of the soul itself. In a context alien to Plotinus’ thought we
may say that the One knows absolutely nothing of the fate of the soul.
Yet, it is the memory of its divine nature that impels the soul upward
to its source. It is not so much an active call, such as Origen seems to
conceptualize it, but rather the ongoing presence that serves to remind
the fallen soul and thus “call” it back to Itself.
This divine Self is immanent in the soul, while at the same time
transcendent in the sense of having been its source. Thus, as Bréhier
has cogently discussed, the transcendent One or Platonic Good re-
mains the source and standard by which all else is evaluated. On the
other hand it also becomes the object of the soul’s yearning to return.
The former is akin to rationalism, the other to ecstasy:
Let us clearly contrast the two points of view. Platonic rational-
ism is the affirmation of the transcendence of the One, the univer-
sal measure of things, which, consequently, is unlike them. The
theory of ecstasy is the affirmation of the immanence of Soul and
Intelligence in the One. The Platonic doctrine affirms a bond of
external dependence between the One and the many. The One is
external to the many as the unit of measure is to the things mea-
sured. This transcendence alone guarantees the trustworthy opera-
tion of reason. The immanence of things within the One, on the
other hand, abolishes these boundaries (Bréhier, p. 159).

334
 Platonism

It does this by absorbing the lower into the higher, the immanent in the
transcendent, in what is the ecstatic obliteration of the subject-object
duality. Plotinus writes:
… one of us, being unable to see himself, when he is possessed by
that god brings his contemplation to the point of vision, and pres-
ents himself to his own mind and looks at a beautified image of
himself; but then he dismisses the image, beautiful though it is, and
comes to unity with himself, and, making no more separation, is
one and all together with that god silently present, and is with him
as much as he wants to be and can be. But if he returns again to be-
ing two, while he remains pure he stays close to the god, so as to
be present to him again in that other way if he turns again to him.
In this turning he has the advantage that to begin with he sees him-
self, while he is different from the god; then he hastens inward and
has everything, and leaves perception behind in his fear of being
different, and is one in that higher world; and if he wants to see by
being different, he puts himself outside (Enn. V.8.11).
The spiritual novice should not abandon the use of divine images, yet
should recognize that it is the unity of subject and object that is the ul-
timate goal; thus, he is no longer the seer, but the seen:
How then can anyone be in beauty without seeing it? If he sees it
as something different, he is not yet in beauty, but he is in it most
perfectly when he becomes it. If therefore sight is of something ex-
ternal we must not have sight, or only that which is identical with
its object. This is a sort of intimate understanding and perception
of a self which is careful not to depart from itself by wanting to
perceive too much (Enn. V.8.11).
Thus we find in Plotinus that yearning for the experience of unity
with the One:
… all men are naturally and spontaneously moved to speak of the
god who is in each one of us one and the same. … they would
come to rest in this way somehow supporting themselves on what
is one and the same, and they would not wish to be cut away from
this unity. And this is the firmest principle of all, which our souls
cry out. … that principle … that all things desire the good … would
be true if all things press on to the one and are one, and their de-
sire is of this. … For this is the good to this one nature, belonging

335
Chapter 8 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

to itself and being itself: but this is being one. It is in this sense that
the good is rightly said to be our own; therefore one must not seek
it outside. For where could it be if it had fallen outside being? Or
how could one discover it in non-being? But it is obvious that it is
in being, since it is not non-being. … We have not, then, departed
from being, but are in it, nor has it departed from us: so all things
are one (Enn. VI.5.1).
Redemption for Plotinus therefore lies in the ecstatic unfolding of the
unity of Being that is already present, brought about by the meditative
and ascetic practice which we shall explore in Chapter 10.
I do not mean in … beings of the sense-world—for these three are
separate … but in … beings outside the realm of sense-perception …
so the corresponding realities in man are said to be “outside,” as
Plato speaks of the “inner man” (Enn. V.1.10).
Plotinus makes it very clear that he is not talking about a spatial or ma-
terial principle, but one totally immaterial, the source of which is God.
Thus the self is transformed from within, turning inward unto itself to
be revealed as itself: one with the One.
Denial of this unity within and unity among all created beings leads
to the forms of disorder and conflict in the world, while acceptance of
unity restores the natural order and escape from the world. It is this ac-
ceptance which is the path of the sage, as we have already seen and
will examine in more detail in Chapter 10: the path of redemption that
liberates the soul from the entrapments of this world; the natural return
that corrects the unnatural fall. Awakening to one’s true self is thus the
task and challenge of every person; it remains that individual’s respon-
sibility and is not to be shouldered by anyone else.

336
 Chapter 9

THE REDEEMER – JESUS

The preceding chapter clearly showed the important role played by

the figure of the redeemer in the process of salvation, and, indeed, this
redeemer figure cannot easily be separated from the Gnostic and
Christian plans of redemption. However, particularly when we com-
pare these Gnostic and Christian plans, it is helpful to discuss more
specifically in a separate chapter the nature of the redeemer.
Even to raise the issue of a Gnostic redeemer is somewhat paradox-
ical, given the emphasis the Gnostics placed on self-knowledge. The
Delphic “Know Thyself ” was an important Gnostic ideal. However,
many of the texts emphasize the impossibility of the sleeping soul to
awaken without outside help. We have already considered the empha-
sis placed upon the call to awaken, which presupposes an awakener—
the bearer of the call. In addition to awakening the soul, the redeemer
also serves in many Gnostic traditions to teach the ways of liberation
from the world. As Rudolph comments:
One may call them just as well revealers or emissaries or messen-
gers, who at the command of the supreme God impart the saving
message of the redeeming knowledge (Rudolph, p. 119).
Thus we have the important emphasis on the gnosis or revelation as the
source of this redeeming knowledge. We have also seen in some of the
Gnostic myths that the redeemer assists the soul in its ascent after
death.
Contrary to what some scholars have asserted about the Christianized
Gnostic idea of a redeemer—i.e., that there is no genuine, autonomous
Gnostic redeemer figure—one can see how the Gnostic need for a
redeemer is an inherent part of its world view:
The gnostic view of the world simply demands a revelation which
comes from outside the cosmos and displays the possibility of de-
liverance; for of himself man cannot escape from his prison in
which according to this religion he is shut up (ibid.).
The figure of Jesus is but one of many figures and, as we shall see pres-
ently, the Gnostics were hardly in agreement as to the person of Jesus
and the means of the salvation he offered to the world. The range is

337
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

from the near-orthodox view of some of the Valentinians to the docetic

view that Jesus never truly existed as a physical person.
There is further the important Gnostic notion of the “redeemed
redeemer,” which we introduced earlier in the discussion of “The
Hymn of the Pearl” where the returning prince is identified with the
pearl and the garment. We shall resume our study of this notion in a
separate section of this chapter.

Non-Christian Redeemers

Let us begin with examples of the redeemer from non-Christian

sources, including the Mandeans, the Sethian Gnostics, and the
Manicheans. In the Mandean literature we find no examples of an his-
torical redeemer. Redemption is accomplished through messengers of
light who are essentially mythological figures. In the case of the most
important of these—Manda dHaiye—the redeemer is a mythic person-
ification of the redemption through knowledge. His name means liter-
ally the knowledge of life. There are certain Mandean texts where the
mythological redeemer appears in an historical setting; namely in Je-
rusalem where Jesus is accused of being a prophet of lies, as opposed
to John the Baptist, the true prophet. This sole example reflects the
strong anti-Christian attitude of the Mandeans. Other aspects of this
literature, however, do suggest that the messenger of life returns from
time to time to re-present the original revelation that was made to
Adam. We find an example of this in the following hymn:
Who saw Manda dHaiye, when he went and came into the
world? … He discoursed and his voice was lovely … . he demol-
ished the world and forsook it. … and Ruha thus sits there in
mourning. … and the Seven [the ruling planets] sit there in dismay.
They weep and prolong their lamentation, because their mysteries
have been disclosed. … [and] they will die on the great last day
(ML Oxf. I.14, in F II, p. 237).
The following excerpts—in the “I am” formula—from various
Mandean texts reflect how the messenger of light is seen. It is interest-
ing to note the strong Christian parallels in many of these statements:
I am a shepherd, who loves his sheep, I protect the sheep and the
lambs. … I carry them and give them water to drink … . A fisherman

338
 Non-Christian Redeemers

am I of the Great Life … . a messenger whom the Life sent. He said

to me: “Go and catch fish … .” The Treasure am I … the Treasure of
the Mighty Life. … I became a crown to the king of glory … . I be-
came the illuminator of the worlds of Light … . I became a king to
the Nasoreans, who received praise and stability through my name.
… and by my name they ascend to the Place of Light … . and Manda
dHaiye was established in their hearts. Whoever puts me on … as a
garment, he loves neither wife nor child, gold nor silver … I speak to
them: “The vine which bears fruit ascends, the vine which bears
nothing is cut off here from the light … .” I am a gentle vine … . I
was planted from the glorious root and the Great Life was my
planter. He called me forth, established and commissioned me, he
prepared me by his word and gave me helpers (Jb. 11; 36-37; 57-59;
GR XV.2, in F II, pp. 232-34).
The Nag Hammadi Library has provided us with several examples
that point up the rich variation in the Gnostic literature on the theme of
the redeemer. The definite non-Christian (if not even pre-Christian)
character seen here denies the allegations of earlier scholars that the
Gnostic redeemer was merely a derivative concept based upon the
Christian understanding of revelation. Rather, we can see the free bor-
rowing of Old Testament figures such as Adam, Eve, their children
Abel and Seth, and even the three anonymous men (angels) who vis-
ited Abraham. In “The Paraphrase of Shem,” the redeemer figure is
Derdekeas (whose name is probably derived from the Aramaic word for
child). We have already met Hermes Trismegistus in the Poimandres,
Zostrianos who is obviously patterned after Zoroaster, and the Mandean
figure of Manda dHaiye. We also find redemptive functions associ-
ated with abstract entities such as Wisdom (Sophia), Understanding
(Nous), Thought (Ennoia), etc. To be sure, there is a great emphasis
in the Gnostic literature on the role of Jesus, as we shall see, but the
Christocentric view of Gnostic redemption clearly does not do justice
to the rich traditions from which the Gnostics so freely borrowed.
We have two examples of the Sethian brand of Gnosticism in the Nag
Hammadi Library. In “The Apocalypse of Adam” we possess an ex-
traordinary document that perhaps dates from as early as the first cen-
tury. The strong influence of the Jewish apocalyptic that comes from that
period is clear, as is the definite absence of any Christian themes. The
basic substance of this text is the revelation that Adam received from the
three heavenly visitors we recognize from the story of Abraham:

339
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

Arise, Adam, from the sleep of death, and hear about … the seed of
that man [Seth] to whom life has come, who came from you and
from Eve, your wife (ApocAdam V.66.1-8, in NHL, p. 257).
Despite the fall which enslaved him and Eve to the creator God, Adam
is nonetheless able to transmit the content of what had been revealed
to him to his son Seth:
… the vigor of our eternal knowledge was destroyed in us, and
weakness pursued us. Therefore the days of our life became few.
For I knew that I had come under the authority of death. Now then,
my son Seth, I will reveal to you the things which those men whom
I saw before me at first revealed to me … (ibid., 67.5-21).
We skip over the contents of the revelation that deal with the attempt of
the Demiurge Sakla to punish the world, first through the great Flood,
and then by fire and brimstone (shades of Sodom and Gomorrah), and
the salvation of the proto-Gnostics in defiance of Sakla’s efforts.
Finally, there is the coming of the “illuminator of knowledge,” by
whom is meant Seth. He
will pass by in great glory, in order to leave something of the seed
of Noah and the sons of Ham and Japheth … . And he will redeem
their souls from the day of death (ibid., 76.10-17, p. 260).
The creator God is obviously distressed and attempts in vain to de-
stroy him. The angels and powers of this world ask about his origins,
and there follows a description of thirteen kingdoms, each having its
own account of the illuminator’s origin. These are rather varied and re-
flect many different traditions. The second kingdom, for example,
states that the illuminator
came from a great prophet. And a bird came, took the child who
was born and brought him onto a high mountain. And he was nour-
ished by the bird of heaven (ibid., 78.7-13, pp. 260-61).
The third relates a virgin birth and a casting out of the city where he
and his mother are brought to the desert. The fifth teaches he came
from a drop from heaven, thrown into the sea, while the seventh con-
tinues the saga of the drop of water, now brought by dragons to a cave
where he grows. The accounts are not without their sexual elements:
the ninth describes one of the Muses going by herself to a high moun-
tain, fulfilling her desire alone and becoming pregnant from this

340
 Non-Christian Redeemers

desire; the tenth conceives the illuminator from the desire of the god
for a “cloud of desire,” begetting the child in his hand; and the eleventh
narrates an incestuous beginning of the illuminator, born of the union
of father and daughter. While on one level these narratives suggest
alternative explanations of the birth of the redeemer, on another they
reflect a linear view of the ongoing revelation of the redeemer through-
out history. He makes his appearance in many forms, and these culmi-
nate in the fourteenth and final one which tells the tale of the “kingless
race”:
But the generation without a king over it says that God chose
him [the illuminator] from all the aeons. He caused a knowledge of
the undefiled one of truth to come to be in him. He said, “Out of a
foreign air, from a great aeon, the great illuminator came forth.
And he made the generation of those men whom he had chosen for
himself shine, so that they should shine upon the whole aeon”
(ibid., 82.19–83.4, p. 263).
This is the time now, and the tractate urges those non-Gnostics who
have condemned the “chosen race” to repent:
And your thought is not like that of those men whom you
persecute … . Their fruit does not wither. … they will be on a high
mountain, upon a rock of truth. Therefore they will be named “The
Words of Imperishability and Truth” … . This is the hidden knowl-
edge of Adam, which he gave to Seth, which is the holy baptism of
those who know the eternal knowledge through those born of the
word and the imperishable illuminators, who came from the holy
seed … [i.e., Seth] (ibid., 84.23–85.1; 10-29, pp. 263-64).
The second of the Nag Hammadi texts from the Sethian tradition is
“The Gospel of the Egyptians,” which picks up as it were where “The
Apocalypse of Adam” leaves off, and traces the work of Seth on earth,
as he protects his race of Gnostics. The text begins with the usual
Gnostic ontology, followed by the separation, making of the world,
and the arrogance of the Demiurge Sakla. At this point
the great Seth [the son of Adamas, the primal, pre-separation
Anthropos] saw the activity of the devil, and his many guises, and
his schemes which will come upon his incorruptible, immovable
race … . Then … [he] … gave praise to the great, uncallable, vir-
ginal Spirit … and the whole pleroma … . And he asked for guards
over his seed [the Gnostics].

341
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

Then there came forth from the great aeons four hundred
ethereal angels … to guard the great, incorruptible race, its fruit,
and the great men of the great Seth … (GEgypt III.61.16–62.19,
in NHL, pp. 202-203).
Seth is then sent to this plane from the Pleroma, and assumes the body
of Jesus, passes through the lower worlds, and is baptized
through a Logos-begotten body which the great Seth prepared for
himself, secretly through the virgin, in order that the saints may be
begotten by the holy Spirit … (ibid., 63.10-14, p. 203).
“The Paraphrase of Shem” has many elements in common with the
Sethian Gnosticism already considered. Derdekeas, as we saw in ear-
lier chapters, is the son of the Light who gives his revelation to Shem
(Seth) who is “from an unmixed power … the first being upon the
earth” (Para. Shem VII.1.18-21, in NHL, p. 309). Derdekeas speaks:
It is I who opened the eternal gates which were shut from the
beginning. … I granted perception to those who perceive. I dis-
closed to them all the thoughts and the teaching of the righteous
ones. … But when I had endured the wrath of the world, I was vic-
torious. There was not one of them who knew me. The gates of fire
and endless smoke opened against me. All the winds rose up
against me. … For this is my appearance: for when I have com-
pleted the times which are assigned to me upon the earth, then I will
cast from me my garment of fire. And my unequalled garment will
come forth upon me … (ibid., 36.2-19; 38.28–39.3, pp. 323-25).
Shem in turn must, in true Gnostic fashion, bring this revelation to the
world: “For without you they [the power of light and fire] will not be
revealed until you speak them openly” (ibid., 49.1-3, p. 328).
Another Nag Hammadi tractate that appears to have been second-
arily Christianized, and which also reflects (if not actually belongs to)
the Sethian brand of Gnosticism, is the “Trimorphic Protennoia.” Its
teaching is similar to “The Apocryphon of John” and dates from ap-
proximately the same late-second-century period. The heavenly re-
deemer is Protennoia, the First Thought of God, and her descent comes
in three forms (trimorphic): “She is called by three names, although
she exists alone” (Tri. Prot. XIII.35.6-7, in NHL, p. 462). We shall skip
over the first two—Father or Voice, Mother or Sound—and quote only
from the third: the Son or Word. The parallels with the accounts of
Jesus in the New Testament are obvious, especially with the Logos of

342
 Non-Christian Redeemers

the Prologue to John’s gospel, and are probably not found in the orig-
inal version which is no longer extant:
I am the Word who dwells in ineffable Silence. I dwell in unde-
filed Light and a Thought revealed itself perceptibly through the
great Sound of the Mother … . The third time I revealed myself to
them in their tents as the Word and I revealed myself in the like-
ness of their shape. … I dwell within all the Sovereignties and
Powers and within the Angels and in every movement that exists in
all matter. And I hid myself within them until I revealed myself to
my brethren. And none of them (the Powers) knew me, although it
is I who work in them. … they are ignorant, not knowing their root,
the place in which they grew. … I came down to the world of mor-
tals on account of the Spirit that remains in that which descended
and came forth from the guileless Sophia. … As for me, I put on
Jesus. I bore him from the cursed wood, and established him in the
dwelling places of his Father. And those who watch over their
dwelling places did not recognize me (ibid., 46.5-10; 47.13-16,
19-25,27-28,31-34; 50.12-16, pp. 468-70).
Our last example of a non-Christian redeemer is Mani, who, as we
have seen, identified himself as a redeemer and prophet, with a role
superior even to that of Jesus, since the Persian considered himself to
be the last and the greatest. In the following excerpts from the psalms
we see this virtual identification in role of Jesus and Mani. The term
“Paraclete” in Manicheism, incidentally, was reserved solely for its
founder.
Light resplendent … thou art come; we call unto thee, the children
of the Paraclete, our Lord Mani. … I bless thee, O glorious seat, the
sign of the Wisdom; we worship the sign of thy greatness and thy
mysteries ineffable. Thou art the blessed Root. … Thou art the man-
ifestation of the victory of the Light. … Thou art he that waits for
Christ [the Luminous Jesus], that he may judge the sinners through
thee; today also through thee the Mind puts to shame the Sects of
Error. … Thou art he that crushes evil, setting a garland upon
godliness; thou art he that cleanses the Light from the Darkness;
thou art he that gives rest unto the souls of men. Thou art the honor
that is honored before all the apostles; thou art the throne of
the judges of godliness that separate the two natures (CCXXX,
in Allberry, p. 26).

343
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

Come to me, O living Christ; come to me, O Light of day. The evil
body of the Enemy I have cast away from me, the abode of
Darkness that is full of fear. … O compassionate, O Paraclete, I call
up to thee, that thou wouldst turn unto me in the hour of dread
(CCXLVII, in Allberry, p. 55).
I am like a sheep seeking for its pastor; lo, my true shepherd I have
found, he has brought me to my fold again. … I was heading for
shipwreck before I found the ship of Truth; a divine tacking was
Jesus who helped me (CCLIII, in Allberry, p. 63).
Taste and know that the Lord is sweet. Christ is the word of Truth:
he that hears it shall live. I tasted a sweet taste, I found nothing
sweeter than the word of Truth. … Put in me a holy heart, my God:
let an upright Spirit be new within me. The holy heart is Christ: if
he rises in us, we also shall rise in him. … If we believe in him, we
shall pass beyond death and come to life (fragmentary unnum-
bered psalms, in Allberry, pp. 158-59).

The Redeemed Redeemer

One of the frequently cited characteristics of Gnosticism is the no-

tion of the “redeemed redeemer.” Though not foreign to some Gnostic
traditions, it actually finds its most complete expression in Manicheism.
In the pages that follow we shall examine this theme in more depth,
drawing upon these other traditions in addition to the Manichean. The
classic statement of the Gnostic redeemer myth is from Bultmann, here
summarized by Yamauchi:
1. In the cosmic drama … [the] Primal Man of Light falls and is
torn to pieces by demonic powers. These particles are encapsu-
lated as the sparks of light in the “pneumatics” of mankind.
2. The demons try to stupefy the “pneumatics” by sleep and for-
getfulness so they will forget their divine origin.
3. The transcendent Deity sends another Being of Light, the
“Redeemer,” who descends the demonic spheres, assuming the de-
ceptive garments of a bodily exterior to escape the notice of the
demons.
4. The Redeemer is sent to awaken the “pneumatics” to the truth
of their heavenly origins and gives them the necessary “gnosis” or
“knowledge” to serve as passwords for their heavenly re-ascent.

344
 The Redeemed Redeemer

5. The Redeemer himself re-ascends, defeating the demonic

powers, and thereby makes a way for the spirits that will follow
him.
6. Cosmic redemption is achieved when the souls of men are col-
lected and gathered upward. In this process the Redeemer is him-
self redeemed, i.e. the Primal Man who fell in the beginning is
reconstituted (Yamauchi, pp. 29-30).
We begin with the interesting Gnostic theme of the redeemer com-
ing to gather his scattered self together. This theme, which has import-
ant antecedents, is a variant of the notion of the “redeemed redeemer.”
Epiphanius has preserved for us a passage from “The Gospel of Philip”
which is not contained in the tractate of the same name found in the
Nag Hammadi Library. Scholars are yet unsure if the same gospel is
meant or, if so, it is the same version. Perhaps both gospels are variants
of an earlier text. Epiphanius quotes the Lord’s revelation to Philip,
who is told
what the soul must say as it ascends into heaven, and how it must
answer each of the higher powers; “I have known myself … and I
have collected myself from every side; I have sowed no children
for the Archon, but I have uprooted his roots and I have collected
the members that were scattered, and I know who thou art. For
I … am one of those from on high;” and so, it [Philip’s gospel] says,
“it is allowed to go.” But … if it is found to have begotten a son, it
is held fast here below until it can recover its own children and re-
store them to itself (Panar. XXVI.13.2-3, in F I, pp. 324-25).
In addition to the familiar Gnostic themes of the ascent—the passwords
to elude the hostile archons as the soul makes its way back to the eternal
world above—we find in this passage the clear statement of the soul’s
gathering to itself its own self, reuniting the scattered particles (else-
where: of light) of the soul’s self that had been dispersed in the lower
world of matter. Thus the soul is its own redeeming agent, and escapes
imprisonment by the archons through this process of re-collection from
the flesh. Nothing then is left of the soul in the world below (“I have
sowed no children for the Archon”). As we have already seen in the
Manichean literature, the plan of the Darkness is to trap the light by dis-
persing it through the world of the body by sexual reproduction. It is thus
understandable why the Manicheans utilized this gospel so heavily.
We find many other references to this theme in the Gnostic liter-
ature. For example, Epiphanius cites the Phibionites, a docetic and

345
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

libertine source similar to the Barbelognostics, Ophites, and follow-

ers of Basilides:
But if … a man attains this knowledge and collects himself from
the world through the periods and the flowing-out of desire, he is
no longer held fast in this world, but passes beyond the aforesaid
Archons (Panar. XXVI.10.9, in F I, p. 323).
In the “Acts of Andrew,” the apostle addresses Maximilla, one of his
converted women:
Well done, O nature, you who are saved despite your weakness
and though you did not hide yourself.
Well done, O soul, you who have cried aloud what you have suf-
fered and are returning to yourself.
Well done, O man, you who are learning what is not yours and
desiring what is yours (AA CV 6, in NTA II, p. 411).
A woman beseeches the apostle in the “Acts of Thomas” to help rid
her of demon possession, so that she “may be free and … gathered to-
gether into my original nature, and receive the gift that has been given
to my kindred” (ATh Aa.II.2.43, in NTA II, p. 467). The demon is ex-
punged, after which Thomas invokes Jesus, he “who dost gather all his
nature into one place …” (ibid., 2.48, p. 469).
Most interestingly, as Puech points out (in NTA I, p. 275), these Gnos-
tic expressions of gathering oneself back to oneself have pronounced
Platonic and Neoplatonic antecedents, illustrating again the Platonic-
Gnostic connections. In these antecedents, of course, the context is
more philosophical and directly spiritual in its expression than the
more mythological forms found in the Gnostic literature. In the
Phaedo, Socrates discusses the end of his journey and the attainment of
the object to which all our efforts have been directed during my
past life. So this journey which is now ordained for me carries a
happy prospect for any other man also who believes that his mind
has been prepared by purification. … [which] consists in separat-
ing the soul as much as possible from the body, and accustoming it
to withdraw from all contact with the body and concentrate itself
by itself, and to have its dwelling … alone by itself, freed from the
shackles of the body. … philosophy takes over the soul in this [im-
prisoned] condition and by gentle persuasion tries to set it free. …
and encourages it to collect and concentrate itself by itself …
(Phaedo 67b-d; 83a).

346
 The Redeemed Redeemer

Plotinus discusses the Soul’s fall into the clutches of the body and
its purification of this alien material substance, reminding us of the
“gold in mud” metaphor cited in earlier chapters
In the same way the soul too, when it is separated from the lusts
which it has through the body with which it consorted too much,
and freed from its other affections, purged of what it gets from be-
ing embodied, when it abides alone has put away all the ugliness
which came from the other nature (Enn. I.6.5).
Plotinus’ student Porphyry, borrowing from his teacher, writes in a let-
ter to a pupil:
If thou study to ascend into thyself, gathering from the body all thy
scattered members which have been scattered into a multitude
from the unity which up to a point held sway (in NTA I, p. 275).
As we saw in our discussion of Mani’s system, the Son of Man—
the being sent from Heaven to rescue the trapped particles of light—
becomes trapped himself and also needs redeeming. Thus he leaves
part of himself—particles of light—below in the darkness and returns
to the realm of Light. What has remained behind becomes part of the
“soul of light” that has become scattered throughout the world. Thus,
the redeemer must return to gather back together the scattered particles
of light (including his own!), restoring the original unity of the light.
This idea is obviously blasphemous to the orthodox Christian notion
that Jesus was perfect, before, during, and after his earthly sojourn,
having come solely for the redemption of the world. Several other
Gnostic texts contain the same idea of Jesus’ own redemption.
In “The Gospel of Philip” we read:
Jesus revealed himself at the Jordan: it was the fullness of the
kingdom of heaven. He who was begotten before everything was
begotten anew. He who was once anointed was anointed anew. He
who was redeemed in turn redeemed others (GPh II.70.34–71.3,
in NHL, p. 142).
In a remarkable passage, “The Tripartite Tractate” states of Jesus, as
well as all heavenly beings:
Not only do humans need redemption but also the angels, too,
need redemption along with the image and the rest of the Pleromas
of the aeons and the wondrous powers of illumination. So that we
might not be in doubt in regard to the others, even the Son himself,

347
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

who has the position of redeemer of the Totality, needed redemption

as well—he who had become man—when he gave himself for each
thing which we need, we in the flesh, who are his Church. Now
when he first received redemption from the Logos who had de-
scended upon him, all the rest received redemption from him,
namely those who had taken him to themselves (Tri. Tract.
I.124.25–125.9, in NHL, p. 92).
In the excerpts from the Valentinian Theodotus, we are told that
“Redemption” was necessary even for Jesus, in order that he might
not be detained by the Ennoia of the deficiency in which he was
placed, though conducted thereto through Sophia … (Excerpta 22.7,
in F I, p. 225).
The apocryphal “Acts of John” contains a hymn sung by Jesus with
his disciples before he is delivered up to the “lawless Jews” for the
crucifixion he never really undergoes. Part of the hymn includes the
following:
And why we give thanks, I tell you:
I will be saved, and I will save. Amen.
I will be loosed, and I will loose. Amen.
.................................
I will be united, and I will unite. Amen. 
(AJ 95.4,5,20, in NTA II, pp. 228-29)
Similarly in “The Odes of Solomon” we find the redeemer Jesus first
being redeemed:
Ask, and abound and abide in the love of the Lord.
And yet beloved ones in the Beloved: those who are kept, in Him
that liveth:
And they that are saved in Him that was saved.
After Jesus is saved, he in turn saves his own people:
And I imparted my knowledge without grudging.
........................................
And I sowed my fruits in hearts, and transformed them into myself:
and they received my blessing and lived;
And they were gathered to me and were saved; because they were
to me as my own members and I was their head.
(In Eden, pp. 124, 129)

348
 The Redeemed Redeemer

We have already examined “The Hymn of the Pearl” where the

prince is both the savior and the saved. In fact, one can especially rec-
ognize in this lovely Gnostic story the underlying psychological
dynamic that both the redeemer and the redeemed are one. Through
the fall or separation from God they have been split off (as the Course
would say, mind from Mind), and thus it is the burden of the spiritual
path to reunite what had been separated (the derivation of the word
“religion,” of course, is to “bind again”). As Jesus is quoted in “The
Second Treatise of the Great Seth”:
… I [“that perfect Blessed One of the eternal and incomprehensible
Father and the infinite light”] came to my own and united them with
myself. There is no need for many words, for our Ennoia was with
their Ennoia (Gr. Seth VII.59.9-13, in NHL, p. 333).
And again from “The Gospel of Philip”:
Because of this [the separation] Christ came to repair the separa-
tion which was from the beginning and again unite the two, and to
give life to those who died as a result of the separation and unite
them (GPh II.70.12-17, in NHL, p. 142).
“The Gospel of Eve,” an apocryphal gospel dating from perhaps as
early as the second century, is not really related to a gospel story of
Jesus but rather has Eve in the role of Gnostic revealer of the truth.
Only one brief fragment remains, from which it is impossible to tell for
certain the characters in the dialogue, although Jesus is a likely candi-
date for the tall man, as Eve is for the recipient of the gnosis:
I stood upon a high mountain and saw a tall man … . Then he
spoke to me and said: I am thou and thou art I, and where thou art
there am I, and I am sown in all things; and whence thou wilt, thou
gatherest me, but when thou gatherest me, then gatherest thou thy-
self (GEve in NTA I, p. 241).
This typical Gnostic passage can be understood as referring to the in-
tegral oneness of life. The “gathering” reflects the reuniting of the spir-
itual substance that had been dispersed in the world of materiality.
Thus the gathering One is essentially gathering himself: the light that
had been split off, fragmented, and imprisoned in the body.

349
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

Jesus

We turn now to the specific Christian Gnostic notions of the re-

deemer. We will organize this section under three categories: 1) the
splitting off of the historical Jesus from the mythological Christ; 2) the
resurrection; and 3) non-docetism and docetism, the latter teaching
that Jesus’ earthly existence was illusory, being basically a “phantom.”

1. History vs. Mythology

We have already seen how the process of redemption has two es-
sential components: the primal revelation with its strong mythological
emphasis, and the ongoing revelation which takes us into the world of
history, albeit not always without mythic or symbolic traits associated
with the “historic” revelation. Students of the New Testament are
familiar with this dual aspect in the figure of Jesus. The Prologue to
John’s gospel is perhaps the most famous example of the cosmic Christ,
pre-existent to the creation of the world. The hymn in Philippians
(2:6-11) also falls into this category. In these hymns we see Jesus not
only as the Son of God, but as the pre-existent Son who is with God
from all eternity and shares the function of creating: “He was with God
in the beginning. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had
its being but through him” (Jn 1:2-3). In the Johannine Christology
especially, we see the cosmic Christ as the foundation for the saving
work of the historically incarnate Jesus.
The bringing of the mythic redeemer into contemporary history has
been seen already in the Mandean literature, not to mention those early
“heretics,” Simon Magus and Menander, who set themselves up as di-
vine redeemers. By and large, however, the Gnostic authors do not
concern themselves with the historical Jesus, focusing more on the
mythic Christ or revelatory Jesus who dispenses gnosis to the enlight-
ened Gnostic. While one can denote in the evolving Church a similar
duality (see John’s Prologue), the orthodox never indulged their myth-
ological fantasies anywhere near their Gnostic counterparts.
The primal Christ is also seen in a Manichean psalm quoted in
Chapter 8, page 284. That psalm is indicative of the typical Gnostic
view of the cosmic Christ, de-emphasizing the historical Jesus of
Nazareth. Even when the historical Jesus is the revealer, as he fre-
quently is, the overriding emphasis is on the nature of his revelation

350
 Jesus

with personal references almost always confined to his crucifixion and

resurrection, just as we also find, incidentally, in Jesus’ references to
himself in A Course in Miracles. For insight into some of the political
influences and ramifications of this position the reader may consult
Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels. The Nag Hammadi texts provide ample
evidence for this type of revelation. For the most part they are directed
to the elect of the disciples—John, Thomas, Peter, and James. Some
examples follow.
“The Apocryphon of James” is a dialogue between the risen Jesus,
and James and Peter, and actually is a Gnostic denigration of Peter
with James elevated to a superior position. In addition to the usual
Gnostic teachings on awakening from the sleep of drunkenness, the
evils of the flesh, etc., Jesus exhorts his followers to remember him:
Scorn death, therefore, and take thought for life! Remember my
cross and my death, and you will live! … Verily I say unto you,
none will be saved unless they believe in my cross. … And I have
commanded you [James] to follow me, and I have taught you what
to say before the archons. Observe that I have descended and have
spoken and undergone tribulation and carried off my crown after
saving you (plural). For I came down to dwell with you so that
you in turn might dwell with me (ApocryJs I. 5.31-35; 6.2-4;
8.33–9.1-4, in NHL, pp. 31, 33).
Continuing for the moment this theme of Jesus’ coming down from
Heaven to save us, we note Church Father Hippolytus’ reporting of a
Naassene psalm. He introduces it this way: “They have strung together
this psalm, through which they suppose they are celebrating all the
mysteries of their error.” The beginning of the psalm relates the fate of
the soul trapped in the body: “without escape the wretched soul enters
a labyrinth of evils in its wanderings.” Jesus observes the soul’s suffer-
ing and says:
Father, behold:
Pursued by evils here upon the earth
There roams the work of thine own breath;
It seeks to escape the bitter chaos
But knows not how it shall win through.
Therefore send me, Father;
Bearing the seals I will descend,
I will pass through all the Aeons,
I will disclose all mysteries,

351
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

I will show the forms of the gods

And the hidden things of the holy way,
Awaking knowledge (gnosis), I will impart.
(Ref. V.10.1, in F I, p. 282)
These Naassene sentiments are similar in tone, if not content, to a
Romance of the sixteenth-century St. John of the Cross. In this great
mystic’s poem, Jesus is in Heaven with God, who tells His Son that the
time has come to “ransom the bride serving under the hard yoke,” who
differs from the Son by virtue of living in the flesh. Jesus replies:
My will is Yours,
The son replied,
And My glory is
That Your will be Mine
...................
I will go and tell the world,
Spreading the word
Of Your beauty and sweetness
And of Your sovereignty.
I will go seek My bride
And take upon Myself
Her weariness and labors
In which she suffers so;
And that she may have life
I will die for her,
And, lifting her out of that deep,
I will restore her to You.
(St. John of the Cross, p. 731)
Hippolytus also discusses a group he calls the “Docetists,” which
appears to be a separate group from those Gnostics who have expressed
docetic ideas. The theme of Christ descending and taking on the body
of the virgin-born Jesus we have already seen, yet Hippolytus’
Docetists have the union occurring at birth, and not at the baptism in the
river Jordan.
That only-begotten Son … willed to come down and save them.
And knowing that not even the Aeons can endure to behold in its
entirety the fullness … of all the Aeons … he contracted himself
like a lightning-flash in a minute body … . So … the eternal only-
begotten Son … came into this world, being so great as we have

352
 Jesus

said, invisible, unknowable, without honor, without credit … in or-

der that he should clothe himself with outer darkness—meaning
the flesh … . and when … [he] was born, then he who came from
on high clothed himself with it, and did everything as it is de-
scribed in the Gospels. … so that when the Archon condemned his
own creation to death, to the Cross, that soul which had been
trained within the body should put off the body and nail it to the
Cross, and through it should triumph over authorities and
powers … (Ref. VIII.10.3,5-7, in F I, pp. 310-11).
We return to the Nag Hammadi Library. “The Gospel of Thomas,”
as we have seen, is perhaps the best known of these texts, and bears
many resemblances to the sayings in the synoptic gospels, in addition
to reflecting many Gnostic ideas. The “Gospel” consists of “secret say-
ings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas
wrote down” (GTh II.32.10-11, in NHL, p. 118). Of himself Jesus says:
It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I whom am
the All. From Me did the All come forth, and unto Me did the All
extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and
you will find Me there (GTh II.46.23-28, in NHL, p. 126).
In the Christianized “Sophia of Jesus Christ,” delivered by Jesus,
we read:
But I taught you about Immortal Man, and I loosed the bonds of the
robbers from him. I broke the gates of the pitiless ones before their
faces. I humiliated their malicious intent. They all were shamed and
rose from their ignorance. Because of this, then, I came here, so that
they might be joined with that spirit and breath, and might from two
become one … and go up to the one who is from the beginning …
(Sophia BG 121.13-III.117.1-5, in NHL, pp. 226-27).
“The Letter of Peter to Philip” is, except for the opening paragraph,
not a letter at all but another revelation discourse from Jesus, “an illu-
minator in the darkness.” He appears to the apostles as a voice speak-
ing out of a great light. He answers the standard questions about the
Pleroma and the “deficiency of the Aeons,” and says of himself:
Next concerning the Pleroma, it is I. And I was sent down in the
body because of the seed which had fallen away. And I came down
to their dead product. But they did not recognize me; they were
thinking of me that I was a mortal man (Pt Ph VIII.136.16-22,
in NHL, p. 396).

353
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

As we have seen, the Nag Hammadi text “Melchizedek” is a Gnostic

revelation given to the Old Testament high priest, which prophecies the
coming of Jesus and does so in a distinctly anti-docetic fashion, as is
seen in the following:
They will come in his name, and they will say of him that he is
unbegotten though he has been begotten, that he does not eat even
though he eats, that he does not drink even though he drinks, that
he is uncircumcised though he has been circumcised, that he is un-
fleshly though he has come in flesh, that he did not come to suffer-
ing though he came to suffering, that he did not rise from the dead
though he arose from the dead (Mel. IX.5.1-11, in NHL, p. 400).
We find many of the aforementioned themes, including the anti-
docetic one, in “The Gospel of Truth,” which in tone and statement
sounds in many places like the orthodox view:
This is the gospel of the one who is searched for, which was re-
vealed to those who are perfect through the mercies of the Father
—the hidden mystery, Jesus, the Christ. Through it he enlightened
those who were in darkness. Out of oblivion he enlightened them,
he showed them a way. And the way is the truth which he taught
them. For this reason error grew angry at him, persecuted him, was
distressed at him, and was brought to naught. He was nailed to a
tree; he became a fruit of the knowledge of the Father, which did
not, however, become destructive because it was eaten, but to those
who ate it it gave cause to become glad in the discovery …
(GT I.18.11-30, in NHL, p. 38).
Before continuing, we note here the clear parallels of the above with
Jesus’ own words in A Course in Miracles, describing the world’s re-
action to his message of guiltlessness and truth. We shall return to
these in Chapter 16.
… he was nailed to a tree; he published the edict of the Father on
the cross. O such great teaching! He draws himself down to death
though life eternal clothes him. Having stripped himself of the per-
ishable rags, he put on imperishability, which no one can possibly
take away from him. Having entered the empty spaces of terrors,
he passed through those who were stripped naked by oblivion, be-
ing knowledge and perfection, proclaiming the things that are in
the heart of the Father in order to teach those who will receive
teaching. … For when they had seen him and had heard him, he
granted them to taste him and to smell him and to touch the

354
 Jesus

beloved Son. … For he came by means of fleshly appearance while

nothing blocked his course because it was incorruptibility and
irresistibility. … Light spoke through his mouth, and his voice gave
birth to life. He gave them thought and understanding and mercy
and salvation and the powerful spirit from the infiniteness and the
gentleness of the Father. He made punishments and tortures cease,
for it was they which were leading astray from his face some who
were in need of mercy, in error and in bonds; and with power he
destroyed them and confounded them with knowledge. He became
a way for those who were lost and knowledge for those who were
ignorant, a discovery for those who were searching, and a support
for those who were wavering, immaculateness for those who were
defiled (GT I.20.25–21.2; 30.27–31.35, in NHL, pp. 39, 43-44).
Few traditional Christians would take exception to these words, de-
spite their Gnostic flavor.
We find another traditional view of Jesus in “The Treatise on
Resurrection,” which we shall return to when we consider the Gnostic
views of resurrection. Here at the beginning of the treatise we find a
passage whose content could easily have come from Paul:
How did the Lord make use of things while he existed in flesh
and after he had revealed himself as Son of God? He lived in this
place where you remain, speaking about the Law of Nature—but I
call it “Death”! Now the Son of God … was Son of Man. He em-
braced them both, possessing the humanity and the divinity, so that
on the one hand he might vanquish death through his being Son of
God, and that on the other through the Son of Man the restoration
to the Pleroma might occur; because he was originally from above,
a seed of the Truth, before this structure of the cosmos had come
into being (Treat. Res. I.44.13-36, in NHL, p. 51).
Finally, “The Tripartite Tractate” says this of a Jesus incapable of suf-
fering, yet otherwise spoken of in traditional terms:
And there is one who is greater than they, who was appointed since
they have need of him, begotten by the spiritual Logos along with
them as one who needs the exalted one, begotten in hope and ex-
pectation in accord with the thought which is the seed of salvation.
… but he alone is the one of whom it is worthy to speak … [the]
one eternally, an unbegotten, impassible Logos who came into be-
ing in flesh … . he appeared being exalted, because he had let him-
self be conceived without sin, stain, and defilement. … The Savior

355
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

was a bodily image of the unitary one. He is the Totality in bodily

form. Therefore he preserved the form of indivisibility, from which
comes impassibility. (Tri. Tr. I.111.23-29; 113.31-38; 115.14-17;
116.28-33, in NHL, pp. 85-88).

2. Resurrection
A key point of contention between the Gnostics and the orthodox
Church was their respective understandings of the resurrection of Je-
sus. Briefly stated here, the orthodox position was that the resurrection
was a physical event seen with one’s naked eye. Quite different from
this was the Gnostic understanding that the resurrection was a spiritual
event, apprehended through the mind, and thus was not restricted to the
fifty-day period between the crucifixion and ascension as is related in
the New Testament literature. The Gnostics taught that the resurrection
was an experience available to all, especially to the “elect” able to re-
ceive it. Removed from its literal physical interpretation, Jesus’ resur-
rection, according to the Gnostics, occurred before his crucifixion; in
other words, his spiritual awakening preceded his death on the cross.
As Pagels has pointed out, much of the Gnostic literature begins
with the resurrection of Jesus and moves forward from there, in contra-
distinction to the canonical gospels, which begin either with Jesus’
earthly and cosmic birth (Matthew, Luke, and John) or with the begin-
ning of his ministry (Mark). This highlights the importance for the
Gnostic of the experience of Jesus, rather than his life or its historical
witnesses. Pagels discusses at great length the political implications of
this distinction in the battle over who represented the true Church; the
interested reader may consult The Gnostic Gospels.
That this controversy was already raging in full form at the turn of
the century is seen in the reference in 2 Timothy, quoted before in Part I:
Talk of this kind [pointless philosophical discussions] corrodes like
gangrene, as in the case of Hymenaeus and Philetus, the men who
have gone right away from the truth and claim that the resurrec-
tion has already taken place. Some people’s faith cannot stand up
to them (2 Tm 2:17-18).
Referring to this citation, Hippolytus wrote:
This Nicholas [considered by the Church to be one of the ancestors
of this heresy] … impelled by an alien (diabolical) spirit, was the
first to affirm that the resurrection has already come, meaning by

356
 Jesus

“resurrection” the fact that we believe in Christ and receive bap-

tism, but he denied the resurrection of the flesh. And at his instiga-
tion several men founded sects. These included above all the so-
called Gnostics, to whom belonged Hymenaeus and Philetus (com-
batted by the Apostle) (De resurrectione, in Puech, p. 81n.77).
Regarding Menander, another Gnostic ancestor, Irenaeus wrote:
His [Simon Magus’] successor was Menander, a Samaritan by
race, who himself attained to the highest point of magic. … His
disciples received resurrection through baptism into him, and they
can no longer die, but remain without growing old and immortal
(Adv. haer. I.23.5, in F I, p. 33).
Similarly, Tertullian wrote:
But the insane opinion of the Samaritan heretic Menander is also
rejected, who will have it that death has not only nothing to do with
his disciples, but in fact never reaches them. He pretends to have
received such a commission from the secret power of One above,
that all who partake of his baptism become immortal, incorrupt-
ible, and instantaneously invested with resurrection-life (De Anima
50.2, in Puech, pp. 81-82n.77).
Let us now look at the specific Gnostic teachings. We begin with
“The Treatise on Resurrection,” written by an anonymous teacher to a
certain Rheginos in the late second century. The tract is interesting in
its combining a clear Gnostic (mostly Valentinian) point of view with,
in many respects, an almost traditional Pauline one. Nonetheless, it is
noteworthy that the teaching here is very similar to that of Hymenaeus
and Philetus cited in 2 Timothy. The treatise is in response to the
pupil’s questions about the meaning of death and resurrection. This
meaning is understood by very few, for others (the orthodox) are reluc-
tant to learn the truth, believing they already have it. The first state-
ment of this truth comes right out of the Pauline tradition:
The Savior swallowed up death … for he put aside the world
which is perishing. He transformed himself into an imperishable
Aeon and raised himself up, having swallowed the visible by the
invisible, and he gave us the way of our immortality. Then, in-
deed, as the Apostle said (Rm 8:17, Ep 2:5-6): “We suffered with
him, and we arose with him, and we went to heaven with him.”
Now if we are manifest in this world wearing him, we are that
one’s beams, and we are embraced by him until our setting, that is

357
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

to say, our death in this life. We are drawn to heaven by him, like
beams by the sun, not being restrained by anything. This is the
spiritual resurrection which swallows up the psychic in the same
way as the fleshly (Treat. Res. I.45.14.46.2, in NHL, p. 51).
However, the strong Gnostic teaching becomes apparent as the Trea-
tise continues:
The thought of those who are saved shall not perish. The mind of
those who have known him shall not perish. Therefore, we are
elected to salvation and redemption since we are predestined from
the beginning not to fall into the foolishness of those who are with-
out knowledge, but we shall enter into the wisdom of those who
have known the Truth … . What, then, is the resurrection? … It is
no illusion, but it is truth. Indeed, it is more fitting to say that the
world is an illusion, rather than the resurrection which has come
into being through our Lord the Savior, Jesus Christ. … the
resurrection … is the revelation of what is, and the transformation
of things, and a transition into newness. For imperishability de-
scends upon the perishable; the light flows down upon the dark-
ness, swallowing it up; and the Pleroma fills up the deficiency.
These are the symbols and the images of the resurrection. This is
what makes the good.
Therefore, do not think in part, O Rheginos, nor live in confor-
mity with this flesh for the sake of unanimity, but flee from the
divisions and the fetters, and already you have the resurrection. For
if he who will die knows about himself that he will die … why not
consider yourself as risen and already brought to this? (ibid.,
46.22-32; 48.3–49.24, pp. 52-53)
The aforementioned “Gospel of Mary” was found in the early part
of this century, and is reproduced in the English publication of the Nag
Hammadi Library. The emphasis here is placed not on the physical
perception of Jesus’ resurrection, but on the interior vision. The
“Gnostic” Mary explains to the “orthodox” Peter:
I saw the Lord in a vision and I said to him, “Lord, I saw you today
in a vision. … does he who sees the vision see it through the soul or
through the spirit?” The Savior answered and said, “He does not see
through the soul nor through the spirit, but the mind which is be-
tween the two—that is what sees the vision …” (GM BG 10.10-23,
in NHL, p. 472).

358
 Jesus

We will return to the Gnostic visionary experiences in Part III when we

consider the important issue of hearing the Voice of the Holy Spirit.
“The Gospel of Philip” has particular importance for our discussion
on the sacraments in the following chapter. Yet, this third-century
Valentinian tract also contains some important statements concerning
the Gnostic view of resurrection, as seen here:
Those who say that the Lord died first and then rose up are in
error, for he rose up first and then died. … Those who say they will
die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the
resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive noth-
ing (GPh II.56.15-18; 73.1-4, in NHL, pp. 134,144).
The “Acts of Thomas” contains a lovely parable of the soul’s jour-
ney. Thomas rides on a talking colt who carries him to the “rest.” On
arriving at the gates to this city the colt drops dead at the apostle’s feet
and Thomas refuses to resurrect him:
I could indeed raise it up through the name of Jesus Christ. But this
is not expedient at all. For he who gave it speech that it might
speak was able also to make it not die. But I do not raise it up, not
because I am not able but because this is what is useful and help-
ful for it (ATh Aa II.2.41, in NTA II, p. 466).
The colt symbolizes the body, whose only function is to carry the soul
to its heavenly rest. Having served that function, and having no inher-
ent worth, it is simply laid aside (buried). Its resurrection therefore
would make no sense and is not “useful and helpful.”
Finally we consider “The Testimony of Truth,” that Gnostic polemic
against the orthodox Church as well as numerous Gnostic groups. The
text is fragmentary, yet is intact enough in these sections to present a
coherent statement that the resurrection is self-knowledge:
And some say, “On the last day we will certainly arise in the res-
urrection.” But they do not know what they are saying, for the last
day is when those belonging to Christ … . those who have
knowledge … the resurrection … come to know the Son of Man,
that is, he has come to know himself. This is the perfect life, that
man know himself by means of the All.
Do not expect, therefore, the carnal resurrection, which is de-
struction, and they are not stripped of it (the flesh) who err in ex-
pecting a resurrection that is empty. They do not know the power
of God, nor do they understand the interpretation of the scriptures

359
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

on account of their double-mindedness (Test. Truth IX.34.26–35.4;

36.8–37.9, in NHL, pp. 408-409).

3. Non-Docetism and Docetism

One of the most widely known forms of Gnosticism is docetism, the
belief that Jesus did not really live in the flesh but merely appeared to
do so. “Appear” is the root meaning of “docetism,” the Greek word for
“to appear” being dokein. It is a mistake, however, to believe that all
Gnostics were adherents to this view, a mistake not even some scholars
have avoided. We begin our discussion by citing some examples of non-
docetic Gnostics who emphasize the real sufferings undergone by Jesus.
“The Tripartite Tractate” speaks of Jesus as the “one who will be be-
gotten and who will suffer” (Tri. Tract. I.113.32-34, in NHL, pp. 86-87):
He it was who is our Savior in willing compassion, who is that
which they [humanity] were. So, for their sake he became mani-
fest in an involuntary suffering. They became flesh and soul—that
is, eternally—which things hold them, and in corruptibility they
die. … Not only did he take upon himself the death of those whom
he thought to save, but also he accepted their smallness to which
they had descended, when they had fasted in body and soul. He did
so because he had let himself be conceived and born as an infant,
in body and soul (ibid., 114.31–115.11, p. 87).
Another strong witness to certain Gnostic groups believing in a suf-
fering Jesus is found in “The Letter of Peter to Philip.” After the reve-
lation to the apostles was completed, they
gave thanks to the Lord with every blessing. And they returned to
Jerusalem. And while coming up they spoke with each other on the
road concerning the light [Jesus] which had come. And a remark
was made concerning the Lord. It was said, “If he, our Lord, suf-
fered, then how much must we suffer?”
Peter answered, saying, “He suffered because of us, and it is nec-
essary for us too to suffer because of our smallness.”
Then a voice came to them, saying, “I have told you many
times, it is necessary for you to suffer. It is necessary that they
bring you to synagogues and governors, so that you shall suffer”
(Pt Ph VIII.138.8-27, in NHL, p. 397).
“The Interpretation of Knowledge” originally was most likely a
homily delivered to a church community torn apart by jealousy and

360
 Jesus

judgment. The audience is exhorted to be like Jesus, who emulated the

true Father who is beyond judgment and hatred, as opposed to the jeal-
ous Demiurge or false father. In this context the writer says of Jesus:
And he was crucified and he died—not his own death, for he did
not deserve to be killed because of the Church of mortals. They re-
moved him so that they might keep him in the Church. And he an-
swered her with humiliations, since in this way he bore the
suffering which he had suffered. … And through him who was dis-
graced we receive the forgiveness of sins. And through the one
who was disgraced and the one who was redeemed we receive
grace (Interp. Kn. XI.5.30-7; 12.25-29, in NHL, pp. 429,431).
We have already quoted from “The Gospel of Truth” and so will
simply highlight the relevant passages:
For this reason [salvation] the merciful one, the faithful one, Jesus,
was patient in accepting sufferings until he took that book [“the
living book of the living” that is part of the Father’s mind], since
he knows that his death is life for many. … For this reason Jesus
appeared; he put on that book … (GT I.20.10-14; 23-24, in NHL,
p. 39).
It is clear from this why Valentinus considered himself to be part of the
apostolic Church. One could not ask for a more fervent “confession of
faith” in the suffering Lord who died for the salvation of the world.
This, despite the more docetic comment later in the text:
For he came by means of fleshly appearance while nothing blocked
his course because it was incorruptibility and irresistibility (ibid.,
31.4-9, p. 43).
It is also clear that suffering does not have the role in Valentinus we
find in the orthodox position. There suffering is in itself redemptive,
as we have seen. Here the suffering is, in Jonas’ words, a “stratagem”
designed to divert the attention of the archons as Christ leaves the body
of Jesus before his death (Jonas p. 195). Thus Christ is able to return
to the Pleroma, a theme spelled out more clearly in other Valentinian
texts. The real suffering is Sophia’s, before the making of the world,
and this is the true Valentinian emphasis.
We turn now to the docetic references among the Gnostics, begin-
ning with Marcion who professed an extreme form of this belief. We
have already seen the tremendous revulsion this second-century

361
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

teacher felt for the body and the material world, the creations of the
inferior God of the Old Testament. Thus Jesus, God’s true Son, could
have nothing whatsoever to do with such tainted flesh that was born of
the antipathy to the true Father. In fact, Marcion’s Jesus was not even
born in this world through a woman’s body. He suddenly appears, sent
to earth from the heavenly realm having gone through none of the
human developmental stages. Tertullian cites Marcion’s interpretation
of the gospel statement “Who is my mother?” (Mt 12:48)15 as illustra-
tive of this fact. We find a similar expression in Manicheism, where the
notion that Jesus was born of a woman was repugnant:
If Christ was conceived in a woman’s womb he cannot be divine:
the whole structure of his royal origin is brought tumbling to the
ground in ruins by any that shall say he was born in a woman’s
womb (Allberry, p. 121n).
Thus, not even the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, avoiding the taint of any
involvement with sexuality, was enough for the extreme anti-corporeal
Manicheans.
We have already seen that Marcion recognized only an edited ver-
sion of Luke’s gospel as canonical. In his treatment of the beginning
of Jesus’ earthly “life” we see an example of this in his omissions,
transposition, and interpolation of the word “God” for “Jesus,” and his
rendering of Luke 3:1-2 and 4:31. The original reads:
In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar’s reign … the word of
God came to John son of Zechariah … . He [Jesus] went down to
Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and taught them on the sabbath.
Marcion’s version reads:
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, God came
down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught on the sabbath
days (in Mansel, p. 215).
The seeming death of Jesus is brought about by the hatred of the
demiurgic God of the Old Testament, who jealously observed this
Son of the good God, whose power and glory were manifest in this
world. It was this heavenly power that represented the end of the Old
Testament’s law and the power of its God. As this God witnessed his
subjects being attracted to Jesus, according to Marcion, he aroused

15. See also “The Gospel of the Ebionites,” pp. 369-70 below.

362
 Jesus

the wrath of the Jews, his sons, against this divine intruder. The Jews,
faithful to their creator, persecute and eventually murder Jesus who
then descends to hell. It goes without saying that Marcion denies the
physical resurrection of this illusory yet nonetheless abhorrent body.
However, as commented earlier, Marcion does not deny the proph-
ecies of the Old Testament prophets, nor the Messianic expectations of
the Jews, since these have nothing to do with the coming of Jesus, but
rather with the advent of the earthly ruler, the son of the Demiurge.
This messianic figure will come only for the restoration and salvation
of the already dispersed Jews. Jesus on the other hand was sent by his
Father for the redemption of the whole world, at least for those who
believe in him and reject the Old Testament Jewish God.
Returning to the Manicheans, Augustine describes their docetism:
They assert … that Christ was the one called by our Scriptures
the Serpent, and they assure us that they have been given insight
into this in order to open the eyes of knowledge and to distinguish
between Good and Evil. Christ came in the latter days to save
souls, not bodies. He did not really exist in the flesh, but in mock-
ery of the human senses proferred the simulated appearance of
fleshly form, and thereby also produced the illusion not only of
death, but also of resurrection (Augustine, de haer. 46.5, in Haardt,
p. 347).
In the Nag Hammadi sources we find many expressions of
docetism. One of the major themes of “The First Apocalypse of
James” is the so-called suffering of Jesus. The Lord appears to the con-
cerned James who says:
“Rabbi, I have found you! I have heard of your sufferings, which
you endured. And I have been much distressed. … I was wishing that
I would not see this people. They must be judged for these things
that they have done. …” The Lord said, “James, do not be con-
cerned for me or for this people. I am he who was within me. Never
have I suffered in any way, nor have I been distressed. And this
people has done me no harm” (1 ApocJs V.31.5-22, in NHL, p. 245).
“The Second Treatise of the Great Seth” is an overtly polemic at-
tack on the orthodox Church. It focuses heavily on the Gnostic inter-
pretation of the crucifixion as against the orthodox view, and holds to
the “laughing Jesus” docetic portrait found in Basilides. The revealer
is Jesus himself and he states:

363
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

I visited a bodily dwelling. I cast out the one who was in it first,
and I went in. And the whole multitude of the archons became trou-
bled. And all the matter of the archons as well as all the begotten
powers of the earth were shaken when it saw the likeness of the
Image, since it was mixed. And I am the one who was in it, not re-
sembling him who was in it first. For he was an earthly man, but I, I
am from above the heavens. … I am a stranger to the regions below
(Gr. Seth VII.51.20–52.10, in NHL, pp. 330-31).
The archons plot against Jesus, but to no avail:
I did not succumb to them as they had planned. But I was not af-
flicted at all. Those who were there punished me. And I did not die
in reality but in appearance, lest I be put to shame by them be-
cause these are my kinsfolk. … I was about to succumb to fear, and
I suffered according to their sight and thought, in order that they
may never find any word to speak about them. For my death which
they think happened, happened to them in their error and blind-
ness, since they nailed their man [Simon of Cyrene] unto their
death. For their Ennoias did not see me, for they were deaf and
blind. But in doing these things, they condemn themselves. Yes,
they saw me; they punished me. It was another, their father, who
drank the gall and the vinegar; it was not I. They struck me with
the reed; it was another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoul-
der. It was another upon whom they placed the crown of thorns.
But I was rejoicing in the height over all the wealth of the archons
and the offspring of their error, of their empty glory. And I was
laughing at their ignorance. … I am Jesus Christ … who is exalted
above the heavens … . I alone am the friend of Sophia. I have been
in the bosom of the father from the beginning, in the place of the
sons of the truth, and the Greatness (ibid., 55.14-56.19; 69.21-22;
70.4-8; pp. 332, 337-38, my italics).
“The Apocalypse of Peter,” probably belonging to the third century
A.D., is another Gnostic treatise attacking the orthodox Church. Parallels
are drawn between the persecution of Jesus and the persecution of the
Gnostics at the hands of the Church authorities. Near the end of his rev-
elation to Peter, Jesus exhorts his apostle to be brave. Peter then sees
Jesus
seemingly being seized by them. And I said, “What do I see, O
Lord, that it is you yourself whom they take, and that you are

364
 Jesus

grasping me? Or who is this one, glad and laughing on the tree?
And is it another one whose feet and hands they are striking?”
The Savior said to me, “He whom you saw on the tree, glad and
laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this one into whose hands and
feet they drive the nails is his fleshly part, which is the substitute
being put to shame, the one who came into being in his likeness.
But look at him and me” (ApocPt VII.81.5-24, in NHL, p. 344).
We see expressed in these passages the prominent Gnostic view that
the power of Christ descended upon the earthly Jesus at the moment of
his baptism, and left his body just before the crucifixion. Thus all re-
demptive meaning is removed from the cross, as Jesus the Christ never
suffered. Rather, the world’s redemption is accomplished by virtue of
the Call Jesus brings from above, as well as his being the model for the
“distinction of kinds,” separating out the true from the false, the form-
less from the form, the divinity from the corporeal (see Basilides be-
low, pp. 366-67). In Chapter 5, pages 169-70, we quoted from the
“Acts of John,” concerning the ontological separating out by the cross
of the fixed from the unstable. We continue that passage now:
… nor am I the man who is on the Cross … . I was taken to be that I
am not, I who am not what for many others I was … . I have suf-
fered none of those things which they will say of me … . You hear
that I suffered, yet I suffered not … and that I was pierced, yet I was
not wounded; that I was hanged, yet I was not hanged; that blood
flowed from me, yet it did not flow … (AJ 99,101, in NTA II, p.
233).
The disciple John, recipient of this revelation, then describes his reac-
tions to the people:
… he was taken up, without any of the multitude seeing him. And
going down I laughed at them all, since he had told me what they
had said about him; and I held this one thing fast in my mind, that
the Lord had performed everything as a symbol and a dispensation
for the conversion and salvation of man (ibid., 102, pp. 234-35).
We turn now to the Gnostic witnesses as described by the Church
Fathers. Of the infamous (to the Church Fathers) Cerinthus, a contem-
porary of John, Irenaeus writes:
Jesus, he suggested, was not born of a virgin, for that seemed to
him impossible, but was the son of Joseph and Mary, just like all

365
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

the rest of men but far beyond them in justice and prudence and
wisdom. After his baptism Christ descended upon him in the form
of a dove, from the power that is over all things, and then he pro-
claimed the unknown Father and accomplished miracles. But at the
end Christ separated again from Jesus, and Jesus suffered and was
raised again, but Christ remained impassible, since he was pneu-
matic [i.e., of the spirit] (Adv. haer. I.26.1, in F I, p. 36).
Carpocrates’ span of activity was the early decades of the second
century, and Irenaeus continues:
Carpocrates and his disciples say that … Jesus was born of Joseph
and like the rest of men, but he was distinct from the rest in that,
since his soul was strong and pure, it remembered what it had seen
in the regions of the unbegotten God: and for this reason power was
sent down to him that he might escape the world-creators by it. It
passed through them all and was set free in all, and ascended up to
him, and likewise the souls which embraced the like (ibid., I.25.1,
p. 36).
Saturninus was probably a contemporary of Basilides, and Irenaeus
reports:
The Savior he [Saturninus] assumed to be unbegotten, incorpo-
real, and without form, but appeared in semblance as a man. The
God of the Jews, he says, was one of the angels; and because all
the archons wanted to destroy the Father, Christ came for the de-
struction of the God of the Jews and the salvation of those who be-
lieve in him; these are they who have the spark of life in them
(ibid., I.24.2, p. 41).
We saw in Chapter 1 that the Church Fathers presented two differ-
ent versions of Basilides’ theory, and this difference is most manifest
in their understanding of Jesus’ suffering and death. We first quote
Irenaeus, writing about the docetic Basilides:
The unoriginate and ineffable Father, seeing their disastrous
plight, sent his first-born Nous—he is the one who is called the
Christ—to liberate those who believe in him … . he appeared on
earth as a man and performed miracles. For the same reason also
he did not suffer, but a certain Simon of Cyrene was compelled to
carry his cross for him; and this Simon was transformed by him
(Jesus) so that he was thought to be Jesus himself, and was cruci-
fied through ignorance and error. Jesus, however, took on the form

366
 Jesus

of Simon, and stood by laughing at them. For since he was an in-

corporeal power and the Nous of the unborn Father, he was trans-
formed in whatever way he pleased, and in this way he ascended
to him who had sent him, laughing at them … . Therefore those
who know these things have been set free from the rulers who
made the world. It is not right to confess him who was crucified,
but him who came in the form of a man … . Thus … if anyone con-
fesses the crucified, he is still a slave, and under the power of
those who made the bodies; he who denies him has been set free
from them, and knows the saving dispensation made by the un-
originate Father (ibid., I.24.4, pp. 60-61).
In the version of Hippolytus, we find quite a different view of Je-
sus’ suffering, paralleling other Gnostic systems; namely, that Jesus’
sufferings were real and served to separate out his spirit from his body,
and so make the distinction for all people. As different as these two
versions are, they nonetheless agree in differing from the orthodox
Christian understanding that Jesus’ sufferings were redemptive, aton-
ing for the sins of the world.
When the birth … had taken place, all that concerns the Savior hap-
pened in a similar way to what is written in the gospels. These
things happened, says he, so that Jesus might become the first-
fruits of the “distinction of kinds” among what was confused [form
and formlessness]. … There suffered, therefore, that bodily part of
him which derived from the formlessness, and it returned to the
formlessness. There rose up that psychic part of him … . He bore
aloft what was from the boundary Spirit, and it stayed in the
boundary Spirit. … the suffering of Jesus took place with no other
object than the distinction into kinds of what had been confused.
For he [Basilides] says the whole Sonship which was left behind in
the formlessness to give and receive benefit must be distinguished
into kinds in the very way in which Jesus also was distinguished
into kinds (Ref. VII.27.8-10, 12, in F I, pp. 73-74).
We turn now to the Ophites, a Gnostic group we spoke of earlier. In
their understanding, Jesus is the product of Sophia’s pleas for help in
releasing the power of light that is trapped in the body. Christ (Sophia’s
brother) thus descends through the spheres until he enters the body of
Jesus at his baptism (a theme we have already seen), and then leaves
before his death after preaching the “unknown God.” Jesus then rises
in his psychic body, not the physical body that was believed by the

367
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

orthodox to have risen. The risen Christ takes with him the trapped par-
ticles of light that are released from those (the Ophites) who receive the
secret Gnostic revelation. It is interesting to note not only the strong
Valentinian influence, but the fidelity in many places to the biblical tra-
dition, not to mention the parallel with this Manichean teaching:
Christ … is the Nous. He came once from the Upper Region, liber-
ated the major share of this [trapped Divine] power for God, and
when at last he was crucified, he thereby established the Gnosis that
in this way the Divine Power is also imprisoned in Hyle [Matter]
and crucified in it (in Haardt, pp. 338-39).
The Ophites:
Since she [Sophia] had herself no respite either in heaven or in
earth, in her grief she summoned her mother [First Woman] to her
aid … [who] took pity at the repentance of her daughter, and …
Christ [was] sent. … out and descended to his sister … . When So-
phia who is below knew that her brother was coming down to her,
she both announced his coming through John, and prepared a bap-
tism of repentance, and prepared in advance Jesus, so that when he
came down Christ would find a clean vessel, and so that … a
woman might receive annunciation from Christ. … And Jesus, be-
ing born from a virgin … was wiser and purer and more just than all
men. Bound up with Sophia, Christ descended, and so Jesus Christ
came to be.
Many of his disciples, they say, did not know the descent of
Christ upon him, but when Christ descended on him, then he began
to perform acts of power, to heal, and to proclaim the unknown
Father, and to confess himself openly as son of the First Man. At
this the rulers [archons] and the father became angry with Jesus and
arranged for him to be killed. While he was being led to it, Christ
himself and Sophia went off, they say, to the Imperishable Aeon,
but Jesus was crucified. Christ did not forget him, but sent a cer-
tain power down into him, which raised him in the body. This body
was of soul and spirit [the psychic body of the Valentinians]; for
what was worldly he left in the world. When the disciples saw that
he had risen, they did not know him; they did not even know Christ
himself, through whom he rose from the dead. They [the Ophites]
say that the greatest error which arose among his disciples was that
they thought he had risen in a worldly body, and did not know that
“flesh and blood do not possess the kingdom of God” (1 Co 15:50)
(Adv. haer. I.30.12-13, in F I, pp. 92-93).

368
 Jesus

We examine now the Valentinian system of Ptolemaeus as given by

the Church Father Clement of Alexandria, closely parallel to the ac-
count given by Irenaeus. It is also most likely one of the prototypes for
the Ophite speculation seen above. We pick up the story with the de-
scent into Jesus:
But when he came to the “place,” Jesus found, ready to be put on,
the Christ who had been foretold, whom the prophets and the law
had proclaimed, who was the image of the Savior. But this psychic
Christ whom he put on was invisible. Therefore it was necessary
that he who was to come into the world, that he might be seen and
touched, and be active in affairs there, should also wear a body
perceptible to the senses. A body was therefore woven for him out
of invisible, psychic substance, and, by the power of a divine
preparation, it came into the world of sense. … That he himself was
other than that which he assumed is made clear from what he
confesses … .
Here Clement cites various scriptural passages in support of the
Valentinian assertion that Jesus and Christ are not the same; i.e., the
Jesus who suffers and the Christ who departs before the crucifixion.
We continue after these citations:
He died, when the Spirit which had come upon him in Jordan de-
parted from him; not that it might exist separately, but rather it
withdrew in order that death might operate. For how would the
body have died, if life had been present in him? Death would then
in fact have had dominion over the Savior, which is absurd. But
death was outwitted by craftiness. For when the body died and
when death had taken hold of it, the Savior sent forth the ray of
power which had come upon him and destroyed death, and he
raised the mortal body after he had scattered the passions. The psy-
chic element is raised again in this way and is saved. The spiritual
[obviously referring to the Gnostics] who have believed obtain a
higher salvation, receiving the souls as wedding garments (Excerpta
59.2-4; 61.1,6-8, in F I, pp. 151-52).
The narrative here concludes similarly to the Ophite text above with
the “fullness of joy and peace” that characterizes the end of the world
and the consummation of the “eternal marriage of the union.”
“The Gospel of the Ebionites,” which dates from the first half of the
second century, also attests to the docetic Jesus: Jesus was not born of

369
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

a virgin, for his divinity does not rest with a divine begetting, but rather
with the bestowal by the Holy Spirit when he was baptized. This be-
stowal is the union of Jesus with the divine Christ. Fragments of this
text are found in the writings of the Church Father Epiphanius:
And as he came up from the water, the heavens were opened and
he saw the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove that descended and
entered into him. … Moreover they [the Ebionites] deny that he
was a man, evidently on the ground of the word which the Savior
spoke … : Who is my mother and who are my brethren? (Haer.
30.13,7-8, in NTA I, pp. 157-58)
Elsewhere Epiphanius supplies another passage which expresses
this docetic belief that Jesus was not really born:
… this Christ is the one who descended and showed men this
knowledge, whom they also call Jesus. And he was not born from
Mary, but was manifested through Mary. And he has not assumed
flesh, unless it be a mere appearance (Panar. XXVI.10.4-5, in F I,
p. 322).
In the very few fragments that the Fathers purport to be Valentinus’
own words, we have but one, cited by Clement, in which this great
teacher speaks of Jesus. The fragment is of particular note because of
its agreement with Hippolytus’ report that the Valentinians believed
that Jesus’ body was spiritual. As we see here, Jesus could not digest
nor eliminate what he ate.
In the letter to Agathopus Valentinus says: “Whilst enduring every-
thing he was continent. Jesus realized divinity: he ate and drank in
a special way, without evacuating the food. So great was his power
of continence that the food was not corrupted in him, for he did not
possess corruptibility” (Strom. III.7, in F I, p. 242).
Returning to the “Acts of John” we find several strong docetic pas-
sages. In one group, Jesus’ appearance is continually changing: to
James he is first like a child and then a young man, while to John, a
handsome man and later a bald-headed man with a thick flowing
beard. John never sees Jesus with his eyes closed, and his breast some-
times is soft and smooth, other times is hard as a rock.
I will tell you another glory, brethren; sometimes when I meant
to touch him I encountered a material, solid body; but at other
times again when I felt him, his substance was immaterial and

370
 Origen – Platonism

incorporeal, and as if it did not exist at all. … And I often wished,

as I walked with him, to see his footprint in the earth, whether it
appeared—for I saw him raising himself from the earth—and I
never saw it (AJ 93, in NTA II, p. 227).
On Mount Tabor, John sees Jesus
not dressed in clothes at all, but stripped of those that we usually
saw upon him, and not like a man at all … (ibid., 90, p. 226).
One of the more popular gospel literary genres was the infancy gos-
pels, all of which reflected at least a tendency to docetism, where the
young Jesus is portrayed as being a super-human miracle worker, in
the words of Cullmann, a “playful divine boy” (in NTA I, p. 391).
In “The Infancy Story of Thomas,” possibly dating from the end of
the second century, Jesus is also seen as a youthful Gnostic revealer.
Here, as a five-year-old, he speaks to his teacher Zacchaeus and to his
father Joseph:
… I am apart from you, though I dwell among you. Honor in the
flesh I have not. … For when thou wast born, I was. … And as for
the cross of which thou hast spoken, he shall bear it, whose it is.
For when I am greatly exalted, I shall lay aside whatever mixture I
have of your race (in NTA I, p. 399).
In an untitled infancy gospel, the midwife to Jesus’ birth states:
And I stood there stupefied … . For I was looking upon the in-
tense brightness of the light which was born. But the light
itself … became like a child, and in a moment became a child as
children are customarily born. And I … took him up in my
hands … and was seized with terror because he had no weight like
other children who are born. And I looked at him and there was no
defilement in him, but he was in all his body shining as in the dew
of the most high God, light to carry, radiant to behold. And … I
wondered greatly because he did not cry as new-born babes are
accustomed to cry … (in NTA I, p. 414).

Origen – Platonism

Of all the Christian writers—Gnostic and orthodox alike—

considered in this book, Origen alone adopts a position in regard to Jesus

371
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

that approximates A Course in Miracles, clearly subordinating him to

God the Father. We briefly touched upon this “Subordinationism” in
Chapter 2, but shall explore it more fully here and take it up again in
Part III.
According to Origen, Jesus was eternally begotten or generated
from God, but Origen cites Paul’s “first-born of all creation” (Col 1:15)
in maintaining that Jesus was still a creature, thus emphasizing that he
is secondary or subordinate to his Creator. The soul of Jesus, then, like
those of all other rational beings, was pre-existent. However, when in
that original instant the other souls began to fall away from God
through their own negligence and sloth, Jesus remained constant in his
remembrance of his Creator. He is thus among that group (if not the
first member of that group as suggested elsewhere by Origen) of
“others … [who fell] so little from their original state that they appear
to have lost scarcely anything” (First Princ., p. 249n.1). Sin never
tainted Jesus’ soul and he retained the innocence of his creation, hav-
ing, in the words of Isaiah 7:15-16, chosen good and refused evil. This
innocence of Christ was so close to him that, in time, it became indis-
solubly linked with his soul, and Jesus and Christ became one. It was
this united soul that entered this world as the flesh of the Virgin Mary:
It is therefore right that this soul [i.e., Jesus’], either because it
was wholly in the Son of God, or because it received the Son of
God wholly into itself, should itself be called, along with that flesh
which it has taken, the Son of God and the power of God, Christ
and the wisdom of God; and on the other hand that the Son of God,
“through whom all things were created,” should be termed Jesus
and the Son of man. … Moreover what could more appropriately
be “one spirit” with God than this soul, which joined itself so
firmly in love to God as to be worthy of being called “one spirit”
with him? … it was the perfection of his love and the sincerity of
his true affection which gained for him this inseparable unity with
God … . As a reward for its love … it is anointed with the “oil of
gladness,” that is the soul with the word of God is made Christ …
(First Princ. II.6.3,4).
Origen is aware of the difficulty of his teaching, especially in view
of his assertions that “among all rational creatures there is none which
is not capable of both good and evil” (ibid., I.8.3). However, this is not
to assert that every soul has chosen evil, nor for that matter, that every
soul has chosen good. Thus, though

372
 Origen – Platonism

it cannot be doubted that the nature of his [Jesus] soul was the
same as that of all souls … . this soul which belongs to Christ so
chose to love righteousness as to cling to it unchangeably and in-
separably in accordance with the immensity of its love; the result
being that by firmness of purpose, immensity of affection and an
inextinguishable warmth of love all susceptibility to change or al-
teration was destroyed, and what formerly depended upon the will
was by the influence of long custom changed into nature. Thus we
must believe that there did exist in Christ a human and rational
soul, and yet not suppose that it had any susceptibility to or possi-
bility of sin (ibid., II.6.5).
Origen’s Christology was of course subject to condemnation by the
Church Council convened by Justinian, and is condemned in words it
can be assumed are drawn from the Alexandrian’s own:
… the race of daemons appears two-fold, being composed of hu-
man souls and of higher spirits that have fallen to this condition,
and that out of all the original unity of rational beings one mind re-
mained steadfast in the divine love and contemplation, and that he,
having become Christ and king of all rational beings, created all
bodily nature, both heaven and earth and the things that are be-
tween them (ibid., II.8.3).
For Origen, then, Jesus becomes a model for us all to choose the
good and refuse evil:
… so, too, should each one of us, after a fall or transgression,
cleanse himself from stains by the example set before him, and tak-
ing a leader for the journey proceed along the steep path of virtue,
that so perchance by this means we may as far as is possible be-
come, through our imitation of him, partakers of the divine nature
(ibid., IV.4.4).
In this sense then, of Jesus being a “non-cosmic” teacher, Origen is
closer to the Platonic tradition than the Christian. We have already dis-
cussed the role of the philosopher-king in Plato’s system and seen its
important place in the plan of the Republic. This person obviously is
not a redemptive figure, but merely one whose example and teaching
leads the pupil higher and higher on the path of reason to the appercep-
tion of the Good. Plotinus, however, does not even go that far. One
finds in his philosophical system the almost total absence of a savior-
teacher, let alone a mediator figure, who brings people closer to God.

373
Chapter 9 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

Rather, it is through the contemplative efforts of the individual soul that

the ascent back to the One is accomplished. All this is brought about
without any effort at all on the part of the One or any of the divine be-
ings or Ideas. They simply are. This position differs, for example, from
that of the religious Philo, who posited an intermediate figure—the
Logos—guiding people back to the Good, supplemented by the prayers
and devotions that emphasize our gratitude to this Divine Being, with-
out whom our goal could never be attained. We shall return to this
theme in Chapter 10.

374
 Chapter 10

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Now that we have considered the various Gnostic theories the cru-
cial question remains: What does all this mean in terms of living in this
world? “By their fruits you shall know them” remains a critical crite-
rion in evaluating any system, philosophic, psychological, or religious.
What is within our minds—our belief system—will inevitably have
behavioral expression, and it is by these expressions—the fruits of our
belief system—that we can often more properly evaluate and under-
stand these beliefs. I do not speak here of the forms of our behavior as
such, but rather their underlying motivation and the meaning given to
them. In this chapter, then, we shall examine the practical implications
of the Gnostic, Christian, and Platonic systems for living in this world
of the flesh.
We begin with the Gnostics who, though denying reality to this
world and not according it any importance, nonetheless had some
serious things to say about living here. We shall divide this part of the
chapter into two essential parts: religious practice, including teachings
regarding ritual and sacrament; and the ethical and moral implications
for living in the world: libertinism, asceticism, and moderateness.

Gnosticism: Religious Practice

The great Gnostic schools of the second century were basically

that: philosophical schools, not religious or cultic communities. As we
have seen, by virtue of their very theologies these Gnostic schools
eschewed organizations and institutionalization of their teachings.
Nonetheless in some Gnostic groups, at least according to the Church
Fathers, there was a strong tendency towards being a cultic commu-
nity. An example of a Gnostic cult is found in Irenaeus’ description of
the Carpocratians:
Some of them mark their own disciples by branding them on the
back of the right ear-lobe. … They call themselves gnostics. They
have also images, some painted, some too made of other material,
and say they are the form of Christ made by Pilate in that time

375
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

when Jesus was with men. These they crown, and they set them
forth with the images of the philosophers of the world, Pythagoras,
Plato, Aristotle, and the rest; and their other observance concern-
ing them they carry out like the heathen (Adv. haer. I.25.6, in F I, p.
38).
And Epiphanius attests to the following:
And if a visitor comes to them who holds the same opinion, there
is a sign in use among them, the men for the women and the
women for the men; when they stretch out their hand, by way of a
greeting of course, they make a tickling stroke beneath the palm of
the hand, indicating by this means that the new arrival belongs to
their cult (Panar. XXVI.4.2, in F I, p. 318).
It was the general Gnostic tendency to see as anathema all church-
related activities—rituals, sacraments, cultic communities—yet there
were at the same time many groups that did emphasize certain sacra-
ments and rituals, looking very much like the orthodox Church in
some cases as we shall see, though clearly with very different under-
standings of these rituals. One of the most important references for
these Gnostic practices is “The Gospel of Philip,” which discusses five
sacramental ceremonies: baptism, anointing, Eucharist, redemption,
and the bridal chamber. We shall use these five as the basis for our dis-
cussion of Gnostic sacramentology. Obviously these Gnostic groups
did not escape recourse to magical interventions as means to effect
salvation and avoid entrapment by the archons of the world. In general
these rituals are in the minority, probably due in part to the attempt of
these dissident sects to differentiate themselves from the orthodox.
The major exceptions are with the non-Christian Mandeans and the
Valentinians who, as we have seen, did not see themselves as separate
from the Great Church. We begin with the rites and rituals surrounding
water: baptism and lustrations (washings).

1. Baptism
As the Mandeans trace their beginnings to John the Baptist, the
“messenger of the King of Light,” it is not surprising to see the import-
ant role that baptism plays in their religious life:
Let the Jordan flow freely [symbol of the baptismal waters] and
baptize … . your souls with the living baptism, which I have

376
 Gnosticism: Religious Practice

brought you from the World of Light … . Every person who is

marked with the “Sign of Life” and over whom the name of the
King of Light is pronounced, and every person who is firm and
steadfast in baptism … will not be impeded by anyone on his way
to the place of light (GR I.123-24, in F II, p. 277).
“The Gospel of Philip” describes baptism in a uniquely powerful
manner, yet nonetheless sounds very orthodox in its understanding of
the meaning of this sacramental ritual:
The living water is a body. It is necessary that we put on the liv-
ing man. Therefore, when he is about to go down into the water,
he unclothes himself, in order that he may put on the living man
(GPh II.75.21-24, in NHL, p. 145).
In Greek the words for “to baptize” and “to dye” are similar (baptizein
and baptein), and this leads the author of our text to write:
God is a dyer. As the good dyes, which are called “true,” dissolve
with the things dyed in them, so it is with those whom God has dyed.
Since his dyes are immortal, they are immortal by means of his col-
ors. Now God dips what he dips in water (ibid., 61.12-20, p. 137).
Characteristic of the Gnostic understanding of baptism was the
total absence of its power to forgive sins, which the Gnostics felt was
a demeaning of the ritual. Baptism had far greater importance as a rite
of admission to the Gnostic awareness of immortality, part of the
initiation into the realm of knowledge. Irenaeus explains this Gnostic
view:
They affirm that it is necessary for those who have attained to
perfect knowledge, that they may be regenerated into the power
which is above all. Otherwise, it is impossible to enter into the
Pleroma, for it is this redemption which leads them down into the
profundities of Bythos [i.e., the abyss wherein dwells the divine
Source]. For the baptism of (that is, instituted by) the visible Je-
sus took place for the remission of sins, but the redemption by the
Christ who descended upon him for perfection. They allege that
the former is psychic and the latter spiritual (Adv. haer. I.21.2, in
F I, p. 218).
Baptism thus is seen as bestowing upon the Gnostic, in the words of
Rudolph “the spirit of immortality, redemption and resurrection”
(Rudolph, p. 227). Hippolytus quotes the Naassenes:

377
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

For the promise of the washing in baptism is, they say, nothing less
than the introduction into unfading enjoyment of him who in their
fashion is washed in living water and anointed with unutterable
anointing (Ref. V.7.19, in F I, p. 267).
The Sethians, Hippolytus writes, cite the parallels drawn between the
baptism of Jesus and what is required of everyone who desires initia-
tion into the Gnostic mysteries:
But … it is not enough that the perfect man, the Word, entered a
virgin’s womb and “loosed the pangs” that were in that darkness
(cf. Acts 2:24); but after he entered into the foul mysteries of the
womb he washed himself and drank the cup of living, springing
water, which everyone must needs drink who is to put off the
form of the servant and put on the heavenly apparel (Ref. V.19.22,
in F I, p. 303).
In “The Gospel of the Egyptians,” part of the Nag Hammadi library,
we find the following prayer involving sacraments focusing on bap-
tism and leading to eternal life. We see here recourse to strange sounds
and syllables, seemingly expressive of the specific mysteries of this
Gnostic (Sethian) school:
Ie ieus eo ou eo oua! Really truly, O Yesseus Mazareus Yessede-
keus, O living water, O child of the child, O glorious name, really
truly, aion o on … , iiii eeee eeee oooo uuuu oooo aaaa … . This
great name of thine is upon me, O self-begotten Perfect one, who
art not outside me. … Now that I have known thee, I have mixed
myself with the immutable. I have armed myself with an armor of
light; I have become light. … Therefore the incense of life is in me.
I mixed it with water after the model of all archons, in order that I
may live with thee in the peace of the saints, thou who existeth
really truly for ever (GEgypt III.66.8–68.1, in NHL, pp. 204-205).
In “The Kerygmata Petrou,” discussed above, there is an extensive
discussion about the doctrine of baptism:
And do not believe that you will ever have hope if you remain un-
baptized even if you are more pious than all the pious have been
hitherto. … when you are born again for God of water, then
through fear you get rid of your first birth which came of
lust … (Ker. Pet. H XI.25.1; 26.1, in NTA II, p. 124).

378
 Gnosticism: Religious Practice

Such baptismal purification, however, cannot be truly efficacious un-

less it is accompanied by the good works associated with a life of as-
cetic purity:
Therefore cleanse your hearts from wickedness by heavenly
thoughts … and wash your bodies with water (ibid., 28.2, p. 125).
The “Acts of Thomas” provides many examples of the use of sac-
raments to seal the initiation into the Christian family brought about
by the apostle Thomas. Central to these acts are the rituals of anointing
by oil and the Eucharist, which we shall discuss below. Characteristi-
cally reduced in importance is the role of water-baptism. Where men-
tion is made it is clear that we have instances of “Catholicizing,”
wherein a later Catholic editor appended his own interpretation. Two
such examples follow. In the Tenth Act, Thomas teaches about baptism:
This baptism is forgiveness of sins. It brings to new birth a light
that is shed around. It brings to new birth the new man … raises up
the new man in three-fold manner, and is partaker in forgiveness of
sins (ATh 132, in NTA II, p. 512).
In the Thirteenth Act, Thomas seals a conversion in these words: “And
when he had anointed them he led them down to the water in the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (ibid., 157, p. 526).

2. Anointing
By far the most important of the Gnostic rituals was the sacrament
of anointing, including the sealing of the initiate—before or at death—
to ensure safe passage through the realms of the archons. There are ob-
vious magical overtones in all recourse to rites and sacraments,
whether in orthodox or heterodox circles, and these are seen particu-
larly in the rituals associated with anointing. Here, as in baptism,
anointing plays a relatively insignificant role in most Gnostic systems.
Yet in certain sects, again principally within the Valentinian circle, we
see its importance.
The anointing was performed with oil (rarely in conjunction with
water), and one of its purposes for the Gnostics was to act as a seal to
protect the person from foreign, not to mention demonic, influence.
However, its principal purpose was to transmit to the Gnostic the im-
mortality that was their promise as redemption for the original fall.

379
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

In “The Gospel of Philip” we find the connection of this “magical”

oil with the olive tree, called the tree of life, which also served as the
source of the wood on which Jesus was crucified:
Philip the apostle said, “Joseph the carpenter planted a garden
because he needed wood for his trade. It was he who made the
cross from the trees which he planted. His own offspring hung on
that which he planted. His offspring was Jesus and the planting
was the cross.” But the tree of life is in the middle of the garden.
However, it is from the olive tree that we get the chrism [oil], and
from the chrism, the resurrection (GPh II.73.8-19, in NHL, p. 144).
The prominence of the anointing is seen in a later passage from “The
Gospel of Philip:”
The chrism is superior to baptism, for it is from the word
“chrism” that we have been called “Christians,” certainly not be-
cause of the word “baptism.” And it is because of the chrism that
“the Christ” has his name. For the Father anointed the Son, and
the Son anointed the apostles, and the apostles anointed us [the
Gnostics]. He who has been anointed possesses everything. He
possesses the resurrection, the light, the cross, the Holy Spirit
(ibid., 74.12-21).
Irenaeus cites the followers of Marcus similarly:
But some say that it is superfluous to bring people to the water
[baptism], but they mix oil and water together and pour it on the
heads to be initiated … : this is regarded as being the redemption.
They also anoint with balsam (Adv. haer. I.21.4, in F I, pp. 219-20).
Irenaeus then continues by contrasting this position with others who
obviously do not take kindly to the more magical view of redemption:
But others reject all this and say that one ought not to celebrate the
mystery of the ineffable and invisible power by means of visible
and corruptible created things, the inconceivable and incorporeal by
means of what is sensually tangible and corporeal. The perfect re-
demption is said to be the knowledge of the ineffable “Greatness”
(ibid., F I, p. 220).
We find in “The Acts of Thomas” clear expression of the impor-
tance the sacrament held in this Gnostic group. We shall cite two
examples: Thomas expels a demon from a woman, who exclaims to
him:

380
 Gnosticism: Religious Practice

“Apostle of the Most High, give me the seal, that that enemy may
not return to me again!” Then he made her come near to him, and
laying his hands upon her sealed her in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And many others also were
sealed with her (ATh 48, in NTA II, p. 470).
In his final act before his martyrdom, Thomas converts Vazan, son of
the king, and anoints him with words which also reflect the association
of the oil with the power of the olive tree:
O fruit fairer than the other fruits, with which no other can be com-
pared at all … power of the tree which if men put on they conquer
their adversaries … . Jesus, let thy victorious power come, and let it
settle in this oil as then it settled in the wood that is its kin … and
they who crucified thee did not endure its word; let the gift also
come by which, breathing upon thine enemies, thou didst make
them draw back and fall headlong, and let it dwell in this oil, over
which we name thy holy name! (Ibid., 157, p. 525)
As has been mentioned, the Gnostic sacrament for the dying was of
great importance in certain sects as the means by which the departed
soul could safely make the ascent to the Pleroma, unimpeded by the
hostile archons who sought to enslave it. Sometimes the soul is ren-
dered invisible and thus escapes notice by the hostile archons. We shall
see later in Gnostic libertinism that another means for evading capture
by the archons, whose hold is mediated by justice—i.e., adherence to
the world’s morality—was to flout all the moral laws. By the use of
certain formulas and passwords the soul becomes unchained by the
powers of the world, and is restored to the wholeness of the Pleroma.
Several Gnostic groups practiced such rituals, or “masses for the
dead.” Irenaeus provides us with a clear statement of this, attributed to
the Valentinians:
Still others there are who redeem the dying up to the point of
their departure by pouring on their heads oil and water … in order
that they may become unassailable by and invisible to the powers
and authorities, and that their inner man may ascend above the
realm of the invisible, whilst their body remains behind in the cre-
ated world, and their soul is delivered to the Demiurge (Adv. haer.
I.21.5, in F I, p. 220).
As we saw in Chapter 8, Irenaeus continues by citing the invocations
the soul is to perform as it makes its ascent.

381
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

Parenthetic to our discussion of anointing as preparation for the as-

cent, we may note here a moving example of the Gnostic petition at
death. It is the prayer of Thomas at his martyrdom:
My Lord and my God … be thou with all who serve thee, and lead
me today, since I come to thee! Let none take my soul, which I
have committed unto thee. Let not the tax-collectors see me, and
let not the exactors lay false charge against me! Let not the ser-
pent see me, and let not the children of the dragon hiss me! Be-
hold, Lord, I have fulfilled thy work and accomplished thy
command. I have become a slave; therefore today do I receive
freedom (ATh 167, in NTA II, p. 529).
The Mandeans offer by far the most elaborate ritual or mass for the
dead, called “masiqta” meaning “ascent.” We already have seen ex-
amples of the prayers and rituals for the ascent in Chapter 8. The en-
tire ritual includes anointings with oil, washings from the Jordan,
ceremonial meals, and of course prayers and recitations. All these
serve the purpose variously of accompanying and nourishing the soul
on its forty-five day journey through purgatory to the light; a journey
which for the Mandeans was fraught with danger and thus necessitated
the safeguards of the rituals. Interestingly enough, the Mandeans’
graves were unmarked, for they believed that they only contained the
transitory body; the essence of the individual returned to the realm of
light. In the following excerpt, we find instructions for the living:
When a soul is set free and leaves the body, do not weep or
lament for it … . Anyone who weeps for a soul, the seas and river-
courses will cut him off from the realm of light. Whoever rends his
clothes for it, he will when he ascends have a blemish in his
garment. … When a soul in your midst departs, let the people hear
hymns and recitations, and instruct them, so that their heart be not
ruined (GR II.1, in F II, p. 282).
The following Mandean hymn was meant for the placing of a sealed
flask of oil with the dead. It is referred to as a letter (cf. “The Hymn of
the Pearl”), and serves to protect the soul as it travels past the “watch-
houses” to its home in the light:
It is a sealed letter which leaves the world. A letter written with
kusta [Life] and sealed with the seal of the Mighty. Perfect men
wrote it and believing men gave it their guarantee. They hung it

382
 Gnosticism: Religious Practice

about the soul’s neck and dispatched it to the gate of life. The soul
in her wisdom impressed her nail on the letter [the plug that seals
the bottle] (ML Qol 73, in F II, p. 285).

3. Eucharist
The Eucharistic sacrament, or “sacred meal,” is described in some
of the texts we have already examined. However, it is even less fre-
quently found in Gnostic texts than references to baptism or anointing.
There is, nonetheless, a non-Christian reference in “The Prayer of
Thanksgiving,” a Hermetic text found in the Nag Hammadi Library.
At the close of the prayer it is stated:
When they had said these things in prayer, they embraced each
other and they went to eat their holy food, which has no blood in it
(Thanks. VI.65.2-7, in NHL, p. 299).
We also find the ritual of a meal in the Mandean literature, as we have
just seen in the description of their ritual for the dead. It was part of the
Sunday worship which included baptism and anointing.
The traditional Christian Eucharistic usage of bread and wine is re-
tained in “The Gospel of Philip,” yet with a characteristically Gnostic
understanding:
So it is also with the bread and the cup and the oil, even though
there is another one superior to these. … The cup of prayer con-
tains wine and water, since it is appointed as the type of the blood
for which thanks is given. And it is full of the Holy Spirit, and it
belongs to the wholly perfect man. When we drink this, we shall re-
ceive for ourselves the perfect man (GPh II.74.36-75.2; 75.14-21,
in NHL, p. 145).
The Gnostic interpretation of the Eucharistic union as a prototype of
the reunion with the “angel image” or the heavenly aeons is expressed
here:
He [Jesus] said on that day in the Thanksgiving [i.e., the Eucha-
rist], “You who have joined the perfect, the light, with the Holy
Spirit, unite the angels with us also, the images” (ibid., 58.10-14,
p. 135).
This meaning of the reuniting with the aeons is clarified in the preced-
ing page:

383
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

Because of this he [Jesus] said, “He who shall not eat my flesh and
drink my blood has not life in him.” What is it? His flesh is the
word, and his blood is the Holy Spirit. He who has received these
has food and he has drink and clothing (ibid., 57.3-8, p. 134).
In the Valentinian cosmology “word” and “Holy Spirit” are among the
pairs of aeons.
Thus, at least in the Valentinian system expressed in “The Gospel
of Philip,” the components of the Eucharist are representative, not of
the body and blood of Jesus, but of the heavenly Pleroma and the guar-
antor of the perfection and eternal life that is the Gnostic goal. This
shift in meaning follows from the docetic Gnostic strain that taught, as
we have seen, that the body of Jesus was illusory. Thus it would make
no sense to establish a cult meal around what is not real, and so the
focus becomes the reality of the spirit rejoined to the Pleroma.
A quite different interpretation, and much more traditional in its
non-docetic nature, is found in this Eucharistic blessing by Thomas in
the aforementioned “Acts.” It illustrates again that the so-called
Gnostic-Orthodox dichotomy was not as clear-cut as is frequently un-
derstood, for here in this text we find a blending of Gnostic ideas
within a more traditional framework.
Thy holy body which was crucified for us we eat, and thy blood
which was poured out for us for salvation we drink. Let thy body,
then, become for us salvation, and thy blood for remission of sins!
(ATh 158, in NTA II, p. 526)
One of the most interesting reports we have of a Gnostic interpre-
tation of a traditional sacrament comes from Irenaeus. It deals with the
Valentinian Marcus, here exposed as a charlatan who uses the Eucha-
rist as a means to further his seduction of women. The reliability of the
report of course is questionable, though it cannot be definitely dis-
proven. Nonetheless, Irenaeus’ treatment is of importance for at least
expressing the ideas of the orthodox Church. The accuracy of its re-
porting should at least be considered, however, given the frequent re-
ports in our own time of sexual exploitation of devotees on the part of
spiritual leaders or gurus.
There is another of those among them who prides himself on be-
ing an improver of his master’s [Valentinus] teaching. His name is
Marcus, and he is knowledgeable in magical deceit, by means of
which he has led astray many men and not a few women and has

384
 Gnosticism: Religious Practice

induced them to turn to him as to one possessed of great skill and

who has received a great power from the invisible and ineffable re-
gions, an actual precursor of the Antichrist. … Over a cup mixed
with wine he pretends to pray and, whilst greatly prolonging the in-
vocation, he contrives that it should appear purple and red so that
Grace [one of the Gnostic aeons], who belongs to the company of
those who are superior to all things, may seem to be dropping her
blood into that cup by means of his invocation, and that those pres-
ent should fervently desire to taste of that cup in order that the
Grace called hither by that magician may let her blood flow into
them. Again he gives to women cups already mixed and full, and
bids them offer thanks in his presence. When this is done, he pro-
duces another cup much larger than the one over which the de-
luded woman has given thanks, and he then pours from the smaller
one over which she has given thanks into the one which he has
brought forward—which was much larger—and at the same time
he speaks as follows: “May ‘Grace’ who is before all things, who is
beyond thought and description, fill thine inner man and multiply in
thee her knowledge, sowing the mustard seed in good soil.” By say-
ing such things and by making the wretched woman deranged, he
appears as a wonder-worker, when the larger cup is filled from the
smaller one to such an extent that it actually overflows. By doing
other things like this he has deceived many and drawn them into
following him (Adv. haer. I.13.1-2, in F I, pp. 200-201).

4. Redemption
The sacrament mentioned in “The Gospel of Philip” as “redemption”
has no specific referents, but seems to have been used rather to desig-
nate the physical or ritualistic expression of the abstract gnosis that was
received. Psychologically of course, we can recognize in this the almost
universal need to rely on external recognitions and safeguards to but-
tress our weakened faith and trust in the spiritual reality we are so fearful
of. As one German commentator, H. G. Gaffron, observed:
The intellectual act seemed too intangible, and perhaps not certain
enough. What was substantial, the action, the sign, the words and
formulas, they provided a more positive guarantee of salvation (in
Rudolph, p. 243).
Thus we find the same need as that which motivated the orthodox
Church in its development of rituals and sacraments.

385
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

5. The Bridal Chamber

The bridal chamber has important mystical connotations, as is seen
in its appropriation by some of the greatest Christian mystics who,
reminiscent of the sexual imagery of the biblical Song of Songs, wrote
of the spiritual marriage. By shifting the symbolism of the bridal
chamber, yet retaining its spiritual content of joining, we emerge with
the “holy relationship” of A Course in Miracles, which we consider in
Part II-B.
The meaning of the bridal chamber rests in the Gnostic understand-
ing of the fall, i.e., the splitting off of part of the Godhead from itself.
This has been symbolized by the mythology of Sophia, most clearly
elaborated in the Valentinian brand of Gnosticism. The Gnostic goal
is thus the reuniting of these divine elements, restoring unity to the
Pleroma. This reunion is the meaning of the sacred wedding, and is
reminiscent of the self’s gathering unto itself that we discussed in
“The Redeemed Redeemer” in the previous chapter. Several Gnostic
texts provide examples of this sacrament, and we begin with “The
Gospel of Philip:”
When Eve was still in Adam death did not exist. When she was
separated from him death came into being. If he again becomes
complete and attains his former self, death will be no more (GPh II.
68.22-26, in NHL, p. 141).
Three buildings are then described—the Holy, the Holy of the Holy,
and the Holy of the Holies—representing, respectively, the sacraments
of baptism, redemption, and the bridal chamber:
But the bridal chamber is in that which is superior to it and the oth-
ers, because you will not find anything like it. … If the woman had
not separated from the man, she would not die with the man. His
separation became the beginning of death. Because of this Christ
came to repair the separation which was from the beginning and
again unite the two, and to give life to those who died as a result of
the separation and unite them. But the woman is united to her hus-
band in the bridal chamber. Indeed those who have united in the
bridal chamber will no longer be separated. Thus Eve separated
from Adam because she was never united with him in the bridal
chamber (ibid., 69.27-29; 70.9-22, p. 142).

386
 Gnosticism: Religious Practice

In discussing the Valentinian system of Theodotus, the Church

Father Clement writes of the “Lord’s Day”:
Then comes the wedding-feast, common to all the saved, until all
become equal and mutually recognize one another.
The pneumatics [Gnostics] then lay aside the souls and, at the
same time as the mother receives her bridegroom, each of them
too receives his bridegroom, the angels [i.e., symbolic of the re-
uniting of the soul with the Pleroma]; then they enter the bridal
chamber within Horos [i.e., one of the aeons: Limit] and attain to
the vision of the Father, and become intellectual aeons, entering
into the intelligible and eternal marriage of the union (syzygy).
The “ruler of the feast,” (Jn 2:8f) the best man of the wedding,
the “friend of the bridegroom,” stands outside before the bride-
chamber and greatly rejoices on hearing the voice of the bride-
groom. This is the fullness … of joy and of repose (Excerpta 63.2;
64.1; 65.1-2, in F I, pp. 152-53).
Of the Marcosians Irenaeus writes, continuing from the excerpts
quoted above:
Some of them prepare a bridal chamber and perform a mystic
rite, with certain invocations, for those who are being consecrated,
and they claim that what they are effecting is a spiritual marriage,
after the image of the conjunctions (syzygies) above (Adv. haer.
I.21.3, in F I, p. 219).
It is clearly recognizable that he [Marcus] has a demon too resid-
ing in him, by means of which he appears to be able to prophesy
and to enable the women whom he counts worthy to be partakers
of his Grace to prophesy as well. … saying, “I desire to make thee
a partaker of my Grace, since the Father of all doth continually be-
hold thy angel before his face. The place of thy greatness is ever in
us; we must come together. First, receive from me and through me
Grace. Adorn thyself as a bride who expects her bridegroom, that
thou mayest be what I am, and I what thou art. Receive in thy
bride-chamber the seed of light. Receive from me the bridegroom,
and give him a place, and have a place in him.” … She tries to re-
pay him, not only with the gift of her possessions … but also by
physical intercourse, prepared as she is to be united with him in
everything in order that she, with him, may enter into the One
(ibid., 13.3, pp. 201-202).

387
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

This report of Irenaeus is the lone reference of this type, and actu-
ally is inconsistent with the basic Valentinian and Gnostic understand-
ing of the non-corporeal and non-sexual aspects of this spiritual
marriage. The metaphor is of an earthly marriage, yet it is firmly con-
trasted with the “defilement” of the sexual union. Thus we read in
“The Gospel of Philip” that the “undefiled marriage”
is not fleshly but pure. It belongs not to desire but to the will. It be-
longs not to the darkness or the night but to the day and the light. If
a marriage is open to the public, it has become prostitution, and the
bride plays the harlot not only when she is impregnated by another
man but even if she slips out of her bedroom and is seen. … Bride-
grooms and brides belong to the bridal chamber. No one shall be
able to see the bridegroom with the bride unless one become one
(GPh II.82.6-26, in NHL, p. 149).
Also expressive of this spiritual understanding of the conjugal
union is the inscription found on a third-century tombstone in Rome.
It speaks of a Gnostic woman, Flavia Sophe:
You, who did yearn for the paternal light, Sister, spouse, my So-
phe, anointed in the baths of Christ with everlasting, holy oil, has-
ten to gaze at the divine features of the aeons … ; you entered the
bridal chamber and deathless ascended to the bosom of the Father
(in Rudolph, p. 212).
It is interesting to note the importance that is placed in “The Gospel
of Philip” on the need for the ceremony of the bridal chamber for the
earthly fulfillment of what will come later. Thus, the celestial consum-
mation of the union is dependent on the earthly sacrament, reflecting
to us again the strange compromises of true spirituality with magic that
the Gnostics, as well as the orthodox Church, fell into. This principle
of the connection between the use of symbols in this world (“types and
images”) and the realization attained in the next world (“truth”) is
clearly enunciated in this passage:
Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types
and images. One will not receive truth in any other way. There is a
rebirth and an image of rebirth. It is certainly necessary that they
should be born again through the image. What is the resurrection?
The image must rise again through the image. The bridegroom and
the image must enter through the image into the truth: this is the
restoration (GPh II.67.9-18, in NHL, p. 140).

388
 Gnosticism: Religious Practice

While the process expressed here of working with symbols (“types and
images”) is essential for one’s salvation (see Lesson 184 in the Course),
the Gnostics fell into the trap of making the error real—treating the
symbols as reality—that we shall return to in Part III.
Speaking specifically now of the sacrament of the bridal chamber,
the text reads:
The powers [that would entrap the soul] do not see those who are
clothed in the perfect light, and consequently are not able to detain
them. One will clothe himself in this light sacramentally in the
union. … If anyone becomes a son of the bridal chamber, he will
receive the light. If anyone does not receive it while he is in these
places [i.e., in this world], he will not be able to receive it in the
other place [i.e., the world after death] (ibid., 70.5-9; 86.4-7,
pp. 142,151).
Our final example comes from the “Acts of Thomas,” where in his
first act on his journey the apostle finds himself at a wedding. This
serves as the setting wherein he sings the famous Wedding Hymn. This
song, filled with rich imagery, describes the wedding of the virgin of
light and the heavenly bridegroom, (a symbol found in Manicheism as
well). The wedding also represents the redemption of the bride, who
here is symbolic of the fallen Sophia we are already familiar with in
the Valentinians. The hymn is presented here in abbreviated prose
form:
The maiden is the daughter of light … Radiant with shining beauty.
… Truth rests upon her head … . Thirty and two [the Valentinian
aeons] are they that sing her praises. … Her fingers open the gates
of the city. Her chamber is full of light … . [Her groomsmen] gaze
and look toward the bridegroom, that by the sight of him they may
be enlightened; and for ever shall they be with him in that eternal
joy, and they shall be at that marriage … and they shall glorify the
Father of all … and were enlightened by the vision of their Lord …
which ambrosial food they received, which has no deficiency at
all … (ATh 6-7, in NTA II, pp. 445-46).
The wedding continues after the hymn, and when the bride and
groom retire to the wedding chamber it is Jesus they find there, in the
image of Thomas. He instructs them in the difference between the
celestial and earthly marriage:

389
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

… know this, that if you abandon this filthy intercourse you be-
come holy temples, pure and free from afflictions and pains both
manifest and hidden, and you will not be girt about with cares for
life and for children, the end of which is destruction. … But if you
obey, and keep your souls pure unto God, you shall have living
children whom these hurts do not touch … waiting to receive that
incorruptible and true marriage as befitting for you, and in it you
shall be groomsmen entering into that bridal chamber which is full
of immortality and light (ibid., 12, p. 449).
The couple hears and believes, and refrains from the “filthy passion.”
In the morning, visited by her parents the king and queen, the bride
teaches the Gnostic message:
… I have set at naught this man, and this marriage which passes
away from before my eyes … because I am bound in another mar-
riage. And that I have had no intercourse with a short-lived hus-
band, the end of which is remorse and bitterness of soul, is because
I am yoked with the true man (ibid., 14, p. 450).

6. Rituals
In his diatribe against the Gnostics, which we first considered in
Chapter 6, Plotinus at one point accuses his adversaries of not being
specific about how one returns to God. He begins this passage by at-
tacking the Gnostics for not emphasizing the pursuit of virtue, a cardi-
nal sin for any Platonist.
This, too, is evidence of their indifference to virtue, that they have
never made any treatise about virtue, but have altogether left out
the treatment of these subjects; they do not tell us what kind of
thing virtue is, nor how many parts it has, nor about all the many
noble studies of the subject to be found in the treatises of the an-
cients, nor from what virtue results and how it is to be attained, nor
how the soul is tended, nor how it is purified. For it does no good
at all to say “Look to God,” unless one also teaches how one is to
look. … but God, if you talk about him without true virtue, is only
a name (Enn. II.9.15).
Indeed, Plotinus was basically correct. Most Gnostic texts are
vague, and more than likely deliberately so. The Gnostics characteris-
tically prevented their instructions from becoming institutionalized
and ritualized, and much preferred highly individualized instruction

390
 Gnosticism: Religious Practice

under the direction of advanced teachers. Therefore, what seems to us

as a fuzzy “come-on,” was really a theory of spiritual attainment inher-
ent in the whole Gnostic thought system. The Gnostics obviously took
their spiritual path seriously, and had little tolerance (at least in the
higher Gnostic schools) for the superficialized spirituality often found
in large communities. They knew that true spiritual progress could
only be attained through the individual direction of a spiritual adept.
This has always been the Eastern way, as seen in some of the higher
Buddhist and Hindu schools of learning, for example.
Nonetheless, there are some texts in the Nag Hammadi Library that
do supply descriptions of spiritual disciplines. We shall discuss two of
these, both of which exhibit definite Neoplatonic influences. “The
Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth” is also part of the Hermetic tradi-
tion, and probably dates from the mid-second century. It is a dialogue
between the now familiar mystagogue Hermes Trismegistus and one
of his initiates. The “Eighth and Ninth” refers to two of the spheres
surrounding the earth. The first seven consist of the sun, moon, and
planets, all aspects of the lower world which serve to imprison human
life. The eighth and ninth mark the beginning of the divine realms, and
thus become the goal of the departed soul after it makes the sometimes
harrowing ascent through the first seven. A tenth sphere—the home of
God Himself—is implied here, though not directly expressed as it was
in St. Paul’s ascent, discussed earlier. The passage through the spheres
also represents the process of spiritual growth, as is seen in this trac-
tate. The dialogue begins with the disciple recalling to Hermes’ mind
his promise:
O my father, yesterday you promised me that you would bring my
mind into the eighth and afterwards you would bring me into the
ninth. You said that this is the order of the tradition (Disc. Eighth
Ninth VI.52.2-7, in NHL, p. 292).
Hermes explains the need to study the sacred texts:
Your part, then, is to understand; my own is to be able to deliver
the discourse from the fountain which flows to me (ibid., 55.19-22,
p. 294).
Thus it is the responsibility of the student to accept what the teacher
offers. The teacher supplies the truth; the student must let it in. Hermes
then calls upon his disciple to pray with him to the Father, the “perfect,

391
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

the invisible God to whom one speaks in silence,” after which there is
an uttering of a series of obviously sacred sounds:
Zoxathazo a oo ee ooo eee oooo ee oooooo ooooo oooooo uuuuuu
oooooooooooo ooo Zozazoth [printed here without accents] (ibid.,
56.17-22).
From here on, the reader without personal experience will remain
in the dark regarding these higher realms:
Lord, grant us a wisdom from thy power that reaches us, so that
we may describe to ourselves the vision of the eighth and the
ninth. … Allow us through the spirit to see the form of the image
that has no deficiency, and receive the reflection of the pleroma
from us through our praise. … Let us embrace each other affection-
ately, O my son. Rejoice over this! … I am mind and I see another
mind, the one that moves the soul! I see the one that moves me
from pure forgetfulness. … Language is not able to reveal this. For
the entire eighth, O my son, and the souls that are in it, and the
angels, sing a hymn in silence. And I, Mind, understand (ibid.,
56.22-26; 57.5-9; 57.26–58.22, pp. 294-95).
The student requests not to be deprived of the celestial vision, and
Hermes places this responsibility back on him:
Return to praising, O my son, and sing while you are silent. Ask
what you want in silence (ibid., 59.19-22, p. 295).
The student does what he is told, and ecstatically exclaims:
Father Trismegistus! What shall I say? We have received this light.
And I myself see this same vision in you. And I see the eighth and
the souls that are in it and the angels singing a hymn to the ninth
and its powers. And I see him who has the power of them all,
creating those that are in the spirit (ibid., 59.24–60.1).
Hermes instructs him to remain silent “in a reverent posture,” and
simply to continue to sing a hymn to the father
until the day to quit the body. … What is proper is your praise that
you will sing to God so that it might be written in this imperish-
able book (ibid., 60.5-16, p. 296).
“Allogenes” is a third-century text also with Neoplatonic themes,
and is most likely the text that Porphyry states was known by Plotinus.
It, too, is a revelation discourse, the Gnostic revealer being called

392
 Gnosticism: Religious Practice

Allogenes which literally means stranger or one of another race. It was

a common term for semi-divine teachers in Gnostic writings from this
period, and Allogenes is often equated with the Sethians. The receiver
of Allogenes’ revelations is his son, Messos. The tractate is in two
parts. The first half consists of the revelations of the female Goddess
Youel to Allogenes, reminiscent of the Barbelognosis we have seen
previously. This is followed by an account of the ascent of Allogenes,
culminating in the revelation of the “Unknown One.” This places
“Allogenes” in the apophatic tradition we have already discussed in re-
lation to works such as “The Apocryphon of John.” The reader’s mind
must thus move beyond the philosophical language of this process to
the actual experience and practice that is only hinted at in the tractate.
Allogenes shares with Messos his own process of spiritual attain-
ment, telling him his reactions in the presence of Youel’s revelations:
… and I escaped and I was very disturbed and I turned to myself.
Having seen the light that surrounded me and the Good that was in
me, I became divine.
And the one pertaining to all glories, Youel, anointed me again
and she gave power to me. She said, “Since your instruction has be-
come complete and you have known the Good that is within you,
hear concerning the Triple Power those things that you will guard in
great silence and great mystery, because they are not spoken to any-
one except those who are worthy” … (Allog. XI.52.7-23, in NHL,
p. 446).
The revelation continues and, as we saw in “The Discourse on the
Eighth and Ninth,” contains also a “silent” sound: “zza zza zza.”
Pagels has suggested that perhaps this represents a kind of meditative
technique consisting of the intonations of sound, not too different from
certain Eastern and contemporary practice (Pagels, pp. 138-40). She
also comments on the possibility of the following passage being part
of a ritual, completing one stage of the spiritual initiation wherein the
spiritual initiate listens to the recitation on the part of the adepts.
Now after I heard these things, I saw the glories of the perfect in-
dividuals and the all-perfect ones who exist together … . And then
I prayed that the revelation might occur to me. And then the one
pertaining to all the glories, Youel, said to me, “O Allogenes … . If
you seek with a perfect seeking, then you will know the God that
is in you; then you will know yourself as well, as one who exists
with the God who truly pre-exists. After a hundred years there

393
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

shall come to you a revelation of That One. …” I prepared myself

therein … . When I was taken by the eternal Light out of the gar-
ment [i.e., body: an “out of body experience”] that was upon me,
and taken up to a holy place whose likeness can not be revealed in
the world, then by means of a great blessedness I saw all those
about whom I had heard. … “O Allogenes, behold your blessed-
ness in the manner that exists in silence, wherein you know your-
self as you are, and, seeking yourself, ascend to the Vitality that
you will see moving. … And when you receive a revelation of him
by means of a primary revelation of the Unknown One—the One
whom if you should know him, be ignorant of him … . Do not
know him, for it is impossible … .” And I ascended to the
Vitality … . And I saw an eternal … undivided motion that pertains
to all the formless powers, one which is unlimited by
limitation. … And when I was confirmed in these matters, the
powers of the Luminaries said to me, “Cease hindering the inac-
tivity that exists in you by seeking incomprehensible matters;
rather hear about him in accordance with the capability provided
by a primary revelation … ” (Disc. Eighth Ninth XI.55.12-15;
55.31–56.23; 57.29; 58.26-37; 59.9–60.28; 61.22-31, in NHL,
pp. 447-50).
The revelation then proceeds in the “negative theology” so character-
istic of the apophatic Gnostic and orthodox traditions.
Pagels quotes the arch heresy-hunter Tertullian’s complaint against
this form of initiation (Tertullian refers specifically to the Valentinian),
which he derogatorially compares to the great Mystery schools of
antiquity:
[They] first beset all access to their group with tormenting condi-
tions; and they require a long initiation before they enroll their
members, even instruction for five years for their adept students, so
that they may educate their opinions by this suspension of full
knowledge, and, apparently, raise the value of their mysteries in
proportion to the longing for them which they have created. Then
follows the duty of silence … (Tertullian, Adversus Valentinianos 1,
in Pagels, p. 140).
Even in the Gnostic text we have considered we find a lack of spe-
cific instructions, but what we see certainly does suggest the ritualistic
spiritual discipline that was present in many of the Gnostic sects. How-
ever, these chants, instructions, and meditative practices were kept

394
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

hidden, to be revealed only to those judged worthy of receiving them,

and thereby able to reach the Gnostic goal of Self-knowledge that
leads to the knowledge of God Himself. In “Allogenes” this knowl-
edge of the divine is a negative one, since the true God is unknown.
However, the Gnostic initiate can be prepared to receive “in accor-
dance with the capability provided by a primary revelation.”

Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

Metaphysical principles inevitably entail practical implications,

though we shall see how the same principles can be interpreted quite
differently. From the basic Gnostic teaching that the true God did not
create the material world, which rather was the work of an inferior
principle, the Gnostics deduced three different ethical positions: liber-
tinism, asceticism, and moderateness. As we have seen, the basic
Gnostic stance is one of total alienation from the physical and social
world. The ego-bodily self is totally ignored, for the object of salvation
is the spark of spiritual light that is trapped. Thus there is no concern
for one’s individual existence in a world that is inherently hostile and
evil. Whether one flouts the authority of the cosmic rulers through lib-
ertinism or ascetic detachment, the result is the same: total denigration
of the cosmos on all levels. We shall consider each of these in turn.

1. Libertinism
The libertine position directly follows from the Gnostic belief that
God did not create this world. Therefore our attachment to any aspect
of this world is part of the archons’ plan to enslave us here. The basic
argument of the Gnostic libertines thus ran as follows: Enslavement by
the archons—the ruling powers of the world—occurs through adher-
ence to their moral laws. As Jonas has summarized this mentality:
For what is the law … but the means of regularizing and thus sta-
bilizing the implication of man in the business of the world and
worldly concerns; of setting by its rules the seal of seriousness, of
praise and blame, reward and punishment, on his utter involve-
ment; of making his very will a compliant party to the compulsory
system, which thereby will function all the more smoothly and in-
extricably? (Jonas, p. 272)

395
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

Therefore, the way to become free of such imprisonment is for the en-
lightened Gnostic—the pneumatic—to flout these laws, thereby
demonstrating his freedom from the evil archons. Certain Gnostic sys-
tems held that if any moral law remained unbroken during a given life-
time, the individual was then impelled to reincarnate until the list was
completed. The punishments that accrue to such a defiance can affect
only the body and psyche, but hardly the spirit which alone is real and
true. One finds a modern expression of this attitude in Mathieu the pro-
tagonist in Sartre’s Age of Reason. This existential hero, sitting in a
restaurant, exemplifies his defiance of the world by calmly sticking a
knife into his outstretched palm, affirming his freedom from any social
or physical concern. Conventional morality is no longer binding on
this now free man.
It seems quite apparent that this approach was in the clear minority
among Gnostics. Not one instance of libertinism, for example, can be
found in the Nag Hammadi library (although of course these texts were
collected by monks hardly likely to be attracted to libertine material),
nor in any of the other Gnostic finds of the last two centuries. In fact,
almost all of our information about this Gnostic morality (or amorality)
is from the Church Fathers, whose predilection for exaggeration has
already been noted. Nowhere is this exaggeration more clearly exem-
plified than in the area of morality, where the Fathers no doubt reveled
in presenting what they believed to be the gross excesses of Gnostic
cultic and orgiastic immorality. In one instance, however, quoted be-
low, Irenaeus does question whether these principles were ever put
into practice. Let us examine the heresiologists’ writings, if not evi-
dence for the Gnostic immorality, at least then for the excesses of the
Fathers in attempting to corrupt the teachings and practices of their
opponents.
We begin with Irenaeus’ treatment of Simon Magus. While there is
no evidence that Simon himself engaged in any licentious behavior—
in fact, “The Testimony of Truth” in the Nag Hammadi Library speaks
thus: “For the Simonians take wives and beget children” (Test. Tr.
IX.58.2-4, in NHL, p. 413)—Irenaeus claims that Simon’s teachings
lead to this:
… those who have their hope in him [Simon] … trouble themselves
no further. … For through his grace are men saved, and not through
righteous works. Nor are works just by nature, but by convention,

396
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

as the angels who made the world ordained, in order to enslave

men by such precepts. Hence he promised that the world will be
dissolved, and those who are his liberated from the dominion of
those who made the world.
Therefore their mystery priests live licentiously … . They practice
… love potions and erotic magic; … and from them the falsely so-
called Gnosis took its beginnings … (Adv. haer. I.23.3,4 in F I, p. 31).
And Hippolytus adds:
These became imitators of error and of Simon Magus and do the
same things, saying that one must engage in intercourse without
consideration, affirming: “All earth is earth, and it makes no differ-
ence where a man sows, if only he sows.” Indeed, they count them-
selves blessed because of this union, and say that this is perfect
love and the holy of holies (Ref. VI.19.5, in F I, p. 31).
Of Carpocrates and his disciples Irenaeus writes:
They practice … evil things, saying that they already have the
power to prevail over the archons and creators of this world … .
They say that conduct is good and evil only in the opinion of men.
And after the transmigrations the souls must have been in every
kind of life and every kind of deed … [so] when they depart from
the body they are deficient in nothing. … So long must a man con-
tinue to be reincarnated, until he has been in absolutely every ac-
tion in the world. When no more is lacking, then his soul, set free,
goes to that God who is above the creator angels, and so it is
saved. … Now if these things are done among them which are god-
less and unrighteous and forbidden, I could not believe. But in their
writings it is so written … (Adv. haer. I.25.3-5, in F I, pp. 37-38).
The Cainites, according to Irenaeus, held the same beliefs as the
Carpocratians:
… they say they cannot be saved in any other way, except they
pass through all things, just as Carpocrates also said. And at
every sinful and base action an angel is present and instills in him
who ventures the deed audacity and impurity; what it is in act
they say in the angel’s name: “O thou angel, I make use of thy
work; … ” And this is the perfect “knowledge,” to enter without
fear into such operations, which it is not lawful even to name
(ibid., I.31.2, p. 42).

397
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

Clement describes the Entychites, followers of Simon Magus, as

exemplifying the same philosophy of rebellion against the ruling
power of the world—the creator God of the Old Testament:
… some others … say that God is by nature the Father of us all, and
everything that he has made is good. But one of his creatures [the
creator God] sowed tares (Matt. 13:25) by creating the nature of
evil, with which he has entangled us all and made us oppose the
Father. For this reason we also oppose him in order to avenge the
Father by resisting the will of this second power. So since he has
said “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” (Exod. 20:14) let us com-
mit adultery, they say, in order to nullify his commandment (Strom.
III.4, in F I, pp. 314-15).
Basilides, as we shall see, adopted a moderate if not ascetic moral
stance, but some of his disciples evidently, at least as exemplified in
this quote from Clement, drew other conclusions from their master’s
teachings:
I (Clement) have quoted these words [from a more moderate posi-
tion] to refute these Basilideans who do not live rightly, whether on
the grounds that they have the right even to sin because of their
perfection, or that they will in any case be saved by nature even if
they sin now, because of their inborn state of election. For the pro-
genitors of their doctrine do not even permit the very things they
do (ibid., III.1.3, p. 80).
The notion that those Gnostics who were perfect need not be con-
cerned with morality finds restatement in Irenaeus’ presentation of the
Valentinians. These “perfect” are contrasted with the “psychics,” who
require the conventional morality until they are freed through gnosis.
According to Irenaeus the adherents to this school included the ortho-
dox Church in this category, which is corroborated in some of the Nag
Hammadi texts. This Gnostic put-down of opponents is obvious, and
parallels the orthodox position that these unredeemable heretics be-
long in hell.
The psychic men … are strengthened by works and mere faith,
and do not have perfect knowledge; and these, they teach, are we
of the Church. Therefore they affirm that for us good conduct is
necessary—for otherwise it would not be possible to be saved—
but they themselves, in their opinion, will be for ever and entirely
saved, not by means of conduct, but because they are spiritual by

398
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

nature. … Just as gold, when placed in mud, does not lose its
beauty but retains its own nature, since the mud is unable to harm
the gold, so they say that they themselves cannot suffer any injury
or lose their spiritual substance, whatever material actions they
may engage in.
For this reason the most perfect among them freely practice
everything that is forbidden. … And some, who are immoderately
given over to the desires of the flesh, say that they are repaying to
the flesh what belongs to the flesh, and to the spirit what belongs to
the spirit. And some of them secretly seduce women … . Others
again who initially made an impressive pretense of living with
women as with sisters were convicted in course of time, when the
“sister” became pregnant by the “brother.” And while they carry on
many other foul and impious practices they slander us, who
through fear of God guard ourselves against sins even of thought
and word, saying we are simple-minded and know nothing; while
they give themselves a superior dignity and call themselves “per-
fect” and “an elect seed.” … [possessing a grace] which has come
down from above with them from the unutterable and unnameable
Conjunction (syzygy); and for this reason it will be increased for
them. Therefore they must always in every possible way practice
the mystery of Conjunction … [i.e., the Bridal Chamber sacrament]
(Adv. haer. I.6.2,3, in F I, pp. 138-39,313-14).
This excerpt from Irenaeus on the immorality of the Valentinians
appears discrepant from his earlier treatment of this great Gnostic
teacher, not to mention from descriptions taken from other Fathers.
Either Irenaeus is speaking of an isolated Valentinian sect (“the most
perfect among them”) or of other Gnostic groups. His description of
the sexual exploitation found in the “mystery of Conjunction” is di-
rectly reminiscent of his description of the Valentinian Marcus.
Therefore, perhaps this is the group he has in mind. If so, Marcus’
form of Valentinianism (excessive numerology, etc.) is far removed
from the higher form of metaphysical speculation of Valentinus him-
self that we find, for example, in the insightful vision of “The Gospel
of Truth.”
We commented earlier on the notorious unreliability of Epiphanius,
the fourth-century bishop who was perhaps the most viciously vindic-
tive of the Church Fathers in his pursuit of the Gnostics. We must there-
fore take Epiphanius’ reports of the Gnostics’ libertine practices with
more than a grain of salt. Nonetheless, the rather strange and outright

399
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

pornographic practices he reports do have a sound, if not perverse, the-

oretical basis in a metaphysics that strongly resembles the teachings of
Mani surrounding the seeds of light that are trapped in matter—plants,
animals, homo sapiens. These seeds, when released, must be collected
and returned to God (through ingestion; this was not the Manichean
practice, however: see below, pp. 417-18) and not allowed to escape out
into the world where they run the risk of being imprisoned once more.
Epiphanius writes:
And the power which resides in the periods and in the semen, they
say, is the soul, which we collect and eat. And whatever we eat, be
it meat, vegetables, bread, or anything else, we are doing a kind-
ness to created things, in that we collect the soul from all things
and transmit it with ourselves to the heavenly world. For this rea-
son they take meat of every kind, saying that it is in order that we
may show mercy to our race. And they say that it is the same soul
which is implanted in living creatures—beasts, fishes, serpents,
and men, as well as in plants, trees, and fruits (Panar. XXVI.9.4-5,
in F I, p. 321).
The extreme literalness of these understandings inevitably led
Epiphanius’ Gnostics to “rescue” the seeds of light in semen and men-
strual blood by ingesting them in rites. Reminiscent of Jewish lore, the
belief according to these Gnostic groups was that semen contained the
seed of life (light), as did menstrual blood. We shall see evidence indi-
cating that these rites actually existed, at least in some groups; but
there can be no question that the Church Father embellished his ac-
count of these rituals to prove the “bestiality” of these heretics. One
finds, incidentally, similar descriptions in Augustine’s reporting of the
Manicheans:
… their Elect are forced to consume a Eucharist, so to speak,
sprayed with human semen, so that by it, as by the other food which
they consume, the divine substance may be purified (Augustine,
de haer. 46.2, in Haardt, p. 344).
We shall devote more space to Epiphanius’ descriptions than their
worth deserves, for they are instructive not only as examples of the
exaggerated anti-Gnostic polemic of the heresiologists, but also for
their value as extreme examples of the mistake of confusing form with
content. This is a mistake, as we have already seen, far from peculiar
to the Gnostics. It is found to be just as prevalent in the formulations

400
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

and practices of the orthodox Church, not to mention in these early

years of A Course in Miracles. It is sound pedagogy to teach with ex-
treme examples, and Epiphanius’ are as extreme as can be found.
Some of these examples follow (all quotes are taken from Epiphanius’
Panarion in F I, pp. 316-25):
… the advocates of Gnosis falsely so called have begun their evil
growth upon the world … . For each of these has contrived his own
sect to suit his own passions and has devised thousands of ways of
evil. … [Some] honour a certain Prunicus [Sophia] and … when
they indulge their passions have recourse to a myth to give this
pretext of their shameful deeds; they say, “We are collecting the
power of Prunicus from bodies by their fluids”—which means the
semen and the periods … (XXV.2.1; 3.2).
Epiphanius proceeds now to the rites of this collection, the first of
which is a love-feast in which all the women are shared:
When they have had intercourse out of the passion of fornication,
then, holding up their own blasphemy before heaven, the woman
and the man take the man’s emission in their own hands, and stand
there looking up towards heaven. And while they have unclean-
ness in their hands they profess to pray … offering to the natural
Father of the Universe that which is in their hands, and saying “We
offer thee this gift, the body of Christ.” And so they eat it, partak-
ing of their own shame and saying, “This is the body of Christ, and
this is the Passover; hence our bodies are given over to passion and
compelled to confess the passion of Christ.” Similarly with the
woman’s emission at her period; they collect the menstrual blood
which is unclean, take it and eat it together, and say “This is the
blood of Christ” (XXVI.4.5-8).
These bizarre descriptions were not unusual during this period,
where charges and counter-charges flew back and forth midst different
religious groups, including various Gnostic and other heretical groups
(e.g., the Montanists), the orthodox Church, and the Jews. These accu-
sations not only included the strange rites described by Epiphanius, but
various kinds of fornications and ritual infanticides and cannibalisms.
These reports have even extended into the modern era. Chadwick re-
ports that the nineteenth-century French priest Boullan encouraged
women to speed themselves along the spiritual path by having sexual
relations with him. He also evidently practiced, similar to Epiphanius’

401
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

group, a Eucharistic rite mixed with semen and menstrual blood (in
Layton, p. 5).
Like the later Manicheans, the Gnostic group of which Epiphanius
writes opposed the bearing of children not only on ascetic grounds, but
because the newborn child carried with it the seed of light, “protected”
from collection and redemption. Thus Epiphanius:
And while they have intercourse with each other they forbid the
bearing of children. For this shameful conduct is pursued by them
not for the bearing of children but for the sake of pleasure … They
have their pleasure, and take for themselves their seed which is un-
clean, not implanting it for the bearing of children, but themselves
eating the shameful thing. But if one of them mistakenly implants
the natural emission and the woman becomes pregnant, attend to
the further outrage that these men perform. They extract the em-
bryo when they can lay hands on it and take this aborted infant and
smash it with a pestle in a mortar, and when they have mixed in
honey and pepper and other condiments and spices to prevent them
from vomiting, then they all assemble, every member of this troop
of swine and dogs, and each one with his fingers takes a piece of
the mangled child. And so when they have finished their feast of
human flesh, they pray to God and say, “We have not been de-
ceived by the Archon of lust, but we have retrieved our brother’s
transgression.” And this they consider the perfect Passover
(XXVI.5.2-6).
Epiphanius is far from finished, and continues by describing one sect
which attempts to return to the innocence of Adam by praying naked:
And they have other outrageous practices. When they are excited to
madness they moisten their own hands with the shamefulness of
their own emissions and get up and with their own hands thus pol-
luted they pray with their whole bodies naked, as if by such a prac-
tice they could gain free access to God. … And they curse the man
who fasts, saying that it is wrong to fast; for fasting belongs to this
Archon who made the world. … and they are not ashamed to say
that our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ himself revealed this shame-
ful practice. For … they pretend that he gave her [Mary Magdalene]
a revelation; that he took her to the mountain and prayed and took
out a woman from his side and began to have intercourse with her,
and so took up his emission and showed it to her, saying “We must
do this, that we may live” … (XXVI.5.7-8; 8.1-3).

402
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

The idea of nakedness reflecting the return to the freedom and inno-
cence of Adam was also found in the “Adamites,” a medieval Gnostic
group (Rudolph, p. 257).
One of the common Church complaints against the Gnostics was
the free use they made of scripture to suit their own purposes. As we
have already seen, the more polemic of the Gnostic groups never tired
of making the most outlandish interpretations of what was considered
to be sacred texts. Likewise, Epiphanius complains:
They use the Old and the New Testament, but they reject Him
who has spoken in the Old Testament. And when they find any
saying whose sense can be contrary to them, they say that this was
spoken by the spirit of this world. But if any text can be adapted to
make a pattern for their lust … they alter it according to their lust
and say that it was spoken by the spirit of truth. … And the text,
“When ye see the Son of Man going up where he was before”
(John 6:62) means the emission which is taken up to the place from
which it came, and the saying, “Unless ye eat my flesh and drink
my blood” (John 6:53) … they quote this as if the saying referred to
indecency, this being the reason why they were overcome and
“went backward” (John 6:66); for, he says, they were not yet estab-
lished in the Pleroma (i.e. fullness of life). And when David says,
“He shall be as a tree that is planted by the springs of the waters,
which shall give forth its fruit in due season” (Ps 1:3), he refers, he
says, to the male member. “By the water-springs” and “which shall
give forth its fruit” refers, he says, to the emission with its plea-
sure; and “his leaf shall not fall,” because, he says, we do not al-
low it to drop upon the ground, but eat it ourselves … (XXVI.6.1-3;
8.3-7).
And on and on.
The prophet Elijah (Elias), venerated by the Church, was hardly ex-
empt from re-evaluation:
And such are their fantasies and romances that they even dare to
insult the holy Elias and say that when he was taken up into heaven
he was cast down again into the world. For there came a female
demon … and seized him and said to him, “Where are you going?
For I have children of yours, and you cannot ascend and leave your
children here.” And Elias … replied, “How did you get children of
mine, when I lived in purity?” It answered him … “Why, when you
were dreaming dreams and often discharged an emission of the

403
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

body, it was I who received the seed from you and bore you sons”
(XXVI.13.4-5).
The Gnostic group Epiphanius identifies in much of his diatribe is
the Phibionites, and in this excerpt he specifies further sexual immo-
ralities in the name of Gnostic aspirations. They
offer the shameful sacrifices of their immorality … to 365 names
which they themselves invented, belonging supposedly to Ar-
chons [the Basilidean system is the referent]; and they delude their
wretched womenfolk, saying, “Be one with me, that I may present
you to the Archon”; and at each [sexual] union they pronounce
the outlandish name of one of their inventions [i.e., one of the 365
Archons], and make as if to pray, saying “To thee … I present my
offering, that thou mayest present it to … [another Archon].” And
at the next union he pretends to present her likewise to another …
(XXVI.9.6-7).
They go through the 365 names with 365 different women, in an as-
cending and then descending series, totaling 730 in all:
So when he arrives at the enormous total of 730 falls, that is of im-
moral unions and of names that they have invented, then the man
in question dares to say, “I am Christ, for I have descended from
above through the names of the 365 Archons” (XXVI.9.9).
Epiphanius exhausts the sexual repertoire, including masturbation and
homosexuality, in his catalogue:
Some of them do not consort with women but corrupt themselves
with their own hands, and they take their own corruption in their
hands and so eat it, using a falsified proof-text, namely, “These
hands were sufficient, not only for me but for those with me”
(Acts 20:34), and again: “Working with your own hands, so that
you may have something to share with those who have nothing”
(Eph 4:28) … . For those who corrupt themselves with their own
hands, and not only they, but also those who consort with women,
since they are not satiated with their promiscuous intercourse with
women, are inflamed towards one another, men with men … . For
there is no satisfying their licentiousness, but the more infamous a
man is in his conduct among them, the more he is honored among
them (XXVI.11.1-9).
As was stated above, we possess no original texts to substantiate
Epiphanius’ charges. Yet, interestingly, there comes a repudiation of

404
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

such libertine practices from a Gnostic source dating from the third or
fourth centuries, the “Pistis Sophia.” There we find a curse in the
name of Jesus on those “who take male semen and female menstrual
blood and make it into a lentil dish and eat it” (quoted in Rudolph,
p. 250). This is quite reminiscent of the Phibionite rite described
above.

2. Asceticism
The writings of the Church Fathers to the contrary, the overwhelm-
ing evidence that we possess points to a governing Gnostic practice
being an ascetic morality that deviated from the orthodox position.
We shall see below that almost as predominant, at least in the second
century, was a moderate position that one generally finds in the New
Testament as well as in the early Church. Later in this chapter we
shall discuss the paradoxical phenomenon of the orthodox Church
adopting the Gnostic form of asceticism as its own, eventually lead-
ing to the development of the monastic spirituality that was to be-
come such an important part of Christian spirituality from the fourth
and fifth centuries onward to the present day. We have already ob-
served the inaccuracy of the older notion that in the early centuries of
Christianity, especially in the second, there was a marked distinction
between the heterodox and orthodox. The great Gnostic teachers —
Basilides, Marcion, and Valentinus—very much saw themselves as
Christians, part of the tradition that dated from Jesus and the apostles.
The boundaries between these two groups were fluid, and the situa-
tion did not begin to change until the fierce opposition of Irenaeus in
the latter decades of the second century spawned the heresiological
tradition taken up by opponents even more fierce in their response.
It is clear that the Fathers were ambivalent about the Gnostic ascetic
stance, since it did find favorable response with them. Thus, we find
these heresiologists questioning the sincerity of the Gnostic position.
Epiphanius says of the Archontics:
And some of them have polluted their bodies by licentiousness,
but others pretend to an affected abstinence and deceive the sim-
pler sort of men by making a show of withdrawal from the world
in imitation of the monks (Panar. XL.2.4, in F I, p. 297).
While Irenaeus states of the followers of Saturninus:

405
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

Marriage and procreation, he [Saturninus] says, are of Satan.

Many of his followers abstain also from animal food, and through
this feigned continence they lead many astray (Adv. haer. I.24.2, in
F I, p. 41).
The basic premise of asceticism—Gnostic or otherwise—is that the
body is evil (“the world, the flesh, and the devil”), and involvement
with it leads to participating in that evil, what many Gnostics described
as entrapment. While the orthodox Church accepted this practice as its
own, it certainly did not accept the radical acosmic premise that under-
lay the Gnostic asceticism: Since the physical universe was not only
not created by the true God, but was the product of an inferior and
sometimes evil deity, it was mandatory if Gnostics were to return to the
Pleroma that they avoid any involvement with the world and the body.
The flesh was a trap that kept the soul imprisoned in darkness, apart
from the light. The Gnostic stance thus was a violent protest against
the evil intentions of the world ruler, and as the decades wore on, this
stance became more and more extreme. Its culmination came in the
moral teachings of Mani in the third century. Having discussed the
Gnostic view of the body, we turn now to the specific behavioral im-
plications of this view, beginning with the writings of the Church
Fathers. The predominant focus, not surprisingly, is sex and food.
Epiphanius writes of Severus, the third-century follower of Marcion,
who taught that the Devil was the son of the chief ruler, called either Ial-
dabaoth or Sabaoth. From him came the vine:
And the grapes of the vine are like … drops of poison … . Wine …
confuses the mind of man. … [leading] to the enchantment of sex-
ual pleasure … [and] frenzy. Or again it instills wrath. … Hence
such people abstain completely from wine. They say that woman
also is a work of Satan … . Hence those who consort in marriage …
fulfill the work of Satan. Even in regard to man, half is of God and
half of the Devil. From the navel upwards … he is the creation of
the power of God; from the navel down he is the creature of the
evil power. Hence … everything relating to pleasure and passion
and desire originates from the navel and below (Panar. XLV.
1:3,7-8; 2:1-3, in F I, pp. 46-47).
Clement writes of the Basilideans’ interpretation of Matthew 19:
10-12, where Jesus speaks of becoming eunuchs for the kingdom of
heaven:

406
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

They explain the saying like this: “Some have from birth a natural
aversion from woman; these do well to follow this natural bent of
theirs by not marrying. These are … the eunuchs from birth. Those
who are such by necessity are those theatrical ascetics who weigh
on the other side the good repute that they want to have, and mas-
ter themselves. These become eunuchs by necessity and not by ra-
tional reflection. But those who have made themselves eunuchs for
the sake of the eternal kingdom arrive at this determination …
because of the things that arise from marriage; they dread the
bother that goes with providing the necessities of life” (Strom.
III.1.1, in F I, p. 79).
In commenting on Paul’s teaching that if unable to control one’s sexual
urges a man should marry, “since it is better to be married than to be
tortured” (1 Co 7:9)—Clement quotes Basilides’ son Isidore as teach-
ing that one should
endure … a quarrelsome wife, so that you may not be dragged away
from God’s grace, and when you have slaked the fire of passion
through satisfaction you may pray with good conscience (Strom.
III.1.2, in F I, p. 79).
Hippolytus writes of the Naassenes, the worshippers of the serpent
(Naas), and their interpretation of the teaching from the Sermon on the
Mount not to “give dogs what is holy … [and not to] throw your pearls
in front of pigs” (Mt 7:6):
… for they say that this is pigs’ and dogs’ business, the intercourse
of women with men (Ref. V.8.32, in F I, p. 276).
And later:
For these men have nothing to offer [to the Great Mother] beyond
what is done there, except that they are not castrated, they only
perform the functions of those who are castrated. For they urge
most severely and carefully that one should abstain, as those men
do, from intercourse with women; their behavior otherwise … is
like that of the castrated (ibid., 9.10-11, p. 280).
Clement has preserved for us excerpts from an interesting book
written in the second century by Epiphanes, the son of Carpocrates
whose teachings we have already examined. According to Clement,
Epiphanes died at the age of seventeen and was worshipped as a god
in Cephallenia (his mother’s birthplace) where a temple was built to

407
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

commemorate him. His book, “On Righteousness,” provides an inter-

esting contrast with his father’s libertine teachings, at least in those as-
pects dealing with worldly attachments. His tract is actually a Gnostic
form of communism, and can be seen to reflect the effect of Plato’s
Republic since Clement mentions that Epiphanes was taught Plato by
Carpocrates. New Testament influences are clear as well.
The righteousness of God is a communion with equality. For …
God has poured forth from above equally upon the earth for all
who can see, but they all see in common, for he makes no distinc-
tion of rich or poor, people or ruler, foolish and wise, female and
male, free and slave. … The sun causes common food to grow up
for all creatures, and the common righteousness is given to all
equally … . For righteousness among them [members of the animal
kingdom] is shown to be community. … But the laws … since they
could not restrain men’s incapacity to learn, taught them to trans-
gress. For the private property of the laws cut up and nibbled away
the fellowship of the divine law … . “mine” and “thine” were intro-
duced through the laws, and that people would no longer enjoy in
community the fruits either of the earth or of possessions, or even
of marriage (Strom. III.2.6.1,3-4; 7.2-3, in F I, pp. 38-39).
We thus find interesting foundations for the later development of mo-
nasticism: a spiritual communism in which one finds the total absence
of private ownership, out of fear of the monks’ developing attachments
to worldly goods. We shall presently see continuation of this ethic in
some of the Nag Hammadi texts and the Apocrypha.
The logical libertine culmination of Epiphanes’ arguments (and his
book is very logical) when applied to the sphere of morality is obvious,
and of course this was Clement’s principal purpose in presenting it:
In that God made all things in common for man, and brought to-
gether the female with the male in common and united all the ani-
mals likewise, he declared righteousness to be fellowship with
equality.
But those thus born rejected the fellowship which had brought
about their birth, and say: “Who marries one, let him have her,”
when they could all share in common, as the rest of the animals
show. … Hence the word of the lawgiver [the Old Testament God]
“You shall not covet” must be understood as laughable, and yet
more laughable is it to say “what is your neighbor’s.” For the very
one who gave the desire as embracing the things of birth commands

408
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

that it be taken away, though he takes it away from no animal. But

that he said “your neighbor’s wife” is even more laughable, since he
compels what was common possession to become private property
(ibid., 8.1-2; 9.3, p. 40).
It is interesting to note the relative paucity of ascetic material from
the Church Fathers’ denunciations of the Gnostics, juxtaposed with the
weight placed on the libertine excerpts, at the same time comparing the
total absence of libertine material from the Nag Hammadi texts, with
their numerous ascetic teachings. We also find numerous teachings on
asceticism in the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. These documents
exhibit definite Gnostic tendencies if not outright teachings, especially
regarding a strong asceticism. Clearly, celibacy was a primary concern
and focal point for these Gnostics who believed that sexual abstinence
was at the core of Jesus’ teachings.
In fragments from the “Acts of John” the disciple uses his presence
at a wedding to preach chastity:
Children, while your flesh is still clean and you have a body that
is untouched, and you are not caught in corruption nor soiled by
Satan … know now more fully the mystery of conjugal union: it is a
device of the serpent … an injury to the seed … a shedding of blood,
a passion in the mind, a falling from reason … an union with
bitterness … a fetter of darkness, an intoxication … that separates
from the Lord, the beginning of disobedience, the end and death of
life. Hearing this, my children, bind yourselves … in an indivisible,
true and holy matrimony, waiting for the … true bridegroom from
heaven, even Christ, who is a bridegroom for ever (AJ, in NTA II,
pp. 209-10).
John’s final prayer is:
Lord, who hast kept me from my infancy until this time un-
touched by woman, who hast separated my body from them, so
that it was offensive to me even to see a woman (ibid., p. 209).
The “Acts of Peter” also contains strong teachings on celibacy and
the horrors of sexuality as an impediment to salvation. In one episode
Peter, while staying in Rome, converts the four concubines of the pre-
fect Agrippa to chastity, as well as many other wives. The husband of
one of them, Albinus, complained bitterly to an already furious
Agrippa:

409
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

“Either you must get me satisfaction from Peter, who caused my

wife’s separation, or I shall do so myself ”; and Agrippa said that he
had been treated in the same way by him … . And Albinus said to
him, “Why then do you delay … ? Let us find him and execute him
as a trouble-maker, so that we may recover our wives, and in order
to give satisfaction to those who cannot execute him, who have
themselves been deprived of their wives by him” (APt 34, in NTA II,
p. 317).
Peter is then apprehended and martyred in an edifying death, crucified
upside down with these final words upon his lips:
… withdraw your souls from every outward sense and from all that
appears but is not truly real; close these eyes of yours, close your
ears, withdraw from actions that are outwardly seen; and you shall
know the facts about Christ and the whole secret of salvation
(ibid., 37, p. 319).
Like the “Acts of Peter,” the “Acts of Andrew” cannot truly be said
to be Gnostic, although it shares the same encratism (extreme asceti-
cism) as do its Gnostic neighbors. The “Acts of Andrew” also exhibits
definite Platonic influences—pro-cosmic and yet urging the return to
the One by turning away from the illusory and shadowy world of mul-
tiplicity. We find here a story similar to Peter’s. This time the victim-
ized husband is the judge Aegeates and the wife Maxmilla. He vows
vengeance on the apostle, who continues to urge the chaste life on
Maxmilla:
I know … that you are moved to resist the whole allurement of sex-
ual intercourse, because you wish to be separated from a polluted
and foul way of life. … And I rightly see in you Eve repenting and
in myself Adam being converted: for what she suffered in igno-
rance you are now bringing to a happy conclusion because you are
converted: and what the mind suffered which was brought down
with her and was estranged from itself, I put right with you who
know that you yourself are being drawn upon. For you yourself
who did not suffer the same things have healed her affliction; and I
by taking refuge with God have perfected his (Adam’s) imperfec-
tion: and where she disobeyed, you have been obedient … (AA 5,
in NTA II, p. 410).
Speaking more generally, Andrew gives the philosophical foundation
for his asceticism:

410
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

If, O man, you understand all these things in yourself, namely that
you are immaterial, holy, light, akin to the unbegotten, intellectual,
heavenly, translucent, pure, superior to the flesh, superior to the
world … to authorities, over whom you really are, if you perceive
yourself in your condition, then take knowledge in what you are
superior (ibid., 6, p. 411).
Later he exhorts the faithful to remember that
they live in transient evils while they enjoy their harmful delu-
sions. From which things I always exhorted you to keep clear and
to press towards the things that are permanent and to take flight
from all that is transient. … no one of you stands firm … . because
the soul is untrained and has gone astray in “nature” … (ibid., 15,
p. 414).
Andrew too is crucified, and during his martyrdom he is yet able to de-
liver a final exhortation:
Pay heed to us who hang here for the Lord’s sake and soon forsake
this body; renounce every worldly desire … . yet we have not per-
suaded our own to flee from the love of earthly things! But they
are still bound to them and abide in them and do not wish to leave
them. … How long will you be taken up with earthly and temporal
things? How long will you fail to understand what is higher than
yourselves and not press forward to lay hold of what is there?
Leave me now to be put to death in the manner you see … . For
there has been allotted me this destiny: to depart out of the body
and to live with the Lord, with whom I am even being crucified
(ibid., Narr. 30,33, pp. 420-21).
The “Acts of Thomas” is most definitely Gnostic and contains, as
seen above, “The Hymn of the Pearl.” In one scene Thomas prays to
Jesus, emphasizing his ascetic life:
Look upon us, because for thy sake we have left our homes and our
fathers’ goods … . that we may behold thy Father and be satisfied
with his divine nourishment. … for thy sake we have left our bodily
consorts and our earthly fruits … (ATh 61, in NTA II, p. 476).
Thomas then exhorts the crowd:
Abstain then first from adultery, for of all evils this is the
beginning … and from all disgraceful deeds, especially those of the
body, and from the horrid intercourse and couch of uncleanness,

411
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

whose outcome is eternal condemnation. For this impurity is the

mother-city of all evils (ibid., 84, pp. 487-88).
Of his own life Thomas boasts to his Lord:
Thou art he who made himself known to me … and I withheld my-
self from woman, that what thou dost require might not be found in
defilement. … But I believed thy revelation and remained in the
poverty of the world … . I have fulfilled thy work and accom-
plished thy command; and I have become poor and needy and a
stranger and a slave, despised and a prisoner and hungry and
thirsty and naked and weary (ibid., l44,145, p. 519).
From “The Pseudo-Clementines,” a group of writings originally at-
tributed to St. Clement of Rome—being the supposed history of his
life and family—but dated as late as the first half of the third century,
we find this strong and damning indictment of adultery:
They [the elders] should urge on to marriage not only the young
people but also those who are older, in order that lust may not flare
up and infect the church with unchastity and adultery. For God
hates the committing of adultery more than any other sin … . To
urge the brethren to morality is love’s highest service, for it is the
saving of the soul, whereas the nourishing of the body is only re-
freshment (Pseudo-Clementines 68.1-2,4, in NTA II, pp. 555-56).
We have already seen the marked ascetic tone of the group of writ-
ings attributed to Thomas, most especially regarding sexual passions.
In “The Book of Thomas the Contender” Jesus teaches his “twin:”
O bitterness of the fire that burns in the bodies of men and in their
marrow … and making their minds drunk and their souls deranged
and moving them within males and females … . Therefore it is said,
“Everyone who seeks the truth from true wisdom will make him-
self wings so as to fly, fleeing the lust that scorches the spirits of
men” (Th Cont. II.139.33–140.4, in NHL, p. 190).
In “The Dialogue of the Savior” Matthew asks his Lord:
“I wish to see that place of life, that place in which there is no evil,
but rather it is the pure light.”
The Lord said, “Brother Matthew, you cannot see it, as long you
wear the flesh.” …
Judas [i.e., Thomas] said, “… . When we pray, how should we
pray?”

412
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

The Lord said, “Pray in the place where there is no woman”

(Dial. Savior III.132.6-12; 144.12-19, in NHL, pp. 233,237).
Not surprisingly, as “The Dialogue of the Savior” shares many par-
allels with the earlier “Gospel of Thomas,” this final misogynist state-
ment is reminiscent of the end of the Gospel:
Simon Peter said to them, “Let Mary [Magdalene] leave us, for
women are not worthy of Life.”
Jesus said, “I shall myself lead her in order to make her male, so
that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For
every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom
of Heaven” (GTh II.51.18-26, in NHL, p. 130).
“The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles” is, strictly speaking,
not a Gnostic document. Its appearance in the monastic library un-
earthed at Nag Hammadi, reflects, however, the fluid boundaries that
existed between the orthodox and heterodox that can be observed even
as late as the fourth century. This text could well have been written in
the second century, and its emphasis on poverty and criticisms of the
rich are familiar ground for the orthodox. Interestingly, its ascetic
teachings on doing without possessions are placed within a framework
of symbolism more reminiscent of Gnosticism: strangers in an alien
world, the hidden pearl, and the garment of the world. The speaker is
Lithargoel, later revealed to be Jesus:
No man is able to go on that road [to the city, i.e., the rest], except
one who has forsaken everything that he has and has fasted daily
from stage to stage. For many are the robbers and wild beasts on
that road. The one who carries bread with him on the road, the
black dogs kill because of the bread. The one who carries a costly
garment of the world with him, the robbers kill because of the gar-
ment (APt 12 VI.5.21–6.1, in NHL, p. 267).
Though exhibiting many Valentinian elements, “The Testimony of
Truth” presents a far more ascetic teaching than what we find in the
Valentinian school (see next section). The author, probably living in
the third century, is emphatic in seeing the total renunciation of the
world and all sexual passions as the only means of salvation. The Old
Testament Law is seen as the path of darkness, a position similar to the
strong anti-Judaism found in many Gnostic texts:

413
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

For no one who is under the Law will be able to look up to the
truth, for they will not be able to serve two masters. … The Law
commands one to take a husband or to take a wife, and to beget, to
multiply like the sand of the sea. But passion which is a delight to
them constrains the souls of those who are begotten in this
place … in order that the Law might be fulfilled through them. And
they show that they are assisting the world; and they turn away
from the light, who are unable to pass by the archon of darkness
until they pay the last penny.
But the Son of Man came forth from Imperishability … . He
came to the world by the Jordan river. … And John bore witness to
the descent of Jesus. … he knew that the dominion of carnal pro-
creation had come to an end. The Jordan river is the power of the
body, that is, the senses of pleasures. The water of the Jordan is the
desire for sexual intercourse. John is the archon of the womb (Test.
Tr. IX.29.22–31.5, in NHL, p. 407).
“The Testimony of Truth” is more than simply an anti-Jewish tract,
however, for as we have seen in earlier chapters it is quite vehement in
its denunciation of the orthodox Church. Here, we cite its attack on the
Church’s emphasis on sacraments, especially baptism, as the way of
salvation:
Some enter the faith by receiving a baptism, on the ground that
they have it as a hope of salvation, which they call “the seal.” They
do not know that the fathers of the world [archons] are manifest to
that place … . But the baptism of truth is something else; it is by the
renunciation of the world that it is found (ibid., 69.7-24, p. 414).
The Hermetic literature offers one source of non-Christian Gnostic
thought, and here we include a quotation on the world’s entrapment of
the soul through sex:
The spiritual man shall recognize himself as immortal, and love as
the cause of death … ; He who has cherished the body issued from
the error of love, he remains in the darkness erring, suffering in his
senses the dispensations of death (in Jonas, pp. 72-73).
A specific expression of asceticism was martyrdom, if not theolog-
ically, then certainly psychologically in its emphasis on bodily punish-
ment. Clearly, identifying with the sufferings of Jesus was central to
the orthodox Church’s understanding of the gospel, as we saw in
Part I, for such suffering was seen as the ultimate expression of the

414
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

disciples’ love for their Lord. Suffering, therefore, whether in the form
of the ascetic turning away from the pleasures of the world, or actively
seeking to suffer and die in the name of Jesus, was all seen as the Will
of God. Many Gnostics, too, emphasized martyrdom as being part of
salvation. Since they were the targets of the Church Fathers, it logi-
cally follows, as it did for the orthodox who were attacked by the syn-
agogue and the Romans, that they would lift the experience of a
suffering victimhood to a spiritual ideal. The Nag Hammadi Library
offers several examples of this, most prominent of which is “The First
Apocalypse of James.”
In this revelation to James, Jesus extols the life of suffering in his
name and for his love:
Fear not, James. You too will they seize. … thus you will undergo
these sufferings. But do not be sad. For the flesh is weak. It will re-
ceive what has been ordained for it. But as for you, do not be timid
or afraid (1 ApocJs V.25.13-15; 32.17-22, in NHL, pp. 243,246).
James weeps at these words, but Jesus continues:
James, behold, I shall reveal to you your redemption. When you
are seized, and you undergo these sufferings, a multitude will arm
themselves against you that they may seize you (ibid., 32.29–33.5,
p. 246).
The revelation continues with the ascent of James’ soul, and instruc-
tions as to becoming free of the “detainers.”
While “The First Apocalypse of James” treats the predictions of
James’ sufferings and martyrdom, “The Second Apocalypse of James”
actually describes these events. James appears before the unpersuaded
crowd, who cry out against him:
“Come, let us stone the Just One [James]. … let us kill this man,
that he may be taken from our midst.” … And they … found him
standing beside the columns of the temple … . They seized him and
struck him as they dragged him upon the ground. They stretched
him out, and placed a stone on his abdomen. They all placed their
feet on him, saying, “You have erred!”
Again they raised him up, since he was alive, and made him dig a
hole. They made him stand in it. After having covered him up to his
abdomen, they stoned him in this manner (2 ApocJs V.61.13–62.12,
in NHL, pp. 254-55).

415
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

In “The Letter of Peter to Philip” Peter teaches the other apostles

that it was not necessary that Jesus suffer for his own salvation, for he
was divine, but that it is necessary that his followers do:
Our illuminator, Jesus, came down and was crucified. … and he
was buried in a tomb. And he rose from the dead. My brothers, Je-
sus is a stranger to this suffering. But we are the ones who have
suffered at the transgression of the mother [Sophia] (Pt Ph
VIII.139.15-22, in NHL, p. 397).
We have already considered the theology of Marcion, the influential
Gnostic teacher of the second century. His norms for behavior and eth-
ical (moral) imperatives logically if not severely follow from his teach-
ing. Recalling what we discussed before, we can see that Marcion’s
morality is based on a strict acosmic dualism, in which the true God is
totally separate and indifferent to the physical world, which is under the
law of its creator, the Demiurge. As was observed with other Gnostic
theorists, Marcion also emphasized the necessity of not being beholden
to any of the laws of the world, and of not being bound to any aspect of
this world. Thus, Marcion advocated the bare minimum of involvement
in the world of matter, thereby reducing its hold over us:
By way of opposition to the Demiurge, Marcion rejects the use of
the things of this world. … [He] believes that he vexes the Demiurge
by abstaining from what he made or instituted (in Jonas, p. 144).
Jonas has observed that this extreme ascetic morality was not “a
matter … of ethics but of metaphysical alignment” (Jonas, p. 144); i.e.,
the Gnostics aligning themselves with the reality of God, as opposed
to the tyranny of the Demiurge and his world. The major expression of
this asceticism, not surprisingly again, was in the areas of sex and
food. Of sexual intercourse Marcion taught, according to Clement:
Not wishing to help replenish the world made by the Demiurge, the
Marcionites decreed abstention from matrimony, defying their cre-
ator and hastening to the Good One who has called them and
who … is God in a different sense: wherefore, wishing to leave
nothing of their own down here, they turn abstemious not from a
moral principle but from hostility to their maker and unwillingness
to use his creation (Strom. III.4.25, in Jonas, pp. 144-45).
The principal Marcionite argument against sex therefore is not the act
itself, but its result of reproduction. Celibacy becomes the attempt to

416
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

foil the Demiurge’s plan of capturing the separated souls of light from
their Source, imprisoning them still further in the material world of
darkness. In terms of food, abstaining as much as possible was
for the sake of destroying and contemning and abominating the
works of the creator (Jerome, Adv. Jovinian II.16, in Jonas, p. 144).
Jonas concludes his discussion of Marcion:
Thus Marcion’s asceticism, unlike that of the Essene or later of
Christian monasticism, was not conceived to further the sanctifi-
cation of human existence, but was essentially negative in con-
ception and part of the gnostic revolt against the cosmos (Jonas,
p. 145).
We are thus very far from the point of view that asceticism was a
positive activity mandated by God, as maintained by the orthodox
Church. Rather, it is here reflective of that extreme negative reaction
to the nature of this world and its creator. Hardly ordered by the good
God, who remains totally indifferent to what occurs in this world, total
abstention nonetheless becomes the only sane Gnostic reaction to the
existential situation here, and thus the means to become free of it.
While Marcion gave the most complete statement of the behavioral
implications of the Gnostic world-view that existed to his time, it re-
mained for Mani in the third century to give this ascetic position its
consummate expression. A quotation from Mani himself serves as a
fine summarizing introduction to a discussion of Manichean morality:
Since the ruin of the Hyle [the world of matter] is decreed by God,
one should abstain from all ensouled things and eat only vegetables
and whatever else is non-sentient, and abstain from marriage, the
delights of love and the begetting of children, so that the divine
Power may not through the succession of generations remain lon-
ger in the Hyle (in Jonas, p. 231).
What was implied in Marcion’s system is here clearly spelled out in
Mani’s. The trapped particles of light in matter must not only not be
harmed, but also must not be ingested. This attitude, incidentally, is in
clear contrast with the libertine sects that are witnessed to by the her-
esiologists. Those Gnostics, according to the Church Fathers, believed
that it was by ingesting the divine element in semen and menses that
they could be returned to God. For Mani, it was just such incorporation
(though without the scatological elements reported by the Church

417
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

Fathers) that imprisoned, preventing the “cosmic ferris wheel” from

collecting the light particles from the world. In addition, Mani advo-
cated a rigorous poverty as part of the continuing process of separating
from the world’s material darkness.
These premises, taken to their ultimate, result in the most extreme
asceticism ever imagined and a justification for the ultimate quietism.
If particles of light are trapped all over and everywhere, any movement
can trample underfoot the divine, including breathing which engulfs
such particles. The light so contained is described as the “slaughtered,
killed, oppressed, murdered soul” (Rudolph, p. 341), and the reader
may recall our discussion from Chapter 8 on Jesus patibilis, the arche-
typal symbol for these suffering particles. Thus one finds a strange form
of compassion inherent in Mani’s system. Nonetheless, this “compas-
sion” for the light particles has resulted in what Jonas refers to as “the
most exaggerated idea of sin that has ever been conceived” (Jonas,
p. 232). He cites some of Mani’s teachings:
When someone walks on the ground he injures the earth [i.e., more
accurately, the Light mixed in with it]; he who moves his hand in-
jures the air, for this is the soul of men and beasts … . It behooves
man that he look down at the ground when walking on his way, lest
he tread under his foot the cross of the Light and destroy the plants
(Kephalaia 208.17, in Jonas, p. 232).
Interestingly, this latter directive found its way into Christian monas-
ticism in the teaching of “custody of the eyes.” This aspect of the
monastic life emphasized the temptation of the world, and in a more
extreme form, as in the writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, would
have monks walking with their eyes cast down lest the beauties of
nature tempt them to forget the inner world of God.
Augustine further describes the Manichees’ extreme asceticism:
Nevertheless they eat no meat, since the divine substance has
fled from dead or slain creatures. What remains, after the death of
an animal, is of such quantity and quality that it is no longer wor-
thy of being purified in the body of one of the elect.
They do not even eat eggs, since these too died when they were
broken, and no dead bodies must be eaten, and the only part of
flesh that is living is what can be trapped in meal so that it does not
die. Nor do they use milk as food, though it is milked or sucked
from the body of the living animal. … They assume that plants and
trees are in this way living, that the life which is in them feels and

418
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

suffers when they are injured; and none of them could tear off or
pluck anything of these without causing pain. They even consider
it wrong, therefore, to cleanse a field of thorns. As a result they
foolishly charge agriculture, the most innocent of all skills as a still
greater murderer. … And when they copulate, they should avoid
conception and procreation, so that the divine substance entering
them through food and drink may not be fettered in fleshly bonds
in succeeding generations. They believe that souls obtain entry to
all flesh, and through food and drink. This is no doubt why they
condemn marriage, and prevent it as far as they can … (Augustine,
de haer. 46.3-4, in Haardt, pp. 345-47).
In the Manichean Psalms we read:
Let us give ourselves to him and he is able to guide us.
Guide my eyes that they look no evil look.
Guide my ears that they hear not a … word.
Guide my nostrils that they smell not the stink of lust.
Guide my mouth that it utter no slander.
Guide for me my hands that they serve not Satan.
Guide for me my heart that it do no evil at all.
Guide for me my Spirit in the midst of the stormy sea.
............................................
Guide my feet that they walk not in the way of Error.
(Unnumbered fragment, in Allberry, p. 150).
Sin therefore is unavoidable in this world of bodies, and empha-
sizes still further the evil designs of the Prince of Darkness in making
humanity. This belief led to the elaborate Manichean manual of con-
fession, from which we now quote. The manual begins by describing
the fate of the Five Gods who suffered the fate of being trapped in this
world:
Because they fought for a while with … the Devil, were injured as a
result and mingled with the Dark, they are now on this earth.
Thus they are subject to the almost infinite variety of sins, for which
the Manichean auditors must beg forgiveness:
My God! Should we ever in any way have injured or shattered the
Five Gods, through Imprudence or evil wickedness; should we
have caused them the fourteen-type Wounds, should we have de-
stroyed Life with the ten snake-headed fingers and the thirty-two
teeth, in order to take it into us as food and drink, and if we thereby

419
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

should have hurt and tormented the Five Gods in any way; should
we ever have offended in any way against the dry and against the
damp Earth, against the fivefold Living Being, against the fivefold
Plants and Trees, we now beg, My God, Forgiveness for our Sins.
The manual continues by enumerating sins against the members of the
Elect, all members of the human race, and the entire animal kingdom.
And finally, these ten sins:
1) should we have in any way lied or in any way borne false wit-
ness; 2) … have been witness to a lie; 3) … have calumnied a sin-
less man … 4) … have practiced magic; 5) and should we
thereby … have slain manifold living beings; 6) … in commerce
have practised deception; 7) … have used up property entrusted to
us by an absent person; 8) … have done anything to displease the
Sun- and the Moon-God; 9) … have committed an offense with the
first Body and with this Body, and have sinned with them, by mak-
ing a living as a male paramour; 10) … have caused harm to so
many creatures, My God, we now pray, therefore, for Forgiveness
for these ten types of sin (Confessional Mirror for the Laity, in
Haardt, pp. 327-29).
This extreme emphasis on sin, incidentally, found its way into the con-
fessions and theology of St. Augustine. Though abandoning the theol-
ogy of his former compatriots, Augustine apparently never lost the
guilt that underlay such teachings.
When one entered the Manichean community the powers of Dark-
ness were banished, but this did not rule out the falling to temptation,
especially when, as we have seen, any bodily activity was considered
a form of sin. This led to the Manichean emphasis on confession as en-
abling the sin to be undone by a simple willingness to repent.
Parallel to the standard Gnostic triad of pneumatic, psychic, and
hylic, the Manicheans had a triad of the Elect, Soldiers, and sinners. The
ideal of extreme asceticism was only for those few spiritually
advanced—the Elect, also called the Perfect, Righteous, or True—who
could maintain such standards. It was incumbent upon them to maintain
a strict schedule of prayer, Manichean scriptural readings, and fasting.
One hundred fast days per year were required, thirty of which were con-
secutive. Central to each day was “the table,” a meal that the elect took
in common, and which consisted of those vegetables, fruits, and bread
that had “a high content of light” and thus were considered sacred. This
included cucumbers, melons, and wheat bread. By their consumption of

420
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

this food the Elect would deliver the light from the bondage of matter
through a process of purification. St. Augustine, reflecting back on the
Manicheans he knew, sarcastically relates how an Elect
breathes out of it angels, yea, there shall burst forth particles of di-
vinity, at every moan or groan in his prayer, which particles of the
most high and true God had remained bound in that fig, unless they
had been set at liberty by the teeth or belly of some “Elect” saint
(Conf. 3.10, in Rudolph, pp. 341-42).
The Elect also were to dedicate themselves to studying and copying
religious writings as their principal activity, and their reputation here
for excellence both in writing materials as well as artistry has far ex-
ceeded the content of what they were copying. Rudolph quotes one
Arab author (al-Jahiz) as saying:
When the Manicheans expend effort on the production of their
holy writings, it is like the Christians doing the same for the
churches … (in Rudolph, p. 340).
Clearly, the Elect on their own could never manage to run a com-
munity. It was the function of the second group, the Soldiers (also re-
ferred to as Hearers) to assume the responsibility for the practical
details and exigencies of daily life. The sins that they would amass by
virtue of their worldly involvement would be promptly forgiven by the
Elect. Quite obviously the Soldiers were second-class citizens of the
community who could never achieve salvation in this lifetime, which
was only possible if they would be reborn as a member of the Elect, or
as a plant with a high degree of light:
[they] must return into the “world and its terrors … until [their]
light and … spirit shall be freed and after long wandering back and
forth [they attain] to the assembly of the Elect” (in Jonas, p. 233).
Material wealth of course was denied to the Elect, but not to this sec-
ond group, who were allowed to amass large amounts of wealth to form
the economic foundation for the community. In addition, their respon-
sibilities included observing basic commandments of renunciation of
sins, including sexual infidelity, lying, killing of animals, and doubts of
the Manichean faith.
The third group comprised the sinners who, it goes without saying,
were confined to the power of the Darkness and eternal damnation in
hell:

421
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

Hail to all those who escape the end of the Sinners and Deniers
and avoid the ruin which confronts them in concealment for all
eternity! (From Kephalaia 41, in Haardt, p. 327)
Manicheism also strongly emphasized martyrdom, Mani’s eventual
fate, as seen in his own words:
Endure persecutions and temptations, which will come to ye, for-
tify yourselves in these commandments which I gave unto ye, that
ye may escape that second death and these last bonds, in which
there is no hope of life, and that ye may avoid the evil end of the
Deniers and Blasphemers who have seen the Truth with their own
eyes and have turned away from it. They shall come unto the Place
of Punishment at which there is no day of life. For the shining
Light shall hide from them, and from that hour onward they shall
not see it (ibid., p. 326).

3. Moderateness
For the more moderate Gnostic view of morality we find our great-
est examples in the Mandean community and Valentinian schools—
though not necessarily as related by the heresiologists who, as we have
seen, almost always chose to highlight if not exaggerate the dramatic
and grossly deviant.
Our only specific example of Valentinian ethics, from which it is pos-
sible to derive some implications, is the “Letter of Ptolemaeus to Flora,”
preserved for us by Epiphanius. We discussed this letter in Chapter 6
(pp. 224-26), where we considered its view of the “three Gods.” As we
saw then, this Valentinian teacher is instructing a hitherto uninitiated
lady as prelude for the higher teachings which will follow later. The let-
ter is instructive for us as it illustrates clearly the importance for the
Valentinians of the Ten Commandments (with some reservations) and
the Sermon on the Mount as ethical guides. It is thus an interesting doc-
ument, illustrating once again how close the Gnostic schools could be to
the orthodox Church in many important areas. While teaching that the
“perfect God and Father” did not create this world, this school did not
hold that the world was evil or the work of the devil. Rather, as
mentioned earlier, it was seen as coming from a “God who is just and
hates evil.” Let us look specifically at the Ten Commandments.
The Law—i.e., the body of laws found in the five books of Moses
—has three parts: that given by the Middle or Just God—good but

422
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

imperfect; that containing the additions made by Moses himself as ad-

aptations to the need of the people; and those commandments intro-
duced by the “elders of the people” who came after Moses.
The law given by this God of Justice is itself divided into three
parts: that which is to be fulfilled (the Ten Commandments) by Jesus
because, while not evil, the legislation was not perfect; that which is
evil and unjust (e.g., an eye for an eye), and so was destroyed by Jesus;
and that which is to be understood symbolically (such as fasting and
circumcision): The first part is fulfilled as is stated in the Sermon on
the Mount, as is the second abrogated there as well (e.g., turning the
other cheek). It is the third part of the laws given by the Just God with
which we are particularly concerned and now address.
Ptolemaeus is in essence here talking about form and content,
teaching Flora that the content or meaning of the various Jewish rituals
was true, while the form of any particular one was no longer needed.
One example is fasting, the spiritual meaning of which is the “absti-
nence from all that is evil.” Because of Jesus the truth (content) has
come, and so the commandment to abstain from food (form) is obso-
lete. However, interesting to note, Ptolemaeus does not consider obe-
dience to the commandment to be evil, for it is still practiced within his
circle. Let him speak for himself:
But the part which is exemplary [symbolic] … I mean what is laid
down about offerings, circumcision, Sabbath, fasting, Passover, un-
leavened bread, and other such matters. All these are images and
symbols and they were changed when the truth appeared. As far as
their phenomenal appearance and literal fulfilment are concerned,
they were destroyed; but as far as spiritual meaning is concerned,
they were restored; the names remained the same, but the content
changed. For the Savior … . wants us to be engaged not in physical
fasting, but in spiritual fasting, which amounts to abstinence from
all that is evil. External, physical fasting is observed even among
our followers, for it can be of some benefit to the soul, if it is en-
gaged on reasonably … . At the same time we fast as a way of re-
membering the true fast, in order that those who are not yet able to
keep that fast may have a reminder of it from the physical fast
(Panar. XXXIII.5.8-14, in F I, pp. 158-59).
Thus we find in this Letter a prominent example of how the Gnostic
metaphysics, here the Valentinian form, can be adapted to meet the
ethical and practical needs of the community and specific individuals.

423
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

In quite a different vein we also find a moderate position in

“Asclepius,” a Hermetic text in the Nag Hammadi Library. We have al-
ready considered this document, but its discussion of sex in a positive
light is relevant here. The treatise begins with the Revealer Hermes
Trismegistus instructing his initiate Asclepius on the similarities be-
tween the “mystery” (of spiritual union) and the experience of sexual
intercourse, certainly a curious positive comparison to find in the Nag
Hammadi collection, another argument for not truly seeing this text as
purely Gnostic. It serves as another example of the thin line that some-
times served to separate Gnosticism from other contemporary systems
of thought, not always Christian. Hermes says:
And if you wish to see the reality of this mystery then you
should see the wonderful representation of the intercourse that
takes place between the male and the female. For when the semen
reaches the climax, it leaps forth. In that moment the female re-
ceives the strength of the male; the male for his part receives the
strength of the female … (Ascl. VI.65.15-24, in NHL, p. 300).
Our final example of a moderate ethical position among the Gnostics
is the Mandeans, an interesting amalgam of heterodox Jewry and
Gnosticism. As Rudolph has summarized the situation:
One may indeed say that here gnosis has been grafted on to an old
branch of the cultic community of unorthodox Jewry, but from this
an authentic and even typical Mandean-Nasorean product has been
created (in F II, pp. 139-40).
Much closer to the Old Testament ethic as its norm, the Mandean lit-
erature contains no real ascetic nor libertine morality, but rather a
focus on living a “good” and “just” life, devotion to good works, dis-
pensing alms to the poor, etc. Nonetheless, the Gnostic anti-cosmic
bias is unmistakably present. Thus, at times the Mandean literature on
morality is almost indistinguishable from the biblical soil from which
it grew, while at others it fits comfortably into a Gnostic context.
Moreover, as we have seen, emphasis on rites of baptism, washings,
etc., as mandatory for salvation, co-equal with the role of knowledge,
distinguishes the Mandean way of life.
The more traditional Judaeo-Christian moral precepts clearly pre-
vail, and can be seen in the following examples:

424
 Gnosticism: Ethics – Morality

Perfect and faithful: do not deviate from your words and love
not lies and falsehood. Love not gold and silver and the posses-
sions of this world, for this world will come to nothing and per-
ish, and its possessions and its works will be abandoned. Do not
worship Satan, the idols, the images, the error, and the confusion
of this world … . Do not put your trust in the kings, rulers, and reb-
els of this world, nor in military forces, arms conflict, and the
hosts which they assemble … (GR I.95f, in F II, pp. 289-90).
The following excerpt is reminiscent of the teaching of Ptolemaeus to
Flora:
I say to you, my chosen … Fast the great fast, which is not a fast-
ing from the eating and drinking of the world. Fast with your eyes
from immodest winking, and do not see or practice evil. … Fast
with your mouths from wanton lies and do not love falsehood and
deceit. Fast with your hearts from wicked thoughts … with your
hands from committing murder and do not commit robbery. Fast
with your body from the married woman who does not belong to
you (GR I.110-18, in F II, p. 290).
In what follows, we find the same ethic and behavioral norm so char-
acteristic of Old Testament thinking, taken over in the New Testament
most clearly in the Sermon on the Mount and the parable of the Last
Judgment in Matthew:
If you see a prisoner who is believing and true, then pay the neces-
sary ransom and release him. Do not however simply release the
soul with gold and silver, but also with … faith, and pure words of
the mouth release the soul from darkness to light, from error to
truth … from unbelief to belief in your lord … . Give alms to the
poor and be a guide to the blind. And when you give alms, my cho-
sen, do not give ostentatiously. … When you see anyone who is
hungry, then satisfy his hunger. When you see anyone who is
thirsty, then give him to drink. When you see anyone naked, then
give him clothes and coverings for his nakedness. For whoever
gives, receives, and whoever makes loans, is repaid. Whoever
gives alms will find abundant alms as his support. Whoever clothes
the naked with raiment, will find clothes and covering for his
nakedness. Whoever releases a prisoner, will find a Messenger of
Life advancing to meet him. … Give bread, water, and shelter to
poor and persecuted people who suffer persecution. (GR I.103-105;
138, in F II, p. 291).

425
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

Regarding sexuality and worldly pleasures:

Take a wife and found a family, so that the world may multiply
through you. … Do not commit adultery or fornicate, do not sing
or dance. … and do not neglect the night prayer. Love not treacher-
ous spirits and seductive courtesans. … Drink not and do not be-
come intoxicated, and do not forget the lord in your thoughts (GR
I.92,146; GR XVI.2, in F II, pp. 292-93).
In the following excerpt we find a teaching very reminiscent of the
Old Testament—that we love our brothers, but not our enemies:
Love and support one another, as the eyes take care for the feet.
Love and support one another, and you shall cross the great Ocean
of Suf [the Red Sea: Mandean symbol for the dividing line be-
tween this world and the next; i.e., death]. For brothers of flesh
come to nothing, but brothers of kusta [truth] are established (in
the realm of light) (GR I,128, in F II, pp. 291-92).
Finally, we look at some Mandean passages that are more frankly
Gnostic in their anti-cosmic attitude:
Do not put your trust in the beauty of bodies, which soon pass
into corruption … for everything that is born, dies, and everything
that is made with the hands, passes into corruption. The whole
world comes to an end, and idolatry comes to nothing. … Do not
praise the Seven and the Twelve, the ringleaders [archons] of the
world, who travel day and night, those who seduce the family of
souls, who were transplanted here from the House of Life. Do not
praise the sun and the moon, the luminaries of this world, for this
radiance does not belong to them: it was only given to them in or-
der to illuminate the dark abode. They are the angels of the per-
ishable house … . Adam, look upon the world, which is a
completely unreal thing. … in which you can put no trust. … I
wander about searching after my soul, which is worth ages and
worlds to me. I went and found my soul—what are all the worlds
to me? (GR I.153-65; GR XVI.2,5, in F II, pp. 289-90,293-94)

Platonism

The Platonic ethic of living a virtuous life in pursuit of truth has

been discussed in the preceding chapters, and so will not be dealt with

426
 Platonism

in depth here. The exception is Plotinus who, as we shall see presently,

addresses the subject of morality specifically in the context of the
Gnostic position, and we will close the chapter with Plotinus’ moving
description of the culmination of the spiritual life, doubtless drawn
from his own experience.

1. Plato
In Chapter 7 we discussed Plato’s notions of the body and the tri-
partite mind. We specifically referred to his telling image in the
Phaedo of the charioteer (reason) reining in the recalcitrant forces of
the emotions and appetites (body). It is especially important to recall
that for Plato the body is seen as the agent and cause of moral evil in
the world, with the soul being the innocent victim of the body’s grossly
material and evil qualities. Plato saw the problem as resting in the fail-
ure of society to educate people properly in the use of reason and cul-
tivation of virtue:
… no one wishes to be bad, but a bad man is bad because of some
flaw in his physical make-up and failure in his education, neither
of which he likes or chooses. … The responsibility lies with the
parents rather than the offspring, and with those who educate rather
than their pupils; but we must all try with all our might by educa-
tion, by practice and by study to avoid evil and grasp its
contrary … (Tim. 86e-87b).
We saw in Chapter 8 that the practice of virtue is Plato’s version of sal-
vation, and leads him to describe the various ethical and educational
practices that foster the development of reason in attaining knowledge
of the Good. This is the goal of justice, summarized in this way in the
Republic:
Justice[’s] … real concern is not with external actions, but with a
man’s inward self, his true concern and interest. The just man will
not allow the three elements which make up his inward self to tres-
pass on each other’s functions or interfere with each other, but, by
keeping all three in tune … will in the truest sense set his house to
rights, attain self-mastery and order, and live on good terms with
himself. When he has bound these elements into a disciplined and
harmonious whole, and so become fully one instead of many, he
will be ready for action of any kind … (Rep. IV 443c-e).

427
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

The emphasis, judged by this passage, is placed by Plato on the pro-

cess of attaining inner harmony, not the action itself.

2. Philo
We find in Philo a more subtle expression of the Platonic paradox
with which we are now more than familiar. Clearly negative in his es-
timation of the body, he nonetheless does not attack the body with the
repulsion we find in most other Platonists, and emphatically repudiates
a life of physical austerity or neglect. He writes:
If then thou observest anyone not taking food or drink when he
should, or refusing to use the bath and oil … or sleeping on the
ground, and occupying wretched lodgings, and then on the strength
of all this fancying that he is practicing self-control, take pity on
his mistake, and show him the true method of self-control; for all
these practices of his are fruitless and wearisome labors, prostrat-
ing soul and body by starving and in other ways maltreating them.
A man may submit … to purifications befouling his understanding
while cleansing his body; he may, having more money than he
knows what to do with, found a temple, providing all its furniture
on a scale of lavish magnificence; … yet shall he not be inscribed
on the roll of the pious. No, for this man … has gone astray from
the road that accords with piety, deeming it to be ritual instead of
holiness, and offering gifts to Him who cannot be bribed and will
not accept such things … who welcomes genuine worship of every
kind, but abhors all counterfeit approaches. Genuine worship is
that of a soul bringing simple reality as its only sacrifice; all that is
mere display, fed by lavish expenditure on externals, is counterfeit
(The Worse Attacks the Better 19-21).
Not only is an error made in this ritualistic approach but, on a more di-
rectly practical level, opposing the flesh through ascetic practices
merely compounds the problem, as we see in this passage, filled with
psychological wisdom:
… for in this way you will rouse your adversary’s spirit and stimu-
late a more dangerous foe to the contest against you (On Flight and
Finding 25).
In other words, you merely intensify the fear by reinforcing the fact
that there is an “enemy” outside you that needs to be defeated before
it defeats you. Beginning with fear, the ascetic attack upon the flesh

428
 Platonism

ends with fear, completing the vicious circle that Philo intuitively
sensed. Thus, he urged a more moderate approach to the physical and
social world:
Begin, then, by getting some exercise and practice in the business
of life both private and public; and when by means of the sister vir-
tues, household-management and statesmanship, you have become
masters in each domain, enter now, as more than qualified to do so,
on your migration to a different and more excellent way of life. For
the practical comes before the contemplative life; it is a sort of pre-
lude to a more advanced contest; and it is well to have fought it out
first (ibid., 36).
Such involvement even includes indulging in life’s physical pleasures,
if done with self-control, for
the countenance of wisdom is not scowling and severe, contracted
by deep thought and depression of spirit, but on the contrary cheer-
ful and tranquil, full of joy and gladness … (Noah’s Work as a
Planter 167).
Thus it is not the world that is good or bad, but the use that we make
of it:
We have to say … that sense-perception comes under the head nei-
ther of bad nor of good things, but is an intermediate thing com-
mon to a wise man and a fool, and when it finds itself in a fool it
proves bad, when in a sensible man, good (Alleg. Interp. III.67).
It is our attitude towards the physical world and its gifts that is the
problem, not the physical gifts themselves, for they are nothing. Philo
illustrates this point by his allegorical interpretation of one of the Old
Testament’s strictures against incest: “A man shall not go near to any
that is akin to his flesh to uncover their shame” (Lv 18:6). Philo ex-
plains this passage as a command to spurn the flesh: “Let not our
appetites … be whetted and incited towards anything that is dear to the
flesh” (On the Giants 35). However, Philo quickly points out that he is
speaking of the attraction to the things of the flesh:
The meaning of these words it would be well to explain. Men have
often possessed an unlimited profusion of wealth, without engaging
in lucrative trade, and others have not pursued glory and yet been
held worthy to receive civic eulogies and honors. … Let all such
learn not to “go near” with deliberate purpose to any of these gifts,

429
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

that is, not to regard them with admiration or undue satisfaction,

judging that each of them is not only no true blessing, but actually a
grievous evil … . For it is the lovers of these things in each case who
make the “approach,” … . They have abandoned the better to the
worse, the soul to the soulless. The sane man brings the dazzling
and coveted gifts of fortune in subjection to the mind as to a cap-
tain. If they come to him, he accepts them to use them for improve-
ment of life, but if they remain afar off, he does not go to them,
judging that without them happiness might still be quite possible
(On the Giants 36-39).
Philo thus cautions not to make the mistake of embracing the body
as a source of pleasure. The body is, as it were, a necessary evil in our
experience in this world, and pleasure thus is a
serpent … bad of itself; and therefore it is not found at all in a good
man, the bad man getting all the harm of it by himself. … Just as
joy, being a good condition of soul, deserves prayer, so pleasure,
the passion par excellence [its “starting-point and foundation”], de-
serves cursing … . beyond all the wild beasts … (Alleg. Interp.
III.68,107,113).
In The Sacrifices of Cain and Abel he writes even more strongly de-
nouncing the pleasures of the body (21-32), leading the reader to ex-
pect the same stirring exhortations to the ascetic life we have found in
many of the Gnostics:
So Pleasure comes languishing in the guise of a harlot or courte-
san. Her gait has the looseness which her extravagant wantonness
and luxury has bred; the lascivious roll of her eyes is a bait to en-
tice the souls of the young; her look speaks of boldness and shame-
lessness; her neck is held high; she assumes a stature which Nature
has not given her; she grins and giggles … (21).
For page after page Philo continues with this portrait of physical plea-
sure, culminating in a list of almost 150 adjectives that describe the
one who becomes a “pleasure-lover.” Yet unexpectedly, as we have
already discussed, Philo is an ethical moderate, for he recognizes that
pleasure, as a by-product of this physical participation is not to be
avoided, but it must never be allowed to distract one from the true
purpose here: the practice and attainment of virtue, the goal of becom-
ing Plato’s philosopher-king. And here Philo’s Platonic heritage
comes to the fore, as we saw in Chapter 7, wherein he sees the body

430
 Platonism

as a corpse, “that dwelling place of endless calamities” (On the Con-

fusion of Tongues 177). The body thus is merely a means that we dis-
card when the goal of reaching God has been attained. It is the
philosopher-kings who have attained this goal, they who walk the fine
middle line of working within the physical framework without be-
coming enticed in the corporeal snare:
Now some of the souls have descended into bodies, but others
have never deigned to be brought into union with any of the parts
of earth. They are consecrated and devoted to the service of the
Father and Creator whose wont it is to employ them as ministers
and helpers, to have charge and care of mortal man. … [they] have
risen to the surface and then soared upwards back to the place from
whence they came. These … are the souls of those who have given
themselves to genuine philosophy, who from first to last study to
die to the life in the body, that a higher existence immortal and in-
corporeal, in the presence of Him who is Himself immortal and un-
create, may be their portion (On the Giants 12-15).
Elsewhere, Philo states that these souls,
free from flesh and body spend their days in the theater of the uni-
verse and with a joy that none can hinder see and hear things di-
vine, which they have desired with love insatiable (ibid. 31).

3. Origen
Despite his strongly mystical and ascetical bent, Origen nonethe-
less upholds the Church’s belief in sacraments, seeing them as the
framework within which the non-ritual spiritual practices are carried
out. Thus in his writings, one finds references to the sacraments of
penance, baptism, and the Eucharist. Martyrdom, as we have seen, es-
pecially finds favor, for to shed blood purifies and cleanses the Church,
as is stated in this passage from An Exhortation to Martyrdom:
At any rate, clearly “the cup of salvation” in Psalms is the death of
the martyrs. … Therefore, death comes to us as “precious” if we are
God’s saints and worthy of dying not the common death, if I may
call it that, but a special kind of death, Christian, religious, and holy.
Let us also remember the sins we have committed, and that it is
impossible to receive forgiveness of sins apart from baptism … and
that the baptism of martyrdom has been given to us (Martyrdom
XXIX-XXX).

431
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

As previously discussed, Origen sees the physical world as the ef-

fect of the fall of the rational beings, coming into existence as God’s
means of allowing the fallen soul to return to its true state. The body
thus is indeed a prison, being the antithesis of our reality, yet it is one
used by God as the means of returning to Him. Origen discusses this
in some detail in On Prayer:
… the soul always preserves free choice; and on its own responsi-
bility it either comes to be in nobler things, advancing step by step
to the summit of goods, or descends from failing to pay attention in
diverse motions to one flood or another of evil (On Prayer
XXIX.13).
In many cases God allows, as it were, the evil or diseased condition to
remain because of its potential for helping the soul to freely choose
other than sin. Too precipitous a healing would simply set up a repeat
of the problem, as long as the soul does not choose otherwise. Thus,
the purpose of God
is that they may become satiated by long exposure to evil, and by
being filled with the sin they desire may so perceive the harm they
have taken. Then they hate what they previously welcomed; and
since they have been healed more firmly, they are able to profit
from the health of their souls, which is theirs by the healing (ibid.).
In choosing the lusts of the body, people have forsaken God:
For they have lowered to a body without soul or sense the name of
Him who gives to all sentient and rational beings not only the power
of sentience, but also of sensing rationally, and to some even the
power of sensing and thinking perfectly and virtuously (ibid., 15).
Yet in the midst of this “fire and prison” they are not really punished,
but rather
they gain a beneficence for cleansing them of the evils in their error.
This is accompanied by saving pains that follow those who love
pleasure. And so they are freed from all the filth and blood by which
they had been so stained and defiled that they could not even think
of being saved from their own destruction. … For God does not wish
that the good should belong to anyone by necessity but willingly,
since there are perhaps some who by their long association with evil
will come by toil and pain to understand its ugliness and will turn
away from it as something falsely supposed beautiful (ibid.).

432
 Platonism

Thus God does not drag us away from our bodies, but waits for us to
make the inevitable choice of drawing the soul away from the “lowly
body.” God cannot be known as long as we cling to the corporeal, and
so Origen, good Platonist that he is, urges the cultivation of reason,
wisdom, and virtue:
… the perfect establishment of His kingdom is not possible unless
there also comes the perfection of knowledge, of wisdom, and,
probably, of the other virtues. … the kingdom of sin cannot coexist
with the kingdom of God. If, therefore, we wish to be ruled by
God, let not sin rule in any way in our bodies; and let us not obey
its commands, when it summons our soul to the works of the flesh
and to what is alien to God. Rather, let us put to death the mem-
bers that are on earth; and let us bring forth the fruits of the
Spirit … (ibid., XXV.2-3).
Elsewhere Origen discusses the “food” of contemplation which nour-
ishes the soul’s pursuit of virtue and God:
… this food must be understood to be the contemplation and under-
standing of God, and its measures to be those that are appropriate
and suitable to this nature which has been made and created. These
measures will rightly be observed by every one of those who are
beginning to “see God,” that is, to understand him through “purity
of heart” (First Princ. II.11.7).

4. St. Augustine
We depart here from our usual chronological sequence in present-
ing St. Augustine after Origen and before Plotinus. For Augustine, as
we have seen, the body is far less than the soul; in fact, it is the soul’s
master, enslaving and keeping it from God:
And therefore the soul, being turned from its Lord to its slave,
necessarily weakens; and again, being turned from its slave to its
Lord, necessarily progresses and gives to this same slave a most
easy life and therefore a life very little toilsome and troublesome
… . nothing keeps us farther from the truth than a life given over
to the pleasures of the flesh and a mind crowded with the deceiv-
ing impressions of sensible objects, impressions which arise from
the sensible world, are transmitted by the body, and give rise to
the most varied beliefs and errors. We must try, therefore, to
achieve perfect mental health, that we may attain to the vision of

433
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

the immutable pattern of things, to the beauty which is always

constant with itself and everywhere the same, beauty never dis-
torted by changes of place or time, but standing out one and the
same under all circumstances … . It is given only to the rational
and intelligent souls among all these creatures to enjoy the con-
templation of his eternal nature, to be moved and adorned by it,
and to be able to merit eternal life (On Music VI.5.13; The True
Religion 3.3, in Bourke, pp. 46-48).
Thus Augustine follows in Plato’s footsteps by advocating the con-
templation of the Divine through detaching from the distractions of the
lesser physical world. This process, however, in marked contrast to
Plato, Plotinus, and the pagan Platonists in general, cannot be achieved
without the grace of God. In his elaboration of the role of grace in sal-
vation, Augustine achieved perhaps his most lasting position in the
Church, the Doctor of Grace, as mentioned earlier. Augustine devel-
oped his teachings on grace by opposing Pelagius, who emphasized
that for salvation, grace, though helpful, was not necessary; it was suf-
ficient for people to exercise their own free will on behalf of heaven.
On the other hand, Augustine taught:
The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord must be under-
stood as that by which alone men are delivered from evil, and
without which they do absolutely no good thing, whether in
thought, or will and affection, or in deed … (On Admonition and
Grace 3.3, in Bourke, p. 176, my italics).

5. Plotinus
Plotinus, in distinction from Augustine, taught that it made no sense
to think of God as being in a place different and separate from our own
existence. The Good already is present within our minds, and thus all
its attainment requires is a change in our minds or attitudes. Hence, as
we have seen, there is no place in Plotinus’ system for the traditional re-
ligious practices. God, or the One, is absolutely impersonal and simply
shines like an eternal light. It is this unceasing radiance that constitutes
the Call, not an anthropomorphically personal deity. He cites Plato as
his authority here:
Plato says the One is not outside anything, but is in company with
all without their knowing. For they run away outside it, or rather
outside themselves. They cannot then catch the one they have run

434
 Platonism

away from, nor seek for another when they have lost themselves. A
child, certainly, who is outside himself in madness will not know
his father; but he who has learnt to know himself will know from
whence he comes (Enn. VI.9.7).
Likewise, Plotinus saw no need for rituals. He faulted the particular
Gnostic sect that was the object of his diatribe for its use of certain
liturgical prayers or formulas:
But they themselves most of all impair the inviolate purity of the
higher powers in another way too. For when they write magic
chants, intending to address them to those powers, not only to the
soul but to those above it as well, what are they doing except mak-
ing the powers obey the word and follow the lead of people who
say spells and charms and conjurations, any one of us who is well
skilled in the art of saying precisely the right things in the right
way, songs and cries and aspirated and hissing sounds and every-
thing else which their writings say has magic power in the higher
world? But even if they do not want to say this, how are the incor-
poreal beings affected by sounds? So by the sort of statements with
which they give an appearance of majesty to their own words, they,
without realising it, take away the majesty of the higher powers
(Enn. II.9.14).
Plotinus encourages none of these prayerful or ritualistic practices,
emphasizing almost exclusively the inner concentration on the divine
that is basically abstract, a process lacking the qualities of personal
relationship that are so characteristic of most forms of Western spiri-
tuality. In one remarkable section, however, Plotinus does speak of
praying to the sun, stars, etc., who are spoken of anthropomorphically
as hearing and remembering our prayers:
For it is obvious that if when we pray they act, and do not do it at
once, but afterwards, and very often after a long delay, they have
memory of the prayers which mortals offer to them (Enn. IV.4.30).
But it is clear that Plotinus is speaking not of a magical intervention of
a celestial being, but rather of the individual’s self-orienting with the
unity of the divine universe:
We must, then, take a general view of all actions and experiences
which occur in the whole universe … some of the natural ones are
effects of the All on its parts … . By the acts of the whole universe I
mean those which the whole heavenly circuit does to itself and its

435
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

parts—for as it moves it disposes both itself and its parts in a cer-

tain way—both those within the circuit itself and all the effects
which it produces on the things on earth … . this All is a “single liv-
ing being which encompasses all the living beings that are within
it”; it has one soul which extends to all its parts, in so far as each
individual thing is a part of it; and each thing in the perceptible All
is a part of it, and completely a part of it as regards its body; and in
so far as it participates in the soul of the All, it is to this extent a
part of it in this way too … (Enn. IV.4.31,32).
Plotinus continues by drawing the analogy between the human body
and the universe, aspects seemingly separate yet working harmoni-
ously or disharmoniously among each other, each part affecting all
others.
Plotinus’ spirituality therefore is utterly solitary. He does not ad-
vocate “good works,” since this would be emphasizing the wrong re-
ality. Rather, by knowing our spiritual selves we know all selves—we
know God—and thus we feel one with all creation. At that point,
clearly, “good works” involving others is inevitable, as was the case in
Plotinus’ own life. In addition, mere intellectual pursuits are insuffi-
cient if not combined with the attitudinal shift discussed above. The
pursuit of reason is the means towards such a shift, but not the end it-
self. Greek that he is, Plotinus advocates a life of restraint—moderation
in all things—rather than the so-called freedom that comes from the lib-
ertinism practiced by certain sects, Gnostic and otherwise. Freedom lies
in contemplation, not action, and the foundation for this is virtue. The
world may impress upon this freedom, yet can virtue rise above such
seeming constraint, valuing only its “high aim”:
… in practical actions self-determination and being in our own
power is not referred to practice and outward activity but to the in-
ner activity of virtue itself, that is, its thought and contemplation
(Enn. VI.8.6).
What we term freedom is really the experience of consciousness ac-
tualizing itself, emerging from the contrast of what we truly are with
what we believe we are; of true with apparent reality. Action which
comes from such contrast merely drives us still further from our true
self. Passivity, however, is not the ideal, but rather an action that comes
from contemplation; activity is not evil, but rather a shadow of the
reality shown to us by contemplation.

436
 Platonism

Another of Plotinus’ major criticisms of the Gnostics involved

their lack of morality; specifically, the total disregard in the particular
Gnostic sect he is criticizing of the Greek ideal of virtue. Plotinus, and
correctly so, traces this absence of virtue to the total rejection of the
cosmos. We have observed in Plato and Plotinus the great importance
placed on the cultivation of virtue as the means whereby individuals
could ascend from the shadows of this world to the vision of the high-
est realm, the world of Ideas, the Good. This ideal had no place in
many Gnostic sects, as we have seen—though this by no means in-
cluded all of them—and Plotinus is quite emphatic in his denuncia-
tion of this position:
But there is one point which we must be particularly careful not
to let escape us, and that is what these arguments do to the souls of
those who hear them and are persuaded by them to despise the uni-
verse and the beings in it. … this doctrine censures the lord of
providence and providence itself still more crudely, and despises
all the laws of this world and the virtue whose winning extends
back through all time, and makes self-control here something to
laugh at, that nothing noble may be seen existing here below … .
for nothing here is of value for them, but something else is, which
they will go after one day. Yet those who already have the gnosis
should start going after it here and now, and in their pursuit should
first of all set right their conduct here below, as they come from a
divine nature; for that nature is aware of nobility and despises the
pleasure of the body. But those who have no share of virtue would
not be moved at all towards that higher world (Enn. II.9.15).
The remainder of this passage on the absence of virtue in the Gnostics
was quoted earlier in this chapter, page 390.
Plotinus later discusses the importance of souls living in bodies
in such a way that they are very close to the dwelling of the soul of
the All in the universal body. This means no clashing with, nor
yielding to the pleasures or sights which hurl themselves upon us
from outside, and not being disturbed by any hardship. The soul of
the universe is not troubled; it has nothing that it can be troubled
by. We, while we are here, can already repel the strokes of fortune
by virtue, and make some of them become less by greatness of
mind and others not even troubles because of our strength. As we
draw near to the completely untroubled state we can imitate the
soul of the universe and of the stars, and, coming to a closeness of

437
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

resemblance to them hasten on to the same goal and have the same
objects of contemplation, being ourselves, too, well prepared for
them by nature and training (but they have their contemplation
from the beginning) (Enn. II.9.18).
Plotinus concludes his defense of the cosmos and, in fact, his chap-
ter against the Gnostics, with the following interesting argument, com-
paring the Gnostics with his own school. It is interesting to note that
Plotinus characterizes his view of living in the body as belonging to
one who “does not revile,” which certainly does not fit with his com-
ments about the body elsewhere in the Enneads, nor with his strong
ascetic personal life.
But perhaps they will assert that those arguments of theirs make
men fly from the body since they hate it from a distance, but ours
hold the soul down to it. This would be like two people living in
the same fine house, one of whom reviles the structure and the
builder, but stays there none the less, while the other does not re-
vile, but says the builder has built it with the utmost skill, and
waits for the time to come in which he will go away, when he will
not need a house any longer: the first might think he was wiser and
readier to depart because he knows how to say that the walls are
built of soulless stones and timber and are far inferior to the true
dwelling-place, not knowing that he is only distinguished by not
bearing what he must—unless he affirms that he is discontented
while having a secret affection for the beauty of the stones (Enn.
II.9.18).
Elsewhere he writes that the
exhortation to separate ourselves is not meant in a spatial sense—
this (higher part) of soul is naturally separated—but refers to our
not inclining to the body, and to our not having mental images, and
our alienation from the body—if by any chance one could make
the remaining form of soul ascend, and take along with us to the
heights that of it which is established here below, which alone is
the craftsman and modeller of the body and is actively concerned
with it (Enn. V.1.10).
Our destiny, therefore, does not lie in what we do, but rather in the
rational knowledge or apperception of truth, of our real self. And,
again, this knowledge of our self is the knowledge of the divine,
awareness of which comes without an intermediary, whether divine or

438
 Platonism

community. It comes without a divine summons, but simply by the in-

dividual’s pursuit of the spiritual life. This pursuit unites the soul di-
rectly with God: the goal of the true philosopher. The soul finds the
One within itself, and is merged with it. The goal for Plotinus, there-
fore, is the mystical state in which all distinctions are gone, when the
Love of the universe is finally known without impediment. Near the
end of the Enneads we find perhaps Plotinus’ clearest statement of this
vision, made possible by the inner ordering, the “preparation,” of the
soul through contemplation and asceticism:
But when the soul has good fortune with it, and it comes to it, or
rather, being there already, appears, when that soul turns away
from the things that are there, and has prepared by making itself as
beautiful as possible and has come to likeness (the preparation and
the adornment are clearly understood, I think, by those who are
preparing themselves) and it sees it in itself suddenly appearing
(for there is nothing between, nor are there still two but both are
one; nor could you still make a distinction while it is present; lov-
ers and their beloveds here below imitate this in their will to be
united), it does not still perceive its body, that it is in it, and does
not speak of itself as anything else, not man, or living thing, or be-
ing, or all (for the contemplation of these would be somehow dis-
turbing), and it has no time for them nor wants them … . and in its
happiness is not cheated in thinking that it is happy; and it does not
say it is happy when the body tickles it, but when it has become
that which it was before, when it is fortunate. But it says it in con-
tempt of all the other things in which it delighted before, offices or
powers or riches or beauties or sciences, and it would not have
spoken if it had not met better things than these; it is not afraid,
either, that anything may happen to it, since it does not even see it
while it is with that; but if all the other things about it perished, it
would even be pleased, that it might be alone with this: so great a
degree of happiness has it reached (Enn. VI.7.34).
The non-rational One thus is beyond reason, which nonetheless
remains the essential means for its attainment. However, “the end of
the journey” is ultimately reached through the transcendence of reason
and the duality of the world, to the sublime vision of the “solitary”:
When therefore the seer sees himself, then when he sees, he will
see himself as like this, or rather he will be in union with himself
as like this and will be aware of himself as like this since he has

439
Chapter 10 PRACTICAL IJMPLICATIONS

become single and simple. But perhaps one should not say “will
see”, but “was seen”, if one must speak of these as two, the seer
and the seen, and not both as one—a bold statement. So then the
seer does not see and does not distinguish and does not imagine
two, but it is as if he had become someone else and he is not him-
self and does not count as his own there, but has come to belong to
that and so is one, having joined, as it were, centre to centre. For
here too when the centres have come together they are one, but
there is duality when they are separate. This also is how we now
speak of “another”. For this reason the vision is hard to put into
words. For how could one announce that as another when he did
not see, there when he had the vision, another, but one with
himself ? … he was as if carried away or possessed by a god, in a
quiet solitude and a state of calm, not turning away anywhere in
his being and not busy about himself, altogether at rest and having
become a kind of rest. … But if it runs the opposite way, it will ar-
rive, not at something else but at itself, and in this way since it is
not in something else it will not be in nothing, but in itself; but
when it is in itself alone and not in being, it is in that; for one be-
comes, not substance, but “beyond substance” by this converse. If
then one sees that oneself has become this, one has oneself as a
likeness of that, and if one goes on from oneself, as image to origi-
nal, one has reached “the end of the journey”. … This is the life of
gods and of godlike and blessed men, deliverance from the things
of this world, a life which takes no delight in the things of this
world, escape in solitude to the solitary (Enn. VI.9.10,11).
And so does the Enneads end.

440
 PART II-B

THE BASIC MYTH:

A COURSE IN MIRACLES
 INTRODUCTION TO PART II-B

Now that we have presented the Gnostic, Platonic, and traditional

Christian views of the seven stages of our myth, we shall continue with
A Course in Miracles. Before proceeding with a summary of the myth,
by way of introducing the fuller treatment given below, brief comment
need be made on some of the striking similarities between a number of
the key ideas discussed in Part II-A and what we shall now consider in
the Course. These will be returned to later in the chapters to come as
well.
The rather startling insight of the Valentinian form of Gnosticism
was the recognition of the psychological aspects of the separation.
While practically every Gnostic system taught that the true God did not
participate in the making of the cosmos (even where, as in Manicheism,
God does participate in it, the physical world is nonetheless never
considered as good), none spoke of the dream nature of the world ex-
cept for the Valentinians. Though generally couched in mythological
language (except for the de-mythologized “Gospel of Truth”), the
Valentinian conception of the separation and the subsequent making of
the material universe was that they were internal processes, i.e., they
occurred within the mind. We have already expressed the view, to be
returned to again, that the full implications of this understanding were
not to be realized until A Course in Miracles blended non-dualistic
metaphysics with twentieth-century psychology. Nonetheless, we can
still stand in awe before the Valentinian understanding of “Sophia’s
folly.”
We might also point out that the Gnostic understanding of the
Pleroma parallels in many ways the Plotinian One and Mind, and the
nature of God and Christ as seen by the Course. In all three systems we
find the concept of a totally unified and undifferentiated Source extend-
ing itself in non-material creation. This creation by the Mind of God
consists of, for want of a better term, divine Thoughts (in Gnosticism,
aeons or glories; in Plotinus, divine Ideas or beings; in the Course,
Christ and His creations) sharing in the perfection of their Creator,
though somehow distinct from Him since they are the created, He the
Creator.

443
INTRODUCTION TO PART II-B

We can also note again the crucial difference between Gnosticism

and A Course in Miracles; namely, the behavioral or practical implica-
tions of their shared metaphysics. Though both systems recognize the
impossibility of the perfect non-material God creating an imperfect
material world, the Gnostics nonetheless make the world psychologi-
cally real by seeing it as an evil prison from which one had to escape.
The Course, as we shall discuss in depth below, avoids that trap by
shifting the imprisonment to the mind; salvation thus comes from
changing our thinking, and does not involve the world at all.
We turn now to a brief summary of the Course’s version of our myth,
reminding the reader that the presentation of A Course in Miracles is
generally more psychological, in contrast to the philosophical and theo-
logical language we have been considering heretofore:
1) God is defined as spirit—formless, changeless, perfect, and eternal
—as is the Christ whom God created one with Him. Their unity, Father
and Son, is Heaven.
2) The separation resulted from God’s Son believing that he could be
separated from his Creator. God answered the Son’s (or ego’s) thought
of separation by creating the Holy Spirit, the presence of God’s love in
our minds that undoes the “tiny, mad idea.” However, the Son listens
to the voice of the ego instead and takes the thought of separation se-
riously. The Son’s belief that the separation has actually occurred
translates as sin, which leads to guilt, and subsequent fear of God’s re-
taliation which requires defense. These beliefs constitute the psycho-
logical foundation of the ego’s thought system.
3) The ego concludes its answer to the Holy Spirit by projecting the
thought of separation out of the mind, thereby protecting itself from
love. This projection gives rise to the material world—cosmos and
body—as a defense in which the ego hides its guilt and fear of God’s
avenging wrath.
4) The true essence of God’s creation is spirit, equated with the Mind
of Christ that has never left its Source. This identity is hidden from our
awareness by the ego, which cloaks itself in a body. Thus, the tradi-
tional triadic view that homo sapiens consists of mind-body-spirit is not
valid according to A Course in Miracles: body and spirit are mutually
exclusive states and cannot coexist as shared realities, for God did not
create the body. The word “mind,” here, can be equated with “ego” or

444
 Introduction

even “soul,” similar to its frequent usage in contemporary metaphysical

thought to denote the idea of an “entity.”
5) Salvation is defined as correction, or Atonement, which undoes the
belief in the reality of the separation. In other words, we learn to listen
to the Holy Spirit, no longer taking the separation or the resulting
world seriously (“remembering to laugh”). This learning is accom-
plished through the miracle, whose principle is forgiveness.
6) Jesus is the name of the one who first completed his own Atonement
path, transcending the ego belief in separation and remembering his
true Identity as part of Christ. Thus he becomes the manifestation of
the Holy Spirit (the Atonement principle) and our world’s greatest
symbol of forgiveness. In establishing this example Jesus is able to
help all his brothers and sisters accept his teaching lesson.
7) The plan of the Atonement calls for each separated Son of God to
learn the single lesson of undoing guilt and separation through very
specific forgiveness lessons that appear in personal relationships. Thus,
though the phenomenal world is seen as inherently illusory, it serves a
very important function in the Holy Spirit’s plan of correcting our
misperceptions, since errors can only be corrected on the level on
which they are manifested and experienced. The Course fosters an
amorality, emphasizing that it is not our behavior that is important, but
rather the purpose that our minds impute to our behavior. In other
words, it is the content (purpose) that is essential, not the form (behav-
ior). Religious sacraments and rituals thus are not essential to reach
God.

445
 Chapter 11

THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN:

The Pre-Separation State

The metaphysics of A Course in Miracles is non-dualistic which, as

discussed in Chapter 4, expresses one pre-existent state, that of God.
Moreover, the Course belongs within the same “Syrian-Egyptian”
school of Gnosticism that Hans Jonas defined. This brand of non-
dualism held that only God is truth, and therefore we can extrapolate
that only God is real. To the Gnostic non-dualist, the imperfection of
separation that arises (the Course would say appeared to arise), is pres-
ent within the Godhead itself (i.e., is not due to an external force). As
we have briefly noted in earlier chapters, the Course’s insistence on the
illusory, dreamlike nature of this imperfect thought was prefigured in
the work of Valentinus and his school. We shall explore the Course’s
metaphysical treatment of the illusory world in the following three
chapters.
Earlier we discussed the apophatic tradition, which emphasizes that
God is beyond all human attempts to define or classify Him. His nature
remains forever ineffable and unknowable in this material world, be-
yond our power of comprehension and expression which are inher-
ently limited by the physical and psychological dimensions of our ego
self. At home within that tradition, A Course in Miracles does not
define our Source, but rather simply designates God as the First Cause,
the Creator of all life. In light of the Gnostic effusions we explored
earlier, how refreshing then is this simple apophatic statement from
A Course in Miracles: “We say ‘God is,’ and then we cease to speak,
for in that knowledge words are meaningless” (W-pI.169.5:4). The
Course teaches that before the beginning of time there is only God.
God is, and the nature of His Self is spirit, whose characteristics in-
clude being formless, changeless, limitless, perfect, and eternal. To go
beyond these few words would be futile, an example of what the
Course calls “senseless musings.”
According to A Course in Miracles, the basic dynamic of spirit is ex-
tension, wherein God is continually expressing His being in creation. In
the Course, the words “extension” and “projection” reflect the identical

447
Chapter 11 THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN

dynamic—the proceeding outward of what is within the mind. “Exten-

sion,” as we shall see, is reserved for the “movement” or “outflow” of
spirit, while “projection” is almost always utilized for the ego. In fact, in
the first mention of this dynamic, the Course speaks of projection as
being the “inappropriate use of extension” (T-2.I.1:7); thus we can like-
wise speak of extension as being the “appropriate” use of projection. It
is interesting to note that the Greek word used in the Gnostic writings to
denote this process of spirit’s extension is probole, which literally means
“projection.” However, the Greek word is almost always translated as
“emanating,” the counterpart to the Course’s “extension.” As we have
seen, “emanating” is a word common to Platonism and Gnosticism.
It should also be stated that while we are using words and concepts
—e.g., “extension”—that have temporal and spatial connotations, the
dynamics they reflect totally transcend time and space. Thus in our
popular speech “extension” connotes someone or something extend-
ing itself across time and space. We who are bound by our own con-
ceptual limitations must use words—“symbols of symbols”—that
share these limitations. Therefore we should keep in mind that these
concepts point to a state of reality that is beyond concepts entirely. The
Course reiterates:
There is no need to further clarify what no one in the world can
understand. … for those in time can speak of things beyond … . Yet
what meaning can the words convey to those who count the hours
still, and rise and work and go to sleep by them? (W-pI.169.
10:1,3-4)
Thus, spirit’s basic function is extension:
Being must be extended. … Spirit yearns to share its being as its
Creator did. Created by sharing, its will is to create. … to extend
His [God’s] Being.
The extension of God’s Being is spirit’s only function. Its fullness
cannot be contained, any more than can the fullness of its Creator.
Fullness is extension (T-7.IX.2:6,8-10; 3:1-3).
The extension of God—His creation—is Christ, defined in A Course
in Miracles as God’s one Son. Paradoxically, in many places the Course
speaks of God’s Sons or the collective Sonship. For example:
It should especially be noted that God has only one Son. If all
His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of

448
 The Nature of God

the whole Sonship. The Sonship in its oneness transcends the sum
of its parts (T-2.VII.6:1-3).
Similarly, the Course talks about the Great Rays (not Ray), which are
the extensions of the light of God, similar to the rays of light that em-
anate from the sun. Although conceptually no separated or fragmented
mind can understand this, we may yet state that Christ consists of in-
finite Rays (Sons of God), all perfectly united and indivisible; how-
ever, we clearly are not speaking here of personal individuality as we
experience it in the world.
It should be especially noted—to be returned to in Chapter 16—
that, in distinction from traditional Christianity and all the Christian
Gnostics, Christ is not to be exclusively identified with Jesus, who is
understood in the Course as being part of Christ, as we all are. In the
light of St. Paul’s teaching in Galatians, Jesus was seen as the only Son
of God, while we remained adopted sons, second class citizens as it
were: “But when the appointed time came, God sent his Son … to re-
deem the subjects of the Law and to enable us to be adopted as sons”
(Ga 4:4-5). In A Course in Miracles, however, Jesus states that he has
nothing that we cannot attain, and that he is not “in any way separate
or different” from us except in the world of time (T-1.II.4:1). What dis-
tinguishes Jesus from the rest of the Sonship is that he was the first to
have transcended the split mind and remember his Source, recalling
his true Identity as Christ. As the Course says of him:
The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw
the face of Christ [the Course’s symbol of total forgiveness] in all
his brothers and remembered God. So he became identified with
Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God. … Is he the Christ?
O yes, along with you (C-5.2:1-2; 5:1-2).16
As an extension of His Father or Source, then, Christ shares in the
attributes of His Creator. He, too, is spirit—formless, changeless,
limitless, perfect, and eternal. In addition, Christ shares His Father’s
attribute of extending or creating. As God extended His Self, creating
Christ, so too does Christ extend His Self. These extensions of Christ
are what the Course refers to as creations, and have their counterpart
in the “glories” that appear in certain Gnostic texts (see Chapter 4).

16. For further discussion of the Course’s Christology, see “Is He the Only Teacher?”
in Chapter 16 of Forgiveness and Jesus.

449
Chapter 11 THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN

“Creations” is a term that appears throughout the material, even

though, for the reasons just discussed, they can never really be ex-
plained. Thus, for example, the Course states:
As God’s creative Thought proceeds from Him to you, so must your
creative thought proceed from you to your creations. … He created
the Sonship and you increase it. … Your creations belong in you, as
you belong in God. You are part of God, as your sons are part of
His Sons (T-7.I.2:3,6; 3:1-2).
Together with Christ, these creations make up what Christianity has
termed the Second Person of the Trinity and, again, what the Gnostics
refer to as the Pleroma. In distinction from its philosophical fore-fathers,
however, A Course in Miracles avoids the excessive mythologizing
about the nature of the Pleroma—God and the nature and number of the
aeons—that is so prevalent in Gnostic teachings, and which is also
found in Plato and his school. The Course simply presents God and His
creation as a given, emphasizing, as we have seen already, that it is im-
possible to understand what is beyond the capability of the separated
mind, which made the body and brain to prevent understanding. Our
psychologically more sophisticated age is better able to tolerate such an
intellectual position than were the two-millennia-older philosophers.
A Course in Miracles teaches that “ideas leave not their source”
(T-26.VII.4:7), a principle that is crucial for understanding its theo-
retical system. As the workbook states:
The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its cen-
trality in our attempts to change your mind about yourself. It [this
principle] is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It
is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God
(W-pI.167.3:7-11).
In looking at the process of creation or extension we can imagine God
to be a Mind which had a Thought, called Christ. Christ, then, can be
defined as an Idea in the Mind of God. Therefore, if ideas leave not
their source, then the Idea that is Christ can never leave its Source, nor
can Christ’s creations leave theirs:
God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining
the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are
thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other (T-6.
II.8:1-2).

450
 The Nature of God

Christ is God’s Son as He created Him. … He is the Thought

which still abides within the Mind that is His Source. He has not left
His holy home, nor lost the innocence in which He was created. He
abides unchanged forever in the Mind of God (W-pII.6.1:1,3-5).
This undivided unity of God and Christ, and Christ and His creations,
constitutes the state of Heaven. Returning to our image of the sun and
its rays, God is the sun, and Christ and His creations are the emanating
rays. Yet they are not separate from their Source. Similarly, a wave in
the ocean cannot be understood or known separate from the water that
is its source. In the following chapter we shall consider in more detail
this important principle of the indivisibility of idea and source.
Interestingly enough, the Course uses the word “knowledge” (gnosis
in Greek) as a synonym for the state of Heaven. This meaning obvi-
ously falls within the Gnostic tradition, for it is independent of the more
common usage which implies a subject-object duality: a body of infor-
mation to be “known” and one who “knows” it. Knowledge is the non-
dualistic and abstract state that is beyond perception, and is thus
“changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable” (C-4.7:1). Fur-
ther, unlike perception:
There is nothing partial about knowledge. Every aspect is whole,
and therefore no aspect is separate. You are an aspect of knowl-
edge, being in the Mind of God, Who knows you. … Perception, at
its loftiest, is never complete (T-13.VIII.2:1-3,5).
Within Heaven, therefore, there is no differentiation, contrast, or vari-
ation. It is not a place:
It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge
that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness, and noth-
ing else within (T-18.VI.1:6).
However, though God and Christ share in spirit’s function of creat-
ing and are totally one, there is one essential difference: God created
Christ; Christ did not create God. Though we are like God, creating as
He does, we are not God. As the Course emphasizes:
… in creation you are not in a reciprocal relation to God, since He
created you but you did not create Him. I have already told you
that only in this respect your creative power differs from His.
Even in this world there is a parallel. Parents give birth to chil-
dren, but children do not give birth to parents. They do, however,

451
Chapter 11 THE NATURE OF GOD AND HIS HEAVEN

give birth to their children, and thus give birth as their parents do
(T-7.I.1:4-8).
The Course explains further:
If you created God and He created you, the Kingdom could not
increase through its own creative thought. Creation would there-
fore be limited, and you would not be co-creator with God. … Only
in this way can all creative power extend outward. God’s accom-
plishments are not yours, but yours are like His (T-7.I.2:1-2,4-5).
In summary, then, God is Father-Creator, and Christ is Son-created;
joined as one, united in the perfect love and peace of Heaven as ex-
pressed in this lovely passage:
There is a place in you which time has left, and echoes of eternity
are heard. There is a resting place so still no sound except a hymn
to Heaven rises up to gladden God the Father and the Son. Where
Both abide are They remembered, Both. And where They are is
Heaven and is peace (T-29.V.1:2-5).

452
 Chapter 12

THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

We come now to A Course in Miracles’ depiction of the central

philosophical problem that we have been exploring: the coming into
existence of imperfection. The Course does not speculate about how or
why this imperfection arose, agonizing over it as did Plotinus, for ex-
ample, although it does address the issue, as we shall see below. The
Course simply teaches that into the heavenly world of perfect creation
it appeared as though the impossible occurred. At some point, that the
Course teaches never really happened, the thought of separation arose
within the mind of God’s Son; into the perfect unity of Heaven there
entered this one insane thought wherein God’s Son decided to be dif-
ferent from his Father, and to establish a will and self independent of
Him:
Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which
the Son of God remembered not to laugh (T-27.VIII.6:2).
This “tiny, mad idea” is the thought of separation.
The fundamental unreality of this thought is what marks the
uniqueness of A Course in Miracles’ contribution to the problem of the
God-world paradox and its resolution. From this basic premise it
draws out, in rigorous logic, a thought system that embraces every
aspect of our physical universe—from its inception to our everyday in-
dividual experience—explaining how the initial illusory thought of
separation fragmented into an illusory world that “has never left its
source.” The Course’s approach to understanding the separation is
what provides its power in correcting the error that gave rise to the
world as we know and experience it. In other words, the basic unreality
of the thought of separation carries with it the seeds of salvation from
this thought. The chapters to come will explore this in more depth. Let
us continue now with this “tiny, mad idea.”
As we have seen, God has but one Son, and when the thought of
separation seemed to arise, it did so in the mind of this one Son. Thus,
we may also say that in the original separation there was but one
thought. The process of fragmentation into many different egos had
not yet taken place. Building on the image used in the previous chapter

453
Chapter 12 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

of the sun and its emanating rays, we may think of this thought appear-
ing somewhere within the rays, and laser-beaming throughout, as a
colored dye that is dropped into a solution of water quickly spreads
throughout the solution.
Inherent in this thought of separation is the wish to be God, to be
self-created instead of God-created; the wish to create on one’s own,
as did Sophia in the Valentinian myth. As the Course states:
God is not the author of fear. You are. You have chosen to create
unlike Him, and have therefore made fear for yourself (T-4.I.9:1-3).
Staying for the moment within the Valentinian parallels, we may note
the Course’s occasional use of the word “ignorance”—central to
Valentinus’ system—to denote the state of the Son’s mind when he
chose to separate himself from knowledge. In the following passages,
especially, one can note the strong similarity between “The Gospel of
Truth” and the Course in describing the power of knowledge to dispel
ignorance:
The journey that we undertake together is the exchange of dark
for light, of ignorance for understanding. Nothing you understand
is fearful. It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive
the frightening … (T-14.VI.1:1-3).
What do you want? Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorance
are yours, but not both. … As darkness disappears in light, so ig-
norance fades away when knowledge dawns. … To God, unknow-
ing is impossible. It is therefore not a point of view at all, but
merely a belief in something that does not exist. It is only this be-
lief that the unknowing have, and by it they are wrong about them-
selves. They have defined themselves as they were not created
(T-14.VII.1:1-2,6; 3:5-8, my italics).
When the Course speaks of the guardians of darkness (elsewhere sen-
tinels), as in the following passage, it refers to the same dynamics of
the ego’s defensive system the Gnostics personified as archons:
Would you continue to give imagined power to these strange
ideas of safety? They are neither safe nor unsafe. They do not pro-
tect; neither do they attack. They do nothing at all, being nothing at
all. As guardians of darkness and of ignorance look to them only
for fear … (T-14.VI.3:1-5).

454
 The Separation from God

The ego therefore is the thought of separation we made real, so hor-

rifying to our minds that we believe in the need for these strange and
insane defenses: ignorant guardians of darkness. The ego is the belief
that we not only have separated from God, but are our own creator,
thus destroying the true Creator and usurping His role on the throne of
Heaven. Yet it is essential to bear in mind that the ego is nothing more
than this belief system of separation, having no reality outside of the
mind that thought it. It is not anything real, but simply a thought or
belief of what is “real.” As the Course defines it:
What is the ego? But a dream of what you really are. A thought
you are apart from your Creator and a wish to be what He created
not. It is a thing of madness, not reality at all. A name for name-
lessness is all it is. … nothing but an ancient thought that what is
made has immortality (C-2.1:4-8,10).
There remains, however, the most basic question anyone could ask
at this point, and one which we raised at the beginning of the book: how
could such a thought of self-creation, independent of the Father-
Creator, ever possibly have arisen? how could the perfect, awake Son
of God have fallen into a sleep of imperfection? how, in fact, could the
separation have occurred at all? in Valentinian terms, how could the
aeon Sophia have possibly fallen into error? Unless my memory fails
me, my wife Gloria and I—together or separately—have not conducted
a class or workshop on the Course where someone has not asked this
question. The question, moreover, is hardly new. We have seen it ex-
pressed in Plotinus, as well as being a concern for all Platonists in one
way or another. In the non-Christian Gnostic text “Zostrianos” the pro-
tagonist asks:
Now concerning Existence: How do those who exist, who are from
the aeon of those who exist, come from an invisible spirit and from
the undivided self-begotten … ? What is the place of that one there?
What is his origin? … How has Existence which does not exist ap-
peared in an existing power?
I [Zostrianos] was pondering these matters in order to understand
them. I kept bringing them up daily to the god of my fathers accord-
ing to the custom of my race … (Zostr. VIII.2.24-3.16, in NHL,
pp. 369-70).

455
Chapter 12 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

However, this god, as well as other celestial revelatory beings men-

tioned in the treatise, does not provide a real answer. In the Mandean
literature the question is also posed, again without answer:
Since you, Life, were there, how did darkness come into being
there? … how did imperfection and deficiency come into being?
(GR III.p.73, in F II, p. 164)
While these are perfectly logical questions to ask, they are nonethe-
less spurious ones, as A Course in Miracles points out. In fact, the
Course addresses the issue in two places. The text states, “It is reason-
able to ask how the mind could ever have made the ego” (T-4.II.1), and
then provides a very practical explanation:
There is, however, no point in giving an answer in terms of the past
because the past does not matter, and history would not exist if the
same errors were not being repeated in the present (T-4.II.1:3).
In other words, why should we persist in wondering how the ego oc-
curred in the past, when we are still choosing it in the present? Near
the end of the manual for teachers is found a more penetrating answer
to the ego’s question of its own origins:
The ego will demand many answers that this course does not
give. It does not recognize as questions the mere form of a ques-
tion to which an answer is impossible. The ego may ask, “How did
the impossible occur?”, “To what did the impossible happen?”, and
may ask this in many forms. Yet there is no answer; only an experi-
ence. Seek only this, and do not let theology delay you (C-in.4).
And later:
Who asks you to define the ego and explain how it arose can be
but he who thinks it real, and seeks by definition to ensure that its
illusive nature is concealed behind the words that seem to make it
so. There is no definition for a lie that serves to make it true
(C-2.2:5–3:1).
Restated, the Course’s argument is that once we ask how the impos-
sible (the ego) happened, we are really affirming that the ego did hap-
pen. Otherwise we could not ask the question. Thus we are making a
statement, not really asking a question at all. It must, then, be only the
ego that could pose such a question-statement. This statement then
leads to the crux of the God-world paradox, for it makes both aspects

456
 The Separation from God

equally real: the true Creator God as well as the illusory ego and its
miscreated world. By denying the reality of the world (once seen as a
miscreated dream), the paradox disappears since what does not exist
cannot be held antithetical to what does:
The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have
no opposite (T-in.1:8; italics omitted).
Thus, the issue of how the thought of separation arose (and later, how
the separated world arose as a defense against God) is itself unresolv-
able and beyond comprehension or belief; as mentioned above, the ego
is unable to understand a reality beyond itself. Thus, no non-dualistic
metaphysical system provides an answer to this pseudo-question: even
to attempt an answer is to give the ego a reality it does not have. The
best approach to this problem, I believe, comes from an Eastern source,
which has the guru respond to his disciple’s question in this way:
“When you are caught in a burning building, you do not worry about
how the fire began; you simply get out as quickly as possible.” Since
one of the Course’s claims for itself is that it will save us time, this
seems to be the most practical and helpful response to this question.
More important than the question and answer themselves are the impli-
cations of the basic premise: If the thought of separation is real, then
the separated world must be real as well; if illusory, then too must the
world be illusory. We shall return to this essential point in Chapter 17,
and again in Part III.
We move on now to the next stage of our story: God’s “response”
to the “tiny, mad idea.” In the instant that the thought of separation en-
tered into the mind of God’s Son, giving birth to the ego, in that same
instant God gave an Answer. As the Course states, using the metaphor
of sleep: “ … He [God] thought, ‘My children sleep and must be
awakened’” (T-6.V.1:8). If the sleep or dream of separation is seen as
the ego’s answer to creation—the state of being awake in God—then
God’s Answer to the ego was the creation of the Holy Spirit. The sep-
aration took place in the mind, where the dream is, and so God placed
His Answer where it was needed: in the mind. Since the core of the
ego’s thought is that it has separated itself from God, the creation of
the Holy Spirit undoes this error. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is defined
as “the Communication Link between God … and His separated Sons”
(T-6.I.19:1). Through Him we remain connected with our Creator,
thus undoing the ego’s fundamental premise that we have ruptured

457
Chapter 12 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

this connection. This correction is what the Course refers to as the

Atonement, as is seen in this summarizing statement:
[The Holy Spirit] is the Call to return with which God blessed the
minds of His separated Sons. … [He] is God’s Answer to the sepa-
ration; the means by which the Atonement heals … . The principle
of Atonement and the separation began at the same time. When the
ego was made, God placed in the mind the call to joy (T-5.II.2:2,5;
3:1-2).
On a more sophisticated level we can understand the Holy Spirit to
be the memory of God’s perfect love that “came” with the Son when
he fell asleep. In this sense then the Holy Spirit is not really a person,
but an ongoing presence that lies within each seemingly fragmented
mind; a distant memory of our Source that continually “calls” out to
us, like a forgotten song:
… an ancient state not quite forgotten; dim, perhaps, and yet not al-
together unfamiliar, like a song whose name is long forgotten, and
the circumstances in which you heard completely unremembered.
Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little wisp of
melody, attached not to a person or a place or anything particular.
But you remember, from just this little part, how lovely was the
song, how wonderful the setting where you heard it, and how you
loved those who were there and listened with you.
The notes are … a soft reminder of what would make you weep if
you remembered how dear it was to you (T-21.I.6:1–7:2).
The Holy Spirit’s “Voice” is this song, but in truth it is abstract and
formless, and therefore does not “say” (or “sing”) anything—“This
form [as God’s Voice] is not His reality, which God alone knows … ”
(C-6.1:5). His song has only one note, as did the protagonist of
“Johnny One Note,” a song popular in an earlier generation. However,
the Holy Spirit’s perfect love assumes the form that is needed, taking
on the words that the ego’s questions demand. The contours of the
Holy Spirit’s presence are therefore the ego’s thoughts, but filled with
love instead of fear. The Course explains, that when all these thoughts
are gone,
and no trace remains of dreams of spite in which you dance to
death’s thin melody. … the Voice is gone, no longer to take form but
to return to the eternal formlessness of God (C-6.5:6,8).

458
 The Separation from God

This understanding of the Holy Spirit helps resolve a problem that

has plagued many a thoughtful student of A Course in Miracles: How
could God have given an Answer to a problem that the Course states
clearly does not exist, and that God does not even know about: “Spirit
in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does not attack it; it merely
cannot conceive of it at all” (T-4.II.8:6-7). And yet the Course says
elsewhere: “There was a need He did not understand, to which He gave
an Answer” (W-pI.166.10:5). Once again, we can see the Course using
language metaphorically, words that are not to be taken as literal truth.
This is why we have spoken of the Course’s mythology, however psy-
chologically sophisticated its form. God does not think, weep, nor give
answers, any more than He makes things happen in the world, heal
physical illness, nor end human suffering. These are metaphoric ex-
pressions Jesus (himself a symbol) uses in the Course to express the
love of God that cannot be expressed except through such literary and
anthropomorphic devices. As he says to us: “You cannot even think of
God without a body, or in some form you think you recognize”
(T-18.VIII.1:7).
Therefore, strictly speaking, God did not give an Answer—the
Holy Spirit—to the birth of the thought of separation; rather, His
“Answer” is simply His own unchanging and eternal love that forever
shines in our split minds, as does a beacon of light shine out into the
darkness. God’s love does not do anything; it simply is: an ongoing
state of love’s presence which we call the Holy Spirit. We shall return
to the Holy Spirit and the principles of salvation in Chapters 15 and
17, and, in Chapter 19, to the Course’s use of metaphorical language.
Thus, when the error of separation seemed to occur it was cor-
rected. As the Course explains, in the context of sickness:
Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing noth-
ing, and as unsubstantial as the empty place between the ripples
that a ship has made in passing by. And covered just as fast, as
water rushes in to close the gap, and as the waves in joining cover
it. Where is the gap between the waves when they have joined,
and covered up the space which seemed to keep them separate for
a little while? (T-28.III.5:2-4)
In that same instant that the thought-that-never-was seemed to be, in
that same instant it was undone:

459
Chapter 12 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

The tiny instant you would keep and make eternal, passed away
in Heaven too soon for anything to notice it had come. What disap-
peared too quickly to affect the simple knowledge of the Son of
God can hardly still be there, for you to choose to be your teacher
(T-26.V.5:1-2).
Nonetheless, within his dream the Son is yet able to choose this
thought system of separation as his teacher.
The ego now counterattacks, seeing the Holy Spirit as a threat to its
existence, which of course He is. To more fully explore the nature of
the Son’s mind at this point, I too shall resort to a myth or story, based
upon the more abstract dynamics that are found in the Course.17
The situation as it now stands in our story is that the mind of the Son
of God has become a battlefield, in which two mortal enemies are pit-
ted one against the other. At least this is the perception of the “tiny, mad
idea” (the ego) that now appears to have an existence all its own. The
battlefield of the mind that appears to have been split off from its
Source has, in effect, three components: the thought of separation (the
“tiny, mad idea” that has conceived of itself as separate and indepen-
dent from its Creator and Source); the thought of perfect love (the Holy
Spirit) that was carried along with the thought of separation as a mem-
ory of what truly is, and that dispels what is not; and the component of
the mind that must choose between these two thoughts. The reader may
recall the Platonic and Gnostic tripartite mind discussed in Chapters 7
and 8, and see that we are not too far here from these earlier, relatively
unsophisticated formulations.
From the standpoint of perfect love nothing has happened. That is
the meaning of the memory: nothing has happened because nothing
could happen. God’s Son remains as he was created, for, love being
forever invulnerable, how could what is of God separate from Itself ?
The evident impossibility of God’s and Christ’s vulnerability renders
as non-existent the situation of separation, continued belief in which is
simply silly. And yet to call the ego silly is anathema to its thought that
something has happened; namely, the Son of God has indeed become
separate and independent. To this thought, therefore, the presence of
the Holy Spirit in the Son’s mind is a great danger, bitterly to be de-
fended against if the “tiny, mad idea” is to survive:

17. For a fuller exposition of this myth, in different form, see my (co-authored with
my wife Gloria) Awaken from the Dream, Chapter One.

460
 The Separation from God

The Holy Spirit … seems to be attacking your fortress, for you

would shut out God, and He does not will to be excluded.
You have built your whole insane belief system because you
think you would be helpless in God’s Presence, and you would
save yourself from His Love because you think it would crush you
into nothingness (T-13.III.3:4–4:1).
If the Son listens to and accepts the Voice of love—remembering to
laugh at the silliness of the thought that a part of God could actually be
separate from Him—then he will awaken from the dream of separation
that then disappears back into its own illusion.
It is thus incumbent upon the ego to convince the Son to believe its
story of separation, rather than the Holy Spirit’s story of non-separation.
Thus the ego conceives a plan to accomplish its goal of silencing the
Holy Spirit’s Voice of love, telling the Son to look at where it finds
itself, split off and separate from God, and recognize what it has done.
“You,” the ego tells the Son, “by refusing to accept as sufficient His
gifts to you, have committed a sin against your Father and Creator.
You,” the ego continues, “decided that perfection and everything as
Christ was not enough, and that there had to be something more:
‘freedom’ to choose to be other than God.” It is this illusory exercise
of choice in the name of “freedom” that the ego terms sin. The Course
describes this belief:
… that what God created can be changed by your own mind. … that
what is perfect can be rendered imperfect or lacking. … that you
can distort the creations of God, including yourself. … that you can
create yourself, and that the direction of your own creation is up to
you.
These related distortions represent a picture of what actually oc-
curred in the separation, or the “detour into fear” (T-2.I.1:9–2:1).
The Son, in a manner reminiscent of the anguish of the Valentinian
Sophia, now gazes with disgust at the sin the ego has convinced him he
has committed. And this is the beginning of guilt: the horror of believ-
ing that a terrible sin has been committed against God, a sin so heinous
that it can never be forgiven or undone. The Son is overwhelmed with
the enormity of these thoughts of sin and guilt, and is further instructed
by the ego to be on guard, for this sinned-against God wants nothing
less than murderous vengeance against His sinning Son. Moreover, the
ego counsels the Son, the so-called loving presence of the Holy Spirit

461
Chapter 12 THE SEPARATION FROM GOD

in the mind is hardly that at all. The Holy Spirit, rather, is the Voice of
hatred, vengeance, and jealousy that the Father has sent to the Son to
bring His words of wrath and to carry out His punishment. Inciden-
tally, while a loving God is not a major theme found in the Gnostic lit-
erature, we do find a relatively rare passage that speaks of a non-
vengeful Creator. It comes in the “Acts of John,” where the apostle
speaks of the loving God who does not punish nor seek retribution, for
we have done much ill and nothing well towards him, [yet he] has
given us not retribution but repentance; and although we knew
not his name, he did not forsake but forgave us; and though we
blasphemed, he did not punish but pitied us; and though we dis-
believed, he bore no grudge; and though we persecuted his breth-
ren, he made no such return, but moved us to repentance and
restraint of wickedness and so called us to himself … (AJ 81,
in NTA II, pp. 251-52).
Fear now grips the Son’s mind for he sees no way out, and the truly
loving Voice of the Holy Spirit has been drowned out and, in effect, si-
lenced. Guilt and fear become the reigning principles of his mind, for
love and truth have been distorted into their opposite.
The Course summarizes this situation in powerful passages from its
three books. First, in the context of magic thoughts (which include all
post-separation ego thoughts), the manual states:
A magic thought … acknowledges a separation from God. It states
… that the mind which believes it has a separate will that can op-
pose the Will of God, also believes it can succeed. That this can
hardly be a fact is obvious. Yet that it can be believed as fact is
equally obvious. And herein lies the birthplace of guilt. Who
usurps the place of God and takes it for himself now has a deadly
“enemy.” And he must stand alone in his protection, and make him-
self a shield to keep him safe from fury that can never be abated,
and vengeance that can never be satisfied. … An angry father pur-
sues his guilty son. Kill or be killed, for here alone is choice. Be-
yond this there is none, for what was done cannot be done without.
The stain of blood can never be removed … (M-17.5:3-9; 7:10-13).
From the text:
Think what this seems to do to the relationship between the
Father and the Son. Now it appears that They can never be One
again. For One must always be condemned, and by the other. Now

462
 The Separation from God

are they different, and enemies. And their relationship is one of

opposition … . And fear of God and of each other now appears as
sensible, made real by what the Son of God has done both to him-
self and his Creator (T-23.II.5:1-5,7).
And from the workbook:
The ego is idolatry; the sign of limited and separated self … . It is
the “will” that sees the Will of God as enemy, and takes a form in
which it is denied. The ego is the “proof ” that strength is weak and
love is fearful, life is really death, and what opposes God alone is
true.
The ego is insane. In fear it stands beyond the Everywhere, apart
from All, in separation from the Infinite. In its insanity it thinks it
has become a victor over God Himself. And in its terrible autonomy
it “sees” the Will of God has been destroyed (W-pII.12.1:1–2:4).
In the text, the ego is also equated with the anti-Christ, an idol that
serves to replace God:
This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power past om-
nipotence, a place beyond the infinite, a time transcending the
eternal (T-29.VIII.6:2).
The thought of separation has now reached its full potential in the
constellation of sin, guilt, and fear within the Son’s mind. These have
been elevated to the level of reality, while truth, love, and peace have
disappeared behind the clouds of illusion. The Voice of reason and san-
ity, speaking of the impossibility of the ego’s lies, is no longer heard,
for the Son only listens to the ego’s voice, which seems effectively to
have counterattacked the Holy Spirit’s correction (the Atonement).
The psychological states of sin, guilt, and fear thus represent the ego’s
pleroma, effectively paralyzing the Son and leaving his mind helpless
in its war with God, with no seeming way out of the dilemma. The
stage is now set for the ego’s ingenious solution: the making of the
world. This solution belongs to the following chapter.

463
 Chapter 13

THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

To recap the situation we left at the end of Chapter 12, confronted

with its own imminent demise by God’s Answer to the separation—the
presence of perfect love in the Son’s mind—the ego sets upon its plan
to save itself. If it is to continue to exist, the ego must somehow deal
with its perceived threat of the Holy Spirit, whose love signals its own
immediate dissolution. We have already seen that the beginning stages
of the ego’s plan were to convince the sleeping Son of God that his
dream of sin, guilt, and fear was real; a reality so compelling that he
was in immediate danger of destruction in the “war” against God. The
ego, however, “comes to the rescue” of the Son.
While the ego is the epitome of arrogance, believing it can supplant
God, its arrogance does not extend to the belief that it can actually de-
feat God’s Answer and drown out the Voice of love in the separated
mind, the ego’s home. Realizing its powerlessness against this presence
—which it can never remove—the ego’s only recourse is to separate it-
self from the Holy Spirit. Thus the ego tells the Son that, although he
cannot defeat the Holy Spirit, he can escape from Him by removing
himself from God’s Answer, a psychological process we call projec-
tion. It should be stated, before we proceed further, that although we
speak of the ego as if it functioned autonomously, having an existence
independent from the Son, in reality of course the ego is ourselves, or
at least what we experience to be ourselves. As Jesus states:
I have spoken of the ego as if it were a separate thing, acting on its
own. This was necessary to persuade you that you cannot dismiss it
lightly, and must realize how much of your thinking is ego-
directed. … The ego is nothing more than a part of your belief
about yourself (T-4.VI.1:3-4,6).
We have observed before that the basic dynamic of spirit is exten-
sion. This reflects the fundamental law of mind that “Thoughts begin
in the mind of the thinker, from which they reach outward. This is as
true of God’s Thinking as it is of yours” (T-6.II.9:1-2). What is within
the mind must “reach outward.” When the Mind is God’s or Christ’s,
this dynamic is called extension and, as was already emphasized, this

465
Chapter 13 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

“reaching outwards” has no spatial or temporal dimensions. When,

however, the mind is the separated or split mind of the ego, the dy-
namic is called projection, and here we do find ourselves existing in
the world of time and space. Thus the Course teaches: spirit extends
(or creates), while the ego projects (or makes): “You make by projec-
tion, but God creates by extension” (T-11.in.3:1).
Therefore, this idea of separation is projected from the mind of the
ego in the attempt to escape and hide from the Holy Spirit. We observed
that in creation (or extension), what God extended became like Him,
sharing His attributes. The same principle holds in projection: what the
ego projects shares in its attributes. Thus the projection of the thought
of separation—born in guilt—gives rise to a world of separation—
based on guilt:
That was the first projection of error [the separation] outward.
The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was
projected and drawn between you and the truth (T-18.I.6:1-2).
The world then is nothing but this thought in the mind projected out-
ward. By the term “world,” incidentally, the Course means the entire
phenomenal universe, encompassing not only our individual physical
lives and all life on earth, but the solar system and every system and
galaxy beyond our own. In a poignantly poetic passage near the end of
the text, we read:
What seems eternal all will have an end. The stars will disappear,
and night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the
tides, the seasons and the lives of men; all things that change with
time and bloom and fade will not return. Where time has set an end
is not where the eternal is (T-29.VI.2:7-10).
This is echoed in the manual:
The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it,
for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is noth-
ing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will
last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come
when all things visible will have an end (C-4.1).
If one imagines a funnel, the thought of separation lies at the narrow
end with the rest of the funnel comprising the physical world. Regard-
less of the seeming magnitude of the larger portion of the funnel, the
two ends remain the same: Ideas leave not their source. The world is

466
 The Origin and Nature of the World

the idea of separation given form, and has not truly left its source in the
mind. Idea and source, effect and cause, can never be separated in
truth, though our minds have the power to believe that they can, and
indeed have been. Thus, paralleling the conclusions of contemporary
quantum physicists, the Course teaches that the inner and outer are
one; what appears to be outside is really one with what is inside. As
Krishnamurti consistently taught: The observer and the observed are
one. The Course states:
The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not
left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought that gave it
birth is cherished (W-pII.3.1:1-3).
This principle of the unity of idea and source, effect and cause, is seen
also in certain Gnostic systems, where the evil and imprisoning attri-
butes of the mother Sophia are manifest in her son Ialdabaoth, and
therefore also are manifest in the world he (mis)creates.
As the basic thought of separation is illusory—since the unity of
Heaven can never be anything other than what it is—all that follows
from this single belief must share in its same illusory nature. Any as-
pect of the funnel is as unreal as any other. Thus, the seeming magni-
tude of the error or misbelief is irrelevant: A monster in a dream is as
illusory as an ant in the same dream; one times zero is the same as a
thousand times zero—an illusion is an illusion is an illusion. As the
Course says:
Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucina-
tion as opposed to a smaller one? Will he agree more quickly to the
unreality of a louder voice he hears than to that of a softer one? …
And do the number of pitchforks the devils he sees carrying affect
their credibility in his perception? His mind has categorized them
all as real, and so they are all real to him. When he realizes they
are all illusions they will disappear (M-8.5:2-3,5-7).
Yet this illusory situation is not what appears to be the case, for it
is the purpose of the ego to confuse us about the unity that is our true
reality, and of which reality the Holy Spirit in our minds is continu-
ally reminding us. Therefore, once the initial projection of separation
occurred, it continued to occur. Projected from the mind, the thought
of separation now separated over and over again, resulting in a phys-
ical world of separation. We observe this process in the biological

467
Chapter 13 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

phenomenon of mitosis, where the fertilized egg in the mother’s

womb divides and subdivides: one becoming two, then four, eight,
sixteen, thirty-two, etc. This development of the physical organism
reflects the birth of the physical world. The Course discusses this
original substitution of the ego for God, fear for love:
You who believe that God is fear made but one substitution. It
has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of illusion
for truth; of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so splin-
tered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is
now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still is
what it was (T-18.I.4:1-3).
What is “almost impossible,” of course, is the ego’s purpose.
Through this projection of itself, the ego has constructed a massive
smokescreen within which it can hide. It has diverted our attention
from our minds, which is where the true problem is, not to mention its
Solution, and caused us to see our problems outside ourselves, where
they are not.
A final step is now required if the ego’s plan is to work: Once the
ego has erected a cosmos to distract us from the spiritual world, it must
ensure that we will fall into the trap of believing that truth is illusion,
and illusion truth. We are once again reminded of the parallels be-
tween A Course in Miracles and many of the Gnostic systems. In this
discussion of the ego’s plot against the Holy Spirit, the reader can re-
call the plot of the archons and the Manichean Darkness to entrap the
particles of light. While the form certainly differs between these two
basic systems, the content is startlingly similar.
We return to the Course. What ensures the success of the ego’s de-
ception, reinforcing belief in the false reality it has made, is the body,
which witnesses to the seeming reality of the external world. It teaches
us, as does Newtonian physics, that the physical universe is indepen-
dent and separate from our minds (ideas leave their source), and that
observers can look at the seeming physical reality outside them and
study, measure, quantify, manipulate, predict, and control it. What we
forget, however, is that the body is as much a part of the physical world
as is the world itself. Thus the body is the crowning achievement in the
ego’s plan. Convincing us that our physical identities are real, the ego
works through the body, bringing back witnesses to the split mind that
convince it of what it has already determined to be reality:

468
 The Origin and Nature of the World

This body, purposeless within itself, holds all your memories and
all your hopes. You use its eyes to see, its ears to hear, and let it tell
you what it is it feels. It does not know. It tells you but the names
you gave to it to use, when you call forth the witnesses to its reality
(T-27.VI.3:1-4).
The circularity of this process never dawns on our minds, and the
ego seems to be forever “safe” from the Holy Spirit. As the Course
asks, speaking of the stranger that is our false identity:
Ask not this transient stranger, “What am I?” He is the only thing in
all the universe that does not know. Yet it is he you ask, and it is to
his answer that you would adjust. This one wild thought, fierce in
its arrogance, and yet so tiny and so meaningless it slips unnoticed
through the universe of truth, becomes your guide. To it you turn to
ask the meaning of the universe. And of the one blind thing in all
the seeing universe of truth you ask, “How shall I look upon the
Son of God?” (T-20.III.7:5-10)
Thus we continuously ask the body, which was made to keep reality
away from us, to tell us what reality is. The body, if one can pardon the
pun, becomes the embodiment of the ego, and thus can be understood,
as with the world, to be the thought of separation given form. Yet still
we ask the ego-body to tell us what truth is, which can only be known
through the spirit and thus never understood within an ego framework.
And so the ego has been seemingly successful in hiding the Son from
his true Self:
The world began with one strange lesson, powerful enough to
render God forgotten, and His Son an alien to himself, in exile
from the home where God Himself established him (T-31.I.4:5).
Following the principle of the unity of idea and source, we have al-
ready seen that God and His Son, sharing the same being and nature,
must share the same attributes, as must the ego and its “son” (the
world). One of the essential elements in the ego’s system is that its
thought of separation constitutes an attack on God. The Son tells his
Creator, in effect: “What you have created is not good enough. I want
something other than what You have given me. Thus I shall make a
will, self, and world that will substitute for the Will, Self, and Heaven
You created.” The ego thus kicks God off the throne as Creator, usurp-
ing His role and sitting in His place. Clearly the ego’s “action” has no
reality and exists only within the dream of God’s separated Son; this is

469
Chapter 13 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

why the Course teaches that ultimately there is no sin. Yet this seeming
attack does have reality for the Son within his dream, and a reality with
far reaching consequences within the illusion, as we shall soon see.
The Course states: “Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheri-
tance, but he is not free to establish what his inheritance is”
(T-3.VI.10:2).
Therefore, the world of separation shares with the thought of sepa-
ration its basic attribute of attack. The Course teaches that “The world
was made as an attack on God” (W-pII.3.2:1), and elsewhere:
If the cause of the world you see is attack thoughts … . [there] is
no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change be-
cause it is merely an effect. … Each of your perceptions of “external
reality” is a pictorial representation of your own attack thoughts.
One can well ask if this can be called seeing. Is not fantasy a better
word for such a process, and hallucination a more appropriate term
for the result? (W-pI.23.2:1,3-4; 3:2-4)
We can further understand why the Course teaches that the world was
made as an attack on God by examining the ego’s world, which is the
exact opposite of God’s Heaven: formless, changeless, perfect, limit-
less, united, and eternal. The phenomenal universe is a place of form
where everything is continuously changing and in a state of flux
(cf. Heraclitus’ famous teaching); it is obviously far from perfect, and
consists of boundary markers we call bodies which set off everything
from everything else, limiting our communication with each other;
and finally it is a place where all who enter come to die. As the Course
states, seeming to share the Gnostic anti-cosmic spirit:
The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by
guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is
so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws
that seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into
it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering,
and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds
seem to be trapped in their brain, and its powers to decline if their
bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert and are de-
serted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most in-
sane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in
the ground, and are no more. Not one of them but has thought that
God is cruel.
If this were the real world, God would be cruel (T-13.in.2:2–3:1).

470
 The Origin and Nature of the World

Earlier in the text we are asked about this world:

Consider the kingdom you have made and judge its worth fairly.
Is it worthy to be a home for a child of God? Does it protect his
peace and shine love upon him? Does it keep his heart untouched
by fear, and allow him to give always, without any sense of loss?
Does it teach him that this giving is his joy, and that God Himself
thanks him for his giving? That is the only environment in which
you can be happy. You cannot make it, any more than you can
make yourself. It has been created for you, as you were created for
it (T-7.XI.3:1-8).
A Course in Miracles is unequivocal on this point that God did not
create the physical world. No compromise is possible here without
rendering ineffectual the Course’s entire thought system. The uncom-
promising position the Course takes towards the integrity of its teach-
ing in general is reflected in the following statement:
This course will be believed entirely or not at all. For it is wholly
true or wholly false, and cannot be but partially believed. And you
will either escape from misery entirely or not at all. Reason will tell
you that there is no middle ground where you can pause uncertainly,
waiting to choose between the joy of Heaven and the misery of hell.
Until you choose Heaven, you are in hell and misery (T-22.II.7:4-8).
Thus we can understand the tremendous investment the ego has
(and therefore all of us who believe we are the separated self called the
ego) in maintaining the belief in the world’s reality. If the world of the
body were real—as a source of pleasure or pain—then the ego thought
that gave rise to it must be real as well. And if the ego is real, God can-
not be, for mutually exclusive states cannot coexist. As the Course
teaches, using the example of pain:
Pain is a sign illusions reign in place of truth. It demonstrates
God is denied, confused with fear, perceived as mad, and seen as
traitor to Himself. If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real,
there is no God. For vengeance is not part of love. And fear, deny-
ing love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that
death is victor over life. The body is the Son of God, corruptible in
death, as mortal as the Father he has slain (W-pI.190.3).
To summarize up to this point: God created His Son Christ like
Himself, and their perfect unity is Heaven. When the thought of sepa-
ration entered into the Son’s mind, this unity appeared to be shattered.

471
Chapter 13 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

This misthought was corrected by God, who “gave” His Answer to the
problem, which Answer is the Holy Spirit, the memory of God’s love
in the split mind. The ego then “retaliated” by 1) convincing the Son
of the reality of the sin-guilt-fear constellation, which 2) required the
Son’s defense against a wrathful God, necessitating the projection of
the thought of separation beyond itself, thus 3) making a world of sep-
aration in which the ego could hide. This one projection would be the
equivalent of the “Big Bang” understood by many scientists to have
begun the cosmos. The physical world, and even more specifically the
body, thus becomes the home of the ego, which can hide in the place
whose very nature excludes God, perceived as a mortal enemy.
Now the ego’s plot begins to thicken. Once it projected its thought,
thereby giving rise to a physical world, the ego repressed its motiva-
tion so that the true cause of the world—the ego’s purpose in protect-
ing itself against the Holy Spirit in the Son’s mind—would remain
unconscious and hidden, beyond all correction. As a result of this
“forgetting,” it appeared as if the world were external to, and indepen-
dent of the mind. The cause and effect connection was broken, and the
truth of the world’s origin hidden behind the screen of its seeming ma-
terial solidity. The ego’s triumvirate of sin, guilt, and fear now contin-
ues to reinforce our belief in the reality of the physical universe that
is the ego’s fortress against God. A Course in Miracles summarizes
this dynamic in a powerful passage that describes the ego’s purpose
for this world and the body. It is difficult reading, made more so by
the Course’s use of pronouns. I have thus added the appropriate nouns
in brackets:
The circle of fear lies just below the level the body sees, and
seems to be the whole foundation on which the world is based.
Here are all the illusions, all the twisted thoughts, all the insane at-
tacks, the fury, the vengeance and betrayal that were made to keep
the guilt in place, so that the world could rise from it [guilt] and
keep it [guilt] hidden. Its [Guilt’s] shadow rises to the surface,
enough to hold its [guilt’s] most external manifestations in dark-
ness, and to bring despair and loneliness to it [shadow, i.e., world]
and keep it [shadow, i.e., world] joyless. Yet its [guilt’s] intensity is
veiled by its [guilt’s] heavy coverings [body], and kept apart from
what [body] was made to keep it [guilt] hidden. The body cannot
see this [guilt], for the body arose from this [guilt] for its [guilt’s]
protection, which [guilt’s protection] depends on keeping it [guilt]

472
 The Origin and Nature of the World

not seen. The body’s eyes will never look on it [guilt]. Yet they
will see what it [guilt] dictates (T-18.IX.4).
In a parallel passage earlier in the chapter, partially cited above, we read:
The world arose to hide it [the original error], and became the
screen on which it [the thought of separation] was projected and
drawn between you and the truth. For truth extends inward, where
the idea of loss is meaningless and only increase is conceivable. Do
you really think it strange that a world in which everything is back-
wards and upside down [a reference to the upside-down retinal
image] arose from this projection of error? It was inevitable. For
truth brought to this could only remain within in quiet, and take no
part in all the mad projection by which this world was made. Call it
not sin but madness, for such it was and so it still remains. Invest it
not with guilt, for guilt implies it was accomplished in reality. And
above all, be not afraid of it (T-18.I.6:2-9).
Recalling to mind this “smokescreen effect,” we also read in the Course
this clear either-or statement, whose meaning the ego uses to prevent,
seemingly forever, the Son’s remembrance of his Source and true home:
The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God
and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they
behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is
true (T-8.VI.2:1-3).
Thus, the ego appears to have triumphed over God, for what began as
an insignificant idea has now assumed almost monstrous proportions
within the Son’s mind, wherein it has become
a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment [the separa-
tion] and real effects [the world] (T-27.VIII.6:3).
One of the ego’s strongest allies in its tactical war against God, car-
ried out in the theater of the Son’s mind, is time. As it is beyond the
scope of this book to treat this subject in depth, we shall confine this
discussion of time to a few pages.18
Like the ancient Greeks, the Course asserts that all has already hap-
pened; however, where the Greeks perceived time as proceeding lin-
early or sequentially within a large cyclic framework, the Course

18. See my A Vast Illusion: Time According to A COURSE IN MIRACLES for a fuller presen-
tation of the concept of time in the Course.

473
Chapter 13 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

teaches that all has already happened in one instant, non-linearly. So

where the Greeks perceived time cyclically, the Christians linearly,
A Course in Miracles sees time holographically; namely, that all of
time can be found within that original ontological instant.
As we saw in Chapter 7, one’s concept of time depends directly
upon one’s understanding of the nature of the world. While not sharing
the Gnostic fear and hatred of time, the Course nonetheless shares the
Gnostic view of time’s role when it describes the ego’s plan to con-
vince the Son of God not to remember his spiritual identity, which re-
turning to his abstract, timeless mind would surely accomplish. Thus
time becomes part of the ego’s cosmic trap, a magician’s plan to trick
us into believing that reality is what appearances tell us it is. We have
seen that in the same instant that the ego had its birth, the Holy Spirit
was created as the Answer, and so the error or misthought was cor-
rected and undone. In other words, time was over the instant that it
seemed to begin:
The instant the idea of separation entered the mind of God’s Son, in
that same instant was God’s Answer given. In time this happened
very long ago. In reality it never happened at all (M-2.2:6-8).
In that one instant, therefore, the entire ego thought system appeared.
To complete its purpose of confounding the sleeping Son, this one ver-
tical instant is, as it were, pressed down by the ego and flattened hori-
zontally into the dimension we experience as time. Included in this
instant, however, are not only the ego’s thoughts of sin, guilt, and fear,
but the Holy Spirit’s thoughts of unity, forgiveness, and love. Both are
fully present in every aspect of the fragmented mind. Thus it seems
that we are living in time, and making real choices within time; in fact,
however, all has already occurred. Our only choice, therefore, is which
fragmentary aspect of the mind we wish to experience: the Holy Spirit
or the ego, love or fear.
Imagine the sleeping Son sitting in front of a television screen, with
a video player perched on top. On either side of the set are two almost
infinitely large libraries of videos, filled with different aspects of fear
and love respectively. The Son, asleep outside of time, chooses which
video he will experience, which dream he will have. Once making that
choice, it seems to him that he is actually experiencing that video
drama, when in truth he is merely re-experiencing what has already
happened:

474
 The Origin and Nature of the World

For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, look-
ing back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing men-
tally what has gone by (W-pI.158.4:5).
And as the manual says:
The world of time is the world of illusion. What happened long
ago seems to be happening now. Choices made long since appear
to be open; yet to be made. What has been learned and understood
and long ago passed by is looked upon as a new thought, a fresh
idea, a different approach. Because your will is free you can ac-
cept what has already happened at any time you choose, and only
then will you realize that it was always there. As the course em-
phasizes, you are not free to choose the curriculum, or even the
form in which you will learn it. You are free, however, to decide
when you want to learn it. And as you accept it, it is already
learned.
Time really, then, goes backward to an instant so ancient that it
is beyond all memory, and past even the possibility of remember-
ing. Yet because it is an instant that is relived again and again and
still again, it seems to be now (M-2.3:1–4:2).
Included in the Holy Spirit’s library is a video in which the Son fi-
nally gives Him his undivided attention and accepts the truth, rejecting
the ego’s illusion. This is the video that reflects the acceptance of the
Atonement that ushers in the “real world,” the Course’s symbol of total
forgiveness and the denial of the ego’s separation. The experience
viewed on this video also has already happened. Salvation requires
only our acceptance of its truth:
The revelation that the Father and the Son are one will come in
time to every mind. Yet is that time determined by the mind itself,
not taught.
The time is set already. It appears to be quite arbitrary. Yet there
is no step along the road that anyone takes but by chance. It has al-
ready been taken by him, although he has not yet embarked on it.
For time but seems to go in one direction. We but undertake a jour-
ney that is over. Yet it seems to have a future still unknown to us.
Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures
come and go as if by magic. Yet there is a plan behind appear-
ances that does not change. The script is written. When experience
will come to end your doubting has been set (W-pI.158.2:8–4:4).

475
Chapter 13 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

Yet the problem remains that, having believed the ego’s story about
the need to protect ourselves against God’s love, we also believe that
time and space are very present to us, and can “protect” us from “the
revelation that the Father and the Son are one.” Thus the Holy Spirit
patiently climbs up with us the ladder of time that separation led us
down (T-28.III.1:2). Or to use another metaphor:
To you who still believe you live in time and know not it is gone,
the Holy Spirit still guides you through the infinitely small and
senseless maze you still perceive in time, though it has long since
gone (T-26.V.4:1).
We but sleep and dream of time, yet all the while our true Self remains
awake in God:
When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien
power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a
false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep
a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to hap-
pen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless,
and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but contin-
ues as it always was (W-pI.167.9:2-4).
The Gnostics spoke of the archons (the world-rulers) employing
time to trap us here and keep us from eternity. If we strip away the an-
thropomorphic mythology we are not too far removed from A Course in
Miracles’ teachings. The Course, however, adds the psychological di-
mension to the ego’s use of time. Time is what roots us in the seeming
reality of the sin-guilt-fear foundation, which is the bedrock of the ego’s
existence. The ego repeatedly tells us that we have sinned in the past,
should experience guilt in the present, and fear the future punishment
that is our just deserts. Thus does time become a prison in which we re-
main forever trapped by a vicious thought system that offers no way out
except suffering and death, the ultimate punishment for our sins:
How bleak and despairing is the ego’s use of time! And how ter-
rifying! For underneath its fanatical insistence that the past and fu-
ture be the same is hidden a far more insidious threat to peace. The
ego does not advertise its final threat, for it would have its worship-
pers still believe that it can offer them escape. But the belief in guilt
must lead to the belief in hell, and always does. The only way in
which the ego allows the fear of hell to be experienced is to bring
hell here, but always as a foretaste of the future (T-15.I.6:1-6).

476
 The Origin and Nature of the World

And thus in the world in which we find ourselves (to be explored

more fully in the next chapter), we simply relive again and again the
original instant when we believed we separated, and believed the ego’s
tale of sin and punishment:
Yet in each unforgiving act or thought, in every judgment and in all
belief in sin, is that one instant still called back, as if it could be
made again in time. You keep an ancient memory before your
eyes. …
Each day, and every minute in each day, and every instant that
each minute holds, you but relive the single instant when the time
of terror took the place of love. And so you die each day to live
again, until you cross the gap between the past and present, which
is not a gap at all. Such is each life; a seeming interval from birth
to death and on to life again, a repetition of an instant gone by long
ago that cannot be relived. And all of time is but the mad belief
that what is over is still here and now (T-26.V.5:5-6; 13).
In this sense, then, time is cyclical insofar as, listening to the ego,
we continually relive that ancient moment of terror. Over and over we
replay the same drama of sin, guilt, and fear of punishment. On a still
deeper level of understanding, hinted at infrequently in the Course,
this cosmic drama of time is actually continually occurring. Time’s di-
mension is not horizontal at all, but vertical. Each of the components
of time exists, now, layered in our minds to confuse us. The bottom or
innermost layer is the ontological separation that passes up through the
almost infinite number of filters we identify as individual existences
and experiences. Thus, that “time of terror” is not really being relived,
as if there were a past experience to be relived, but is actually being
lived, as long as we continue to believe the ego’s story. In this sense,
then, we do not go back to that instant, we go down to it.
And yet, again, there are other dramas also waiting in our minds to
be replayed or re-experienced; these are in the Holy Spirit’s “video
library,” His corrections for the ego’s teachings:
God gave His Teacher to replace the one you made, not to con-
flict with it. And what He would replace has been replaced. Time
lasted but an instant in your mind, with no effect upon eternity.
And so is all time past, and everything exactly as it was before the
way to nothingness was made. The tiny tick of time in which the
first mistake was made, and all of them within that one mistake,

477
Chapter 13 THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE WORLD

held also the Correction for that one, and all of them that came
within the first. And in that tiny instant time was gone, for that was
all it ever was. What God gave answer to is answered and is gone
(T-26.V.3).
It is at this point of experiencing a choice between these two dramas
that we begin to shift from the more abstract metaphysics of the “one
Christ/one ego” level of discourse, to the more individualized struc-
ture of this ego as it becomes reflected in the consciousness of each of
us who walks this earth. Thus, where the ego made the world to
achieve its purpose of perpetuating the illusion of sin, guilt, and fear,
establishing separation as real and attack as salvation, the Holy Spirit
reinterprets the world as the classroom in which we learn a different
lesson. That lesson learned, the world serves no more purpose and
“spins into nothingness from where it came” (C-4.4:5). In the next
chapter, after considering more specifically the nature of our individ-
ual experience, we shall explore the Holy Spirit’s use of the world, and
then again in Chapter 17.

478
 Chapter 14

THE NATURE OF HUMANITY:

SPIRIT, MIND (SOUL), BODY

The Course’s view of the spirit-mind-body triad is decidedly differ-

ent from the previous views we have discussed, and it logically follows
from its basic metaphysics. Spirit is the only part of our Identity that is
real, being what God created. In this sense we can equate spirit with
Mind. The split mind, however, is illusory, and becomes, in Bréhier’s
term to denote Plotinus’ soul, the seat of destiny. The mind’s primary
defense is the body, made to protect the separation thought against
spirit’s truth. Before we discuss the mind and body in detail, however,
we shall review the basic dynamics of the ego and its unholy trinity of
sin, guilt, and fear. These dynamics have been described in depth in
Forgiveness and Jesus (Chapter 1), and so will be reviewed only briefly
here. However, they will become the basis for the later discussion of the
essential differences between the Gnostic beliefs and practices, and the
Course. This sin-guilt-fear constellation is the means whereby the ego
roots us in this world. In Chapters 12 and 13 we discussed the tripartite
ego mind on a metaphysical level, specifically relating to our beliefs
about God our Creator, and His presence (the Holy Spirit) in our split
minds. Now we shift the dynamics to what we experience as our indi-
vidual mind or self, which but reflects the ontological foundation of our
distorted relationship with God.
Sin refers to our belief in the reality of the separation, and this mis-
taken thought is reflected in one of the original Hebrew definitions of
sin as “missing the mark.” From our belief in sin arises the experi-
ence we call guilt, which encompasses all our negative beliefs and
experiences about ourselves, both conscious and unconscious. Once
we feel guilty, we must also fear the punishment we believe must be
forthcoming and which is justified by our sinfulness. As the ultimate
object of our sin is God, since we believe we have attacked Him, the
ultimate object of our fear must be God as well, since we must be-
lieve that He is justified in attacking us in return. The strange and par-
adoxical belief of many religions that a loving God punishes has its
root in this insane thought. Moreover, this fear of God is so over-
whelming that we would do anything to avoid getting too close to it,

479
Chapter 14 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

which confronting our guilt would certainly bring about. Thus, we

find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of making guilt real, be-
coming afraid of it, and then requiring a massive defense to protect
ourselves from that fear. The Course explains:
How can this unfair battle [between ourselves and God] be re-
solved? Its ending is inevitable, for its outcome must be death. …
Forget the battle. Accept it as a fact, and then forget it. Do not re-
member the impossible odds against you. Do not remember the im-
mensity of the “enemy,” and do not think about your frailty in
comparison. Accept your separation, but do not remember how it
came about. Believe that you have won it, but do not retain the
slightest memory of Who your great “opponent” really is (M-17.
6:1-2,5-10).
A key element in this defense is the belief that the world of the body is
real, for the body provides seeming witness to the reality of our sin, for
which defense is needed. Moreover, this witness to our sin becomes
the very place we seek to hide from the great Punisher. The biblical tale
of Adam and Eve similarly describes how these prototypes for our sep-
arated egos sought to hide from God among the trees of the garden in
fear of His expected vengeful wrath.
Since the body is the tangible expression of the ego, serving thus to
make the sin of separation real, it must inevitably become sin’s symbol.
On the deepest level, therefore, any ego involvement in body thoughts
or activities must remind us of our perceived terrible sinfulness. The
Course calls such thoughts “magic,” and summarizes this dynamic in a
powerful passage that describes the ego’s use of such symbolism to re-
inforce the terror that sustains the ego’s existence:
But what will now be your reaction to all magic thoughts? They
can but reawaken sleeping guilt, which you have hidden but have
not let go. Each one says clearly to your frightened mind, “You
have usurped the place of God. Think not He has forgotten.” Here
we have the fear of God most starkly represented. For in that
thought has guilt already raised madness to the throne of God
Himself (M-17.7:1-6).
This same principle, in addition, underlies the almost universal
phenomenon of associating sexuality with sin (or, as in some religious
or secular belief systems, holiness; this inversion follows the ego
dynamic of reaction formation, whereby our conscious thoughts or

480
 The Nature of Humanity: Spirit, Mind, Body

behavior become the opposite of the unconscious thought). The Adam

and Eve story graphically expresses this association, for the two sin-
ners’ first act after eating the forbidden fruit was to cover their naked-
ness. Thus we see the immediate projection of their guilt over the sin
of turning against God—a thought in their minds—onto their bodies,
and very specifically onto their sexual organs, which now become the
“source” of their shame. Interestingly enough, the Dutch word for
pubic hairs means “shame hairs.” Since the Bible, at least in part, came
through the unconscious egos of the people of that time, we can under-
stand this association by examining the specific purpose sex has had
for the ego. Sex is the means of physical reproduction, which we arro-
gantly believe is the source of life. This expresses the basic ego belief
that we—our ego (bodily) selves—are the creators. Sex, then, be-
comes the manifest symbol of our “original sin” of having usurped
God’s role of Creator, displacing Him on His throne. It is no wonder,
then, that there is so much guilt associated with sexuality, and that for
so many religions and spiritualities, including the classical ones dis-
cussed in this book, sex has been seen as anti-spiritual, if not the con-
crete expression of sin. As mentioned earlier, St. Augustine identified
original sin with concupiscence, setting the tone for Christians for cen-
turies to come. We shall return to this idea in Chapter 17.
Since all guilt and fear rest on the prior belief that we have sinned,
or that the separation from God has actually occurred, any experience
of guilt and fear must automatically reinforce the belief that the world
of separation is real as well. It is this guilt and fear that roots us in this
world, not only making the world real in our perception, but setting up
a vicious circle in which we feel caught without seeming escape. It was
this entrapment in an alien world that the Gnostics experienced in a par-
ticularly painful way, as we have seen. A Course in Miracles too ex-
presses this alienation of our self from Self, though without the Gnostic
belief in entrapment. Many passages in the Course, however, are remi-
niscent of the anguished cries of the Gnostics who found themselves to
be “strangers in a strange land.” The words “alien,” “stranger,” and
“homeless,” for example, recur frequently, as can be seen in these rep-
resentative passages:
God is not a stranger to His Sons, and His Sons are not strangers
to each other. … There are no strangers in God’s creation (T-3.III.
6:3; 7:7).

481
Chapter 14 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

God’s Son is indeed in need of comfort … . The Kingdom is his,

and yet he wanders homeless. At home in God he is lonely, and
amid all his brothers he is friendless (T-11.III.2:1-3).
You will undertake a journey because you are not at home in this
world (T-12.IV.5:1).
Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to
sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to
yourself … (T-28.II.4:1).
One entire Lesson—“I am at home. Fear is the stranger here”
(W-pI.160)—treats this theme of alienation and estrangement in a
world not our home. Excerpts follow:
Fear is a stranger to the ways of love. Identify with fear, and you
will be a stranger to yourself. And thus you are unknown to you.
What is your Self remains an alien to the part of you which thinks
that it is real, but different from yourself. … There is a stranger
[fear] in our midst, who comes from an idea so foreign to the truth
he speaks a different language … . Stranger yet, he does not recog-
nize to whom he comes, and yet maintains his home belongs to
him, while he is alien now who is at home. … Who is the stranger?
Is it fear or you who are unsuited to the home which God provided
for His Son? … Who fears has but denied himself and said, “I am
the stranger here. And so I leave my home to one more like me
than myself, and give him all I thought belonged to me.” Now is he
exiled of necessity, not knowing who he is, uncertain of all things
but this; that he is not himself, and that his home has been denied
to him.
What does he search for now? What can he find? A stranger to
himself can find no home wherever he may look, for he has made
return impossible (W-pI.160.1:1-4; 2:1-2; 4:1-2; 5:2-4; 6:1-3).
Life in this illusory and insane world is powerfully portrayed in this
passage from a later lesson, depicting how the world is experienced by
one who believes it real:
Here is the only home he thinks he knows. Here is the only
safety he believes that he can find. Without the world he made is
he an outcast; homeless and afraid. He does not realize that it is
here he is afraid indeed, and homeless, too; an outcast wandering
so far from home, so long away, he does not realize he has forgot-
ten where he came from, where he goes, and even who he really

482
 The Nature of Humanity: Spirit, Mind, Body

is. … He wanders on, aware of the futility he sees about him every-
where, perceiving how his little lot but dwindles, as he goes ahead
to nowhere. Still he wanders on in misery and poverty, alone … .
He seems a sorry figure; weary, worn, in threadbare clothing, and
with feet that bleed a little from the rocky road he walks. No one
but has identified with him, for everyone who comes here has pur-
sued the path he follows, and has felt defeat and hopelessness as he
is feeling them (W-pI.166.4; 5:4–6:2).
A most beautiful Lesson—“I will be still an instant and go home”—
expresses still again the haunting anguish of our being in a world that
is not our home, desperately seeking to recall our true home:
This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And some-
where in your mind you know that this is true. A memory of home
keeps haunting you, as if there were a place that called you to re-
turn, although you do not recognize the voice, nor what it is the
voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here, from some-
where all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with
certainty you are an exile here. … No one but knows whereof we
speak. … We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for
he is not at home. He goes uncertainly about in endless search,
seeking in darkness what he cannot find; not recognizing what it is
he seeks. A thousand homes he makes, yet none contents his rest-
less mind. He does not understand he builds in vain. The home he
seeks can not be made by him. There is no substitute for Heaven.
All he ever made was hell (W-pI.182.1:1-5; 2:1; 3).
And finally, these excerpts from Lessons “There is no peace except the
peace of God” and “The peace of God is shining in me now”:
Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign
places and in alien forms that have no meaning to you, though you
sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you be-
long. You are a stranger here. But it is given you to find the means
whereby the world no longer seems to be a prison house or jail for
anyone (W-pI.200.4).
Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are
alien here as well. The light came with you from your native
home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only
thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines
in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it
came from and you are at home (W-pI.188.1:5-8).

483
Chapter 14 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

Another metaphor used by the Course to depict life in this alien

world is sleep, a metaphor not unfamiliar to the Gnostic literature. An
even more widely used metaphor is the dream, which embraces both the
nightmare illusions of the ego, and the happy ones of the Holy Spirit.
These latter express our forgiveness, which ultimately enables us to
waken from the world of dreams entirely. The state of sleep is usually
contrasted with the state of being awake, the condition of life in
Heaven. Some examples:
Your will is still in you because God placed it in your mind, and al-
though you can keep it asleep you cannot obliterate it. … Rest does
not come from sleeping but from waking. The Holy Spirit is the
call to awaken and be glad. The world is very tired, because it is
the idea of weariness. Our [Jesus’ and our] task is the joyous one
of waking it to the Call for God (T-5.II.1:5; 10:4-7).
You have chosen a sleep in which you have had bad dreams, but
the sleep is not real and God calls you to awake. There will be
nothing left of your dream when you hear Him, because you will
awaken. … God’s extending outward, though not His complete-
ness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him
as one. So He thought, “My children sleep and must be awakened”
(T-6.IV.6:3-4; T-6.V.1:7-8).
You are at home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable
of awakening to reality. … You do not remember being awake
(T-10.I.2:1; 3:2).
You who have spent your life in bringing truth to illusion,
reality to fantasy, have walked the way of dreams. For you have
gone from waking to sleeping, and on and on to a yet deeper
sleep. Each dream has led to other dreams, and every fantasy that
seemed to bring a light into the darkness but made the darkness
deeper. Your goal was darkness, in which no ray of light could
enter (T-18.III.1:1-4).
The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what
is its waking state. It cannot make a body, nor abide within a
body. … What seems to die is but the sign of mind asleep. … What
seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping (W-pI.167.
6:1-3,7; 9:1).
Within the ego’s world of alienation there is no escape for, as we
have seen, imprisonment is the purpose of the world. As long as we

484
 The Nature of Humanity: Spirit, Mind, Body

believe that our problems are in the physical world, we will seek for
solutions there as well. The “solutions” the ego offers—all different
forms of what the Course calls special relationships—are merely subtle
ways of reinforcing the problem, for they continue to teach us to look
at the world as real and separate from its internal cause. As the Course
explains, the ego’s maxim is: Seek but do not find (T-16.V.6:5). Thus
we can better appreciate the importance of our earlier discussions in
Part II-A on the origin—within or with-out the Godhead—of the dark
thought of separation. The way we define the problem dictates where
we look for its solution. Defining a problem externally inevitably
means we must seek to solve it externally, through what A Course in
Miracles refers to as magic. Salvation thus can never be found by look-
ing outside (magic), but only by looking within (miracle)—in our
minds—where the problem is. This inner search is, of course, the very
thing the ego does not want. A definition of golf from an anonymous
source provides a humorous description of the inherent silliness of the
ego’s thought system: “an ineffectual attempt to drive an uncontrollable
sphere into an inaccessible hole, with an instrument ill adapted to the
purpose.” Thus the so-called problems of the world and their solution
are simple, once we redefine them: the one problem of the world is our
belief in it, i.e., in the reality of the separation; the one solution to the
problem is accepting the Atonement, i.e., changing our minds. We re-
turn to this in Chapter 17.
An extensive discussion of special relationships—the ego’s pri-
mary weapon against God—is beyond the immediate scope of this
book.19 However, some comments need be made as the concept specif-
ically interfaces with our basic theme. The function of all relationships
from the ego’s point of view is to fulfill its primary purpose of keeping
separation and guilt real in our minds, and thereby banishing God and
the Holy Spirit. Special relationships thus begin with the ego’s teach-
ing that there is something missing in us, which lack is the direct prod-
uct of sin and is known as the scarcity principle. The experience of
guilt attests to our recognition that there is something radically wrong
with us, a gnawing sense of emptiness that can never be alleviated.
What is lacking of course is Christ, the spiritual Identity that unifies us

19. The interested reader may consult “Special Hate Relationships” and “Special Love
Relationships” in Chapter 1 of Forgiveness and Jesus, and Chapter 7 of Awaken from
the Dream.

485
Chapter 14 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

with God, and that the ego tells us is gone forever; in other words, our
sin has actually occurred with real effects, and thus this lack is real and
can never be undone. We shall return to this presently.
The original special relationship, therefore, is with our Creator. We
demanded His special love so that we would not have to face the guilt
over our separation from Him. We bargained with God, hoping that He
(really our image of Him) would accept our offer of suffering and sac-
rifice as payment back for our sin against Him. When God does not ac-
cept our bargain—again, all this occurs only within our minds—our
guilt begins to overwhelm us, leading to our terror of His vengeful
wrath. This terror in turn results in the defense of projection: It is not
we who rejected God; He rejected us. Thus are we now justified in
turning to others for the love that He denied us, and in that decision are
all our special relationships born:
It is in the special relationship, born of the hidden wish for spe-
cial love from God, that the ego’s hatred triumphs. For the spe-
cial relationship is the renunciation of the Love of God, and the
attempt to secure for the self the specialness that He denied
(T-16.V.4:1-2).
This denial of the Love who created us and who we are as Christ
(“Love created me like Itself” [W-pI.67]), is the underlying foundation
for all that follows. Just as the ego originally counseled the sleeping
Son to escape from the pain of his guilt by projection, so too does it
counsel us here, in our seeming individual existence, to escape from
the pain caused by this inner emptiness by seeking outside ourselves
for relief. This external search has two basic forms, what the Course
terms special hate and special love relationships.
In our hate relationships we seek respite from pain by projecting the
cause of our emptiness and loneliness onto others, saying in effect: I
am unhappy (in pain, etc.) because of what you have done (or failed to
do); I am the innocent victim and you the victimizer, and so I am jus-
tified in my anger and in blaming you for my suffering:
The ego’s plan for salvation centers around holding griev-
ances. It maintains that, if someone else spoke or acted differ-
ently, if some external circumstance or event were changed, you
would be saved. Thus, the source of salvation is constantly per-
ceived as outside yourself. Each grievance you hold is a declara-
tion, and an assertion in which you believe, that says, “If this

486
 The Nature of Humanity: Spirit, Mind, Body

were different, I would be saved.” The change of mind necessary

for salvation is thus demanded of everyone and everything ex-
cept yourself (W-pI.71.2).
For the ego thought system to survive, therefore, it is mandatory that
there be an enemy perceived outside of our minds, for this “protects”
the Son from ever consulting the true source of his distress: the decision
he made to listen to the voice of sin, guilt, and fear, rather than the Voice
of love. Once the true “enemy” is recognized, the Son’s attention is di-
rected back to his mind, where the healing presence of the Holy Spirit
is found. And so the ego continually counsels us to seek for those
“special” people, objects, thought systems, and external forces to hate,
attack, and overcome. Thus, a perception of a we-they world is built
up, solidified through our justified anger:
Anger always involves projection of separation, which must ulti-
mately be accepted as one’s own responsibility, rather than being
blamed on others. Anger cannot occur unless you believe that you
have been attacked, that your attack is justified in return, and that
you are in no way responsible for it (T-6.in.1:2-3).
It should be emphasized here that this principle of unjustified anger
does not condone the anger or attacks of others. It simply deals with our
own reaction to these magic thoughts in others. The projected hatred
observed in the world is the responsibility of those separated minds, as
it is ours when we project.
An historical example of the special hate object is the Jew, and we
find this projection not only within the orthodox Church, as we have
already seen, but in the Gnostic community as well. The Gnostic
“Acts of John,” for example, refers to the “lawless Jews, whose law-
giver is the lawless serpent,” and has Jesus state: “I am your God, not
the God of the traitor [the Old Testament God]” (AJ 94; 96.44,
in NTA II, pp. 227,231). In the anti-Gnostic “Gospel of Peter,” which
dates from the mid-second century, there is exhibited definite anti-
Jewish traits, where all the guilt for the death of Jesus is placed upon
their heads:
And then the Jews drew the nails from the hands of the Lord and
laid him on the earth. … And the Jews rejoiced and gave his body
to Joseph that he might bury it … . Then the Jews and the elders
and the priests, perceiving what great evil they had done to them-
selves, began to lament … (GPt 6.21,23; 7.25, in NTA I, p. 185).

487
Chapter 14 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

In the same Petrine tradition is “The Kerygmata Petrou,” discussed

earlier, which comes from a Jewish-Christian-Gnostic milieu and
shares the anti-Jewish sentiment common to that environment, espe-
cially exhibiting great antipathy to the Old Testament. A distinction is
made between Moses and the prophets, the latter being those
who wrote the law, since they did not foresee its destruction, are
convicted of ignorance and were not [really] prophets … (Ker. Pet.,
in NTA II, p. 118)
“The Testimony of Truth” echoes this anti-Old Testament feeling as
well:
Others have demons dwelling with them as did David the king. He
is the one who laid the foundation of Jerusalem; and his son
Solomon, whom he begat in adultery, is the one who built
Jerusalem by means of the demons, because he received their
powers (Test. Tr. IX.70.1-9, in NHL, p. 415).
Special love relationships follow the same dynamic pattern we find
in hate relationships, but with the opposite form. Now the ego counsels
us not to project our guilt and self-hatred onto others directly, but
rather to cannibalize what is outside of us, wresting it from another (or
the world) and incorporating it within ourselves to fill the gaping hole
of nothingness the ego has convinced us is our reality. Thus the orient-
ing premise of the ego is the aforementioned scarcity principle: that we
are missing something within, a lack that has its origin in the separa-
tion from God:
While lack does not exist in the creation of God, it is very appar-
ent in what you have made. It is, in fact, the essential difference
between them. Lack implies that you would be better off in a state
somehow different from the one you are in. Until the “separation,”
which is the meaning of the “fall,” nothing was lacking. There
were no needs at all. Needs arise only when you deprive
yourself. … [The] sense of separation would never have arisen if
you had not distorted your perception of truth, and had thus per-
ceived yourself as lacking (T-1.VI.1:3-8; 2:2).
These “special” people, therefore, are loved for what they can do
for us, and not for who they are as Christ:

488
 The Nature of Humanity: Spirit, Mind, Body

The “better” self the ego seeks is always one that is more spe-
cial. And whoever seems to possess a special self is “loved” for
what can be taken from him (T-16.V.8:1-2).
Stated another way, people and things outside of us fulfill the special
needs we believe we have, which are nothing more than specific forms
of the underlying abstract belief in the reality of our own guilt and
scarcity. The primary motivation in all special relationships, then, is
the belief that by “joining” with another in love (affection, approval,
etc.) we are completing the inherent incompletion within ourselves:
No one who comes here but must still have hope, some linger-
ing illusion, or some dream that there is something outside of him-
self that will bring happiness and peace to him. If everything is in
him this cannot be so. And therefore by his coming, he denies the
truth about himself, and seeks for something more than every-
thing, as if a part of it were separated off and found where all the
rest of it is not. This is the purpose he bestows upon the body; that
it seek for what he lacks, and give him what would make himself
complete. And thus he wanders aimlessly about, in search of some-
thing that he cannot find, believing that he is what he is not
(T-29.VII.2).
When these needs are met by this special person, we are in love,
which is merely another term for dependency. And where “both part-
ners see this special self in each other, the ego sees a ‘union made in
Heaven’” (T-16.V.8:3). When, however, these needs are not met as we
have established them, then our love quickly turns to hate, and we are
right back into blaming someone or something outside ourselves for
our distress.
The core of all special relationships is the bargain. It does not mat-
ter, incidentally, whether or not my special love partner is aware of
this bartering insanity: I am acting it out for both of us in my own
mind. Returning to our non-dualistic metaphysics for the moment,
since in truth nothing exists outside the mind, there is no person out
there anyway. Just as in a sleeping dream, where all the characters in
our dreams are but projections of our own minds, so too in our wak-
ing dreams. Thus again, my relationship with you (from my point of
view) exists only in my mind: You are not really there at all. The
drama of bargaining, then, takes this form: I am in desperate need of

489
Chapter 14 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

completion, which only you (my chosen special love partner) can
provide for me. However, since I am so wretched, there is no way you
will let me have what I need (which is really a part of your self) with-
out receiving something of value in return. However, I have nothing
of value to give you (since I have already decided that I am guilty and
worthless). And so I must deceive you into believing that I am indeed
giving you something of value in return for the great value that you
are giving me. Of this, then, is the ego’s kingdom of heaven: a veri-
table hell built on lies and deceit, on theft and cannibalistic rape. It is
a state of mind that begins with guilt, and must end with guilt over the
continuing attack that is the ego’s distorted version of salvation and
Heaven:
Most curious of all is the concept of the self which the ego fos-
ters in the special relationship. This “self ” seeks the relationship
to make itself complete. Yet when it finds the special relationship
in which it thinks it can accomplish this it gives itself away, and
tries to “trade” itself for the self of another. … Each partner tries
to sacrifice the self he does not want for one he thinks he would
prefer. And he feels guilty for the “sin” of taking, and of giving
nothing of value in return. How much value can he place upon a
self that he would give away to get a “better” one? … Through the
death of your self you think you can attack another self, and
snatch it from the other to replace the self that you despise
(T-16.V.7:1-3,5-7; 10:6).
The murderous insanity of the ego’s thought system is forever hid-
den from our sight by the special relationship, and we can never look
beyond its blood-drenched glitter to what it truly is:
To know reality is not to see the ego and its thoughts, its works,
its acts, its laws and its beliefs, its dreams, its hopes, its plans for
its salvation, and the cost belief in it entails. In suffering, the price
for faith in it is so immense that crucifixion of the Son of God is
offered daily at its darkened shrine, and blood must flow before the
altar where its sickly followers prepare to die (W-pII.12.4).
In the section entitled “The Two Pictures” (T-17.IV), the Course con-
trasts the special and holy relationship, using the image of a picture and
its frame. The ego’s frame, heavily laden with seeming jewels, con-
ceals the picture of death it presents to us as its gift; the Holy Spirit’s

490
 The Nature of Humanity: Spirit, Mind, Body

picture, on the other hand, is lightly framed so that its inner light can be
clearly visible as it leads us into itself, and then beyond to God.
Such a turnabout from special love to special hate is inevitable for
several reasons: first, no one person or thing has the capacity to be
there always and in all ways for us; second, the ego’s goal, as the
Course tells us, is murder, and so our special love partners are “set up”
by the ego eventually to fail and thus become scapegoats for our jus-
tified wrath; finally, since it is our guilt that has made this special love
relationship necessary as a defense, the love object must become a
symbol of the guilt that is the relationship’s purpose. Thus, while con-
sciously we are aware only of love and gratitude for the beloved who
has enabled us to deny our pain under the cover of specialness, un-
consciously our thoughts continually move from the beloved to what
is symbolized: our guilt. And since it is our guilt we hate more than
anything else in the world, we must also come to hate the one who
symbolizes it for us. This hatred, therefore, is always present, even
when we are protesting our love the most strongly. It is only a matter
of time until the storm of hate breaks through the barricades of special
love and reveals itself for what it always was.
The battleground of specialness is the body, since hatred demands
a specific object:
Hate is specific. There must be a thing to be attacked. An enemy
must be perceived in such a form he can be touched and seen and
heard, and ultimately killed (W-pI.161.7:1-3).
Thus A Course in Miracles unequivocably asserts that God’s creative
principle had nothing at all to do with the separated mind or body.
Nonetheless, the Course does not attack the body nor speak of it in de-
rogatory tones, although in some passages it does reflect our denigra-
tion of our alien home. In one such passage the Course addresses us:
Condemn him [the Son of God] not by seeing him within the rot-
ting prison [the body] where he sees himself (T-26.I.8:3).
And earlier:
And you want your Father, not a little mound of clay [the body], to
be your home (T-19.IV-B.4:8).
And still earlier:

491
Chapter 14 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

The body is a tiny fence around a little part [the ego] of a glorious
and complete idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very
little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming
that within it is your kingdom, where God can enter not (T-18.
VIII.2:5-6).
To be sure, however, the Course does poke gentle fun at our world’s
worship of the body, as seen in this characteristic passage:
The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world.
There is no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream
in which it acts as if it were a person to be seen and be believed. It
takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of
how it was made by other bodies, born into the world outside the
body, lives a little while and dies, to be united in the dust with
other bodies dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it
seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its
main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for
pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it
tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different and can be told
apart.
The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body
seeks in many ways to prove it is autonomous and real. It puts
things on itself that it has bought with little metal discs or paper
strips the world proclaims as valuable and real. It works to get
them, doing senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless
things it does not need and does not even want. It hires other bod-
ies, that they may protect it and collect more senseless things that it
can call its own. It looks about for special bodies that can share its
dream. Sometimes it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker
than itself. But in some phases of the dream, it is the slave of bod-
ies that would hurt and torture it (T-27.VIII.1-2).
Yet nowhere does A Course in Miracles fall into the trap of making the
body real by seeing it as the enemy to be overcome. As the Course
writes of the process of transcending the limitations of the body’s laws:
There is no violence at all in this escape. The body is not at-
tacked, but simply properly perceived. … Not through destruction,
not through a breaking out, but merely by a quiet melting in (T-18.
VI.13:1-2; 14:6).
Being nothing, the body does not live nor die. Thus the Course asks,
referring to the body:

492
 The Nature of Humanity: Spirit, Mind, Body

Can you paint rosy lips upon a skeleton, dress it in loveliness, pet it
and pamper it, and make it live? And can you be content with an il-
lusion that you are living?
There is no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there
life must be. In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. At best
it seems like life; at worst, like death (T-23.II.18:8–19:4).
Later, the Course emphasizes the utter neutrality of the body which,
like a wooden marionette, has no life but simply carries out the wishes
of the mind that is its master:
Who punishes the body is insane. For here the little gap is seen,
and yet it is not here. It has not judged itself, nor made itself to be
what it is not. It does not seek to make of pain a joy and look for
lasting pleasure in the dust. It does not tell you what its purpose is
and cannot understand what it is for. It does not victimize, because
it has no will, no preferences and no doubts. It does not wonder
what it is. And so it has no need to be competitive. It can be vic-
timized, but cannot feel itself as victim. It accepts no role, but does
what it is told, without attack.
It is … a thing that cannot see … [and] cannot hear. … it has no
feeling. It behaves in ways you want, but never makes the choice.
It is not born and does not die. It can but follow aimlessly the path
on which it has been set. … It takes no sides and judges not the
road it travels (T-28.VI.1:1–2:5; 2:7).
Thus the body is not the enemy at all, but a silly construct of the ego
to convince us that the impossible—the separation from God—has oc-
curred. The Holy Spirit, as we shall explore in Chapters 15 and 17,
uses the body as His classroom so that we may learn, finally, His les-
son of salvation. This attitude towards the illusory body distinguishes
the Course from the other thought systems we have been considering,
and we shall return to this in Part III.
Let us now reconsider the spirit-mind-body triad, so that we may
better understand the nature and purpose of each of them. We begin
with spirit.
As we have seen, spirit is the Self that God created. It is equated
with Christ, created in the “image and likeness” of God. Similar to the
Gnostic pneuma, this Self is totally other-worldly and thus has no ref-
erent in this world. Spirit is not part of humanity, but rather is “in spite”
of it. What we call humanity (the ego-body) was made to defend

493
Chapter 14 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

against spirit. An unpublished modern haiku by Patrick Lysons poeti-

cally summarizes the ego’s use of the body:
This bodily prejudice
buries
Itself in lies
carries
Its needs crazily
Needing
To justify, justify
countermeasures
Against my simple
Miracle
As we have discussed, when the mind appeared to separate from
its Source, thereby becoming split, the ego was born. Thus we now
speak of two minds: Mind—one with God; and mind—split off from
Him. This latter mind is what emerges as the ego, the separated and
illusory self. In the words of Plotinus, this self is non-being. A Course
in Miracles in fact distinguishes between being, which refers only to
spirit, and existence, which is the realm of the separated mind, or non-
being. The first part of this passage was partially quoted earlier when
we noted the similarity between the Course and Basilides:
Existence as well as being rest on communication. Existence,
however, is specific in how, what and with whom communication
is judged to be worth undertaking. Being is completely without
these distinctions. It is a state in which the mind is in communica-
tion with everything that is real. … This is your reality. Do not des-
ecrate it or recoil from it. It is your real home, your real temple and
your real Self.
God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have
everything individually … . Remember that in the Kingdom there is
no difference between having and being, as there is in existence. …
Being alone lives in the Kingdom, where everything lives in God …
(T-4.VII.4:1-4,6-8; 5:1,7; T-6.IV.7:4).
We are therefore tripartite, though in a manner different from what
we have considered: mind and body belong to the unreal world of ex-
istence (non-being); spirit alone is being, and therefore real. A Course

494
 The Nature of Humanity: Spirit, Mind, Body

in Miracles is thus on one level uninterested in the body, which is

merely an epiphenomenon of the separated mind, having no existence
outside our thoughts. On this level the Course’s exclusive focus is the
mind: the seat of the problem as well as the answer. “Mind,” inciden-
tally, can be roughly equated with one popular understanding of the
soul, wherein the soul is the part of our self that journeys back to God.
In this context, then, “soul” should not be equated with spirit, that
“being of God … is eternal and was never born” (C-1.3:3).
Therefore, the term “spirit” really does not belong in any discus-
sion of a physical being, let alone homo sapiens. Spirit in fact is ex-
actly what is not found in a physical organism for, again, the body—
the embodiment of the thought of separation—was specifically made to
exclude the spiritual Self. The traditional human trichotomy now be-
comes, for the Course, a dichotomy of mind and body. Within the mind,
however, we can discern three parts, as was described in Chapter 12.
Once the mind (written in lower case to distinguish it from the Mind of
Christ, the home of spirit) split off from God and seemed to exist on its
own, there were within itself, as we have seen, two “voices.” One
speaks for the reality of the separation; this is the voice of the ego that
teaches sin, guilt, fear, and the need for defense. The other speaks for
the unreality of the separation; this is the Voice of the Holy Spirit,
whose teaching is forgiveness and defenselessness. A third part of the
mind is the decision maker, which must choose between these two
voices. In fact this is the only choice truly available to us:
In this world the only remaining freedom is the freedom of
choice; always between two choices or two voices (C-1.7:1).
The ego’s voice apparently wins out, at least in our experience, be-
cause we believe we are here in the illusory world we call reality. To
summarize a process discussed earlier, the ego convinces the Son to
decide for it instead of for God. Believing the tale of his own sin, the
Son seeks to hide from God’s wrath and makes a body as a cloak, hop-
ing against hope that God has forgotten: “Projecting your ‘forgetting’
onto Him, it seems to you He has forgotten, too” (M-17.6:11). And so
we walk this earth, terrified in our deepest consciousness that God will
one day find us out. We continually use the body—ours and others’—
as the means of distracting our thoughts from the awful “truth” the ego
has made real. Once we have accepted the ego’s miserable image of

495
Chapter 14 THE NATURE OF HUMANITY: SPIRIT, MIND, BODY

ourselves, the ego in turn “mercifully” represses it for us. The Course
has powerfully summarized this notion of the self the ego has told us
we must never look at:
You think you are the home of evil, darkness and sin. You think
if anyone could see the truth about you he would be repelled, re-
coiling from you as if from a poisonous snake. You think if what is
true about you were revealed to you, you would be struck with hor-
ror so intense that you would rush to death by your own hand, liv-
ing on after seeing this being impossible.
These are beliefs so firmly fixed that it is difficult to help you
see that they are based on nothing (W-pI.93.1:1–2:1).
The body, then, becomes a powerful instrument in the hands of the ego,
serving its purpose very well. The point is essential and bears restating:
The body is literally nothing, and therefore deserves neither praise nor
condemnation. It is never the problem, which remains only in the mind,
where the belief in sin is held in place by our guilt, the fearful presence
of which necessitates the body as a defense. The body therefore is neu-
tral, simply assuming the role that has been assigned to it.
However, the Holy Spirit also has a use for the body: as an instru-
ment of communication. In a series of parallel passages, the Course
emphasizes the holy use of the body as an instrument of salvation by
the Teachers of God.20 Perhaps the most moving of these is the passage
where Jesus speaks as the manifestation of the Teacher:
For this alone I need; that you will hear the words I speak, and give
them to the world. You are my voice, my eyes, my feet, my hands
through which I save the world (W-pI.rV.in.9:2-3).
Used by the ego to attack God and exclude Christ from our minds, the
body for the Holy Spirit becomes the means to correct the Son’s mis-
takes in having chosen the wrong guide. In a passage already quoted,
we find this teaching succinctly summarized:
The body was not made by love. Yet love does not condemn it and
can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of God has made and
using it to save him from illusions (T-18.VI.4:7-8).

20. See my Glossary-Index for A COURSE IN MIRACLES, under “body,” for a list of these
references.

496
 The Nature of Humanity: Spirit, Mind, Body

In the following chapter we shall discuss more specifically how the

Holy Spirit uses the body (and our special relationships) to undo the
ego’s thought system.
In summary, then, we can see how A Course in Miracles differs rad-
ically from all the other systems we have explored: spirit plays no part
at all in our human experience; the mind is split between the ego and
the Holy Spirit, a split not too dissimilar from what is found in the
other traditions we have considered; and the body is seen as illusory,
ontologically the product of our guilt and fear, yet nonetheless neutral
in terms of how it is used. It is its use that gives the body all the mean-
ing it has for us, for being nothing, it is neither good nor evil. Thus,
seeing the body as inherently one or the other fulfills the ego’s purpose
by ascribing to the illusory body a reality it does not have.

497
 Chapter 15

THE MEANING OF SALVATION

Within A Course in Miracles’ system, salvation is the correction of

the misbelief in separation. It is equated with the process of Atonement,
which undoes the error through a change in thinking, not through pen-
ance or sacrifice of the body, as has been traditionally taught. The
instrument of salvation is forgiveness, the correction for our misper-
ceptions of others: where previously we had judged someone as being
our enemy, the agent or cause of our distress, now that same individual
is seen as our friend. As one Lesson instructs:
Today’s idea [“Give me your blessing, holy Son of God”] is your
safe escape from anger and from fear. Be sure you use it instantly,
should you be tempted to attack a brother and perceive in him the
symbol of your fear. And you will see him suddenly transformed
from enemy to savior; from the devil into Christ (W-pI.161.12:4-6).
The Course teaches that we forgive each other for what we have not
done, not for what we think has been done. This means that the reason
we are upset is not because of another’s actions, but always because of
how we have perceived another’s actions. Seeming attacks are cor-
rected in our perception so that they now are seen as calls for help or
for love. Thus, A Course in Miracles is teaching another way of seeing
the world. This vision does not deny the outward actions or behavior
our sensory organs report to us, but merely reinterprets what we have
seen or, more properly, what we believed we have seen. As the Course
points out: perception is an interpretation, not a fact. It is
a continual process of accepting and rejecting, organizing and re-
organizing, shifting and changing. Evaluation is an essential part
of perception, because judgments are necessary in order to select
(T-3.V.7:7-8).
Crucial to the Course’s understanding of salvation is that it is not
“the world, the flesh, and the devil” from which one needs to be saved,
for that is not the problem. Rather, the problem is the underlying
thought system of separation—the way we think—that brought about
the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is this “way of thinking” that we
may more properly call the devil, it being nothing more than our belief

499
Chapter 15 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

that it is possible to have a force that opposes God, and that can suc-
ceed. As the Course states: “The mind can make the belief in separation
very real and very fearful, and this belief is the ‘devil’” (T-3.VII.5:1).
Therefore, if the problem is belief in separation, the solution can
only be union. Forgiveness thus refers to the process of joining with
another person (in a holy relationship) who heretofore had been seen
as separate from us (in a special relationship). By joining with another
we correct our ego’s belief that attack is salvation. In this attack is the
birthplace of guilt, the true “creator” of this world. God created Christ
—our true Self—as one with Him, and therefore the continual joining
with others, step by step corrects the thought system that had been
erected to take the place of the unity of Heaven. The Course says of
this gradual process:
The Holy Spirit takes you gently by the hand, and retraces with
you your mad journey outside yourself, leading you gently back to
the truth and safety within (T-18.I.8:3).
Referring back to our mythic story, salvation very simply consists
of the process whereby the Son changes his mind and listens to the
Holy Spirit, correcting his original mistake of choosing to believe the
ego’s tale of sin-guilt-fear which, as we have seen, set into motion the
strategic defense leading to the cosmic drama of the making of the ma-
terial universe. Thus the Son is “saved” from his wrong choice by his
changing his mind. What is central here is that the instrument of sal-
vation is the Son himself, not an external agent such as God or one of
His representatives: Salvation does not come to us from the outside,
but from a decision to accept the Holy Spirit’s Atonement, thus undo-
ing our previous decision to deny His truth. In this sense, then, the
Course is similar to the emphasis placed on virtue by the Greek phi-
losophers we have considered, not to mention also being similar to the
Pelagian heresy.
A Course in Miracles however, also makes it very clear that such a
re-training cannot come from the ego, but only from the internal pres-
ence of the Holy Spirit who yet remains outside the ego thought sys-
tem. Salvation is thus a collaborative venture between the Son and the
Holy Spirit, just as the Son had heretofore joined with the ego:
… you and your adviser must agree on what you want before it can
occur. It is but this agreement that permits all things to happen.

500
 The Meaning of Salvation

Nothing can be caused without some form of union, be it with a

dream of judgment or the Voice for God (T-30.I.16:2-4).
This joining together of what the Son had originally decided should be
kept separate (his mind from the truth), becomes reflected on the
bodily level of experience when we join with those from whom we had
decided we should be kept separate. Separation was the ontological
choice that led to the separated mind and eventually to the separated
world. Thus it is this mistaken choice that must be corrected. It appears
as if the correction occurs on the level of our relationships with each
other here in this physical world. But in truth the correction has
already occurred on the mind level; stated even more clearly, the cor-
rection is already happening, since past and future are simply fabrica-
tions made up by the ego to deceive us.
One of the major forms of correcting this time distortion is to help
change the Son’s mind about his perception of God. We recall that the
ego had convinced the sleeping Son that God was angry, hellbent on
punishing him for his sins against Him. This nicely, from the ego’s
point of view, removed any possibility of help the Son might accept
from his Creator:
God … must accept His Son’s belief in what he is, and hate him for
it.
See how the fear of God is reinforced by this … . Now it be-
comes impossible to turn to Him for help in misery. For now He
has become the “enemy” Who caused it, to Whom appeal is
useless. … now is conflict made inevitable, beyond the help of
God. For now salvation must remain impossible, because the sav-
ior has become the enemy.
There can be no release and no escape. Atonement thus be-
comes a myth, and vengeance, not forgiveness, is the Will of God.
From where all this begins, there is no sight of help that can suc-
ceed. Only destruction can be the outcome. And God Himself
seems to be siding with it, to overcome His Son (T-23.II.6:6–7:3;
7:5–8:5).
We thus begin the process of salvation by questioning the voice of the
ego, realizing that its teachings make no sense and contradict what
must be the truth. Now we begin to realize that the Voice of the Holy
Spirit does make sense, and it is in our best interests to listen to His
teachings of forgiveness.

501
Chapter 15 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

We have thus far discussed salvation more on the metaphysical or

ontological level, as a correction of the Son’s mind in terms of making
a different choice. However, one of the unique aspects of A Course in
Miracles is its integration of the metaphysical with the practical. Its
principal focus on the level of practice is on learning the lesson of how
to join with those specific persons we have formerly chosen to keep
separate, whether in the form of special hate or special love relation-
ships. This forgiveness of others (and ultimately ourselves) constitutes
the Course’s process of salvation. It is beyond the scope of this book
to discuss this process at any length, since our major theme is the atti-
tude towards the world and body, and how this attitude leads to the
general theory of salvation. Yet a brief review of the principle of for-
giveness exemplifies not only the Course’s attitude towards the body,
but towards salvation as well.
As was explained above, the correction for the mistake that led us to
believe we are in this world in the first place must occur in the mind,
because that is where the mistake occurs. The mind, not the body, is the
active element in the dream of the separated world, and so it would
make no sense to correct an error where it is not; yet of course the ego
continually tries to convince us to do just that. Forgiveness essentially
reverses the steps that the ego had the Son take in that original instant,
an instant, as we have seen, that we relive over and over and over again.
Let us retrace those steps now, so that we may understand forgiveness’
correction.
As we recall, the ego begins by convincing the Son of the reality of
its triad of sin, guilt, and fear, culminating in his believing that the
sinned-against-God seeks to punish him, and that the Holy Spirit—the
Voice of God’s love in the Son’s mind—is not to be trusted and must
be denied and escaped from. The ego has effectively convinced the
Son to deny his role in instigating God’s “wrath”: namely, that he at-
tacked God first; it is his sin. Projecting his sin onto God, the Son now
believes that God is attacking him, and unfairly so. Thus, the sin and
guilt first have been denied and then projected. The next step projects
the thought of separation from the mind, making (miscreating) a phys-
ical world and a body with which to experience the world as separate
from, and independent of the mind that made it. The ego recognizes
that if the Son remembered that he made the world, he would also
realize it was illusory and designed to hide from him his sin and guilt,
not to mention the presence of love in his mind that would undo the sin

502
 The Meaning of Salvation

through forgiveness of what never was. In other words, the Son would
simply awaken from the bad dream of separation.
Because of the efficacy of denial and projection, the world of time
and space appears on the level of our individual experience to be ex-
ternal to our minds, and quite real. Thus we inevitably experience our-
selves as victims of forces beyond our control. The daily experiences
—physical and psychological—from birth to death, all conspire under
the ego’s guidance to convince us of the reality of the world and of our
helpless place within it. This belief is the “face of innocence” power-
fully described by the Course, a face
often wet with tears at the injustices the world accords to those who
would be generous and good. This aspect [of our self-concept]
never makes the first attack. But every day a hundred little things
make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to irritation,
and at last to open insult and abuse (T-31.V.3:2-4).
This then is the ego’s plan for its own salvation: denying its part in
the making of the world and body, and then projecting the responsi-
bility for it onto the world and body. Now it appears that what we have
in fact done to the world is being done to us:
The world but demonstrates an ancient truth; you will believe that
others do to you exactly what you think you did to them. But once
deluded into blaming them you will not see the cause of what they
do, because you want the guilt to rest on them (T-27.VIII.8:1-2).
Of course what has been “saved” is the ego, while the mind of the Son
of God remains in seeming chains, imprisoned by powers he believes
he can do nothing about.
True salvation now begins where the ego left off, and goes the other
way. As the Course says:
This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next
to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the
dream’s alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny
the active role in making up the dream. They are the glad effects of
taking back the consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is
released because the mind acknowledges “this is not done to me,
but I am doing this.” And thus the mind is free to make another
choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change
the course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the

503
Chapter 15 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and all the dreaming of
the world undone (T-28.II.12).
Forgiveness, through the mind’s correction called the miracle, thus
consists of undoing the ego’s principles of denial and projection, re-
versing the direction the mind had taken when it followed the ego’s
counsel. Forgiveness as the instrument of salvation can be summarized
as a three-step process. (Although it is helpful to consider the process
as consisting of three steps, we must remember that they are of course
not sequential at all, for time is not linear.) The first step consists in
realizing that the cause of our personal world of suffering and pain, of
victim and victimization, is not in what appears to be external, but
rather is within our own minds. Since the external world is nothing
more than a portrait of what is in the mind—a dream not different in
dynamic from the sleeping dream wherein nothing “real” is going on
—anything that occurs in our lives has been dreamt by us, literally:
The secret of salvation is but this: That you are doing this unto
yourself. No matter what the form of the attack, this still is true.
Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, still is this the
truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering
you feel, this is still true. For you would not react at all to figures
in a dream you knew that you were dreaming. Let them be as hate-
ful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you
unless you failed to recognize it is your dream.
This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, what-
ever form it takes. The Holy Spirit will repeat this one inclusive
lesson of deliverance until it has been learned … . He would teach
you but the single cause of all of them [forms of sorrow and pain],
no matter what their form. And you will understand that miracles
reflect the simple statement, “I have done this thing, and it is this I
would undo” (T-27.VIII.10:1–11:2; 11:5-6).
Thus the first step in this process is returning the problem to the Son’s
mind, where it was before the ego removed it through projection; the
cause has been returned to its rightful place:
This is the separation’s final step, with which salvation, which
proceeds to go the other way, begins. This final step is an effect of
what has gone before, appearing as a cause. The miracle is the first
step in giving back to cause [the mind] the function of causation,
not effect. For this confusion has produced the dream, and while it

504
 The Meaning of Salvation

lasts will wakening be feared. Nor will the call to wakening be

heard, because it seems to be the call to fear (T-28.II.9).
Seen in this light, our projections become a gift because we see in oth-
ers what is within our own minds. There is no one really outside us,
except whom we have put there in our dream. The hatred that the ego
hid can now be looked at, and a different choice can at last be made.
The stage is set for the second step. Now that the cause has been re-
turned to the Son’s mind, we are returned to that part of our story before
the Son believed the ego’s tale. Thus, the Son is given another chance
to choose between the two voices. This is what is meant by the Course’s
repeated request that we choose again, as we see in this passage at the
end of the text:
In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to
you and gently says, “My brother, choose again” (T-31.VIII.3:2).
The Son has returned to “the scene of the crime” of his mistake, and
now can change his mind. Where before he chose to believe the ego
contention that he was the “home of evil, darkness and of sin,” that he
was the agent of sin and deserving of all the pain his guilt and fear
brought to him, now he can hear a different Voice speak of God’s true
judgment of him:
“You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and
forever loved, as limitless as your Creator, and completely change-
less and forever pure. Therefore awaken and return to Me. I am
your Father and you are My Son” (W-pII.10.5:1-3).
With this choice to awaken from the ego’s dream of guilt and terror,
the Son’s eyes slowly open, in the third step, to the wonderful truth
God’s Voice speaks to him. The memory of God’s unchanging love be-
gins to dawn within his mind, and he remembers the home with God
that he never truly left.
To restate the steps of forgiveness, the first questions the validity of
the ego’s tale of victim and victimizer: we are subject to forces outside
us and beyond our control. It brings the problem of sin and guilt back
to our minds where it truly belongs, not in someone or something else.
It is thus the undoing of projection, the ego’s plan of defense against
God’s seeming wrath. The second step is now made possible by the
first step’s allowing the Son to reconsider his original decision to listen
to the ego. The basis of the problem was the Son’s belief that he was

505
Chapter 15 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

sinful and guilty. Now that belief can be looked at again, this time with
the Holy Spirit, and our (really the ego’s) investment in it withdrawn.
Once this choice has been made and our decision changed, the guilt
disappears, since it was held in place only by our belief in it:
When you accept a miracle, you do not add your dream of fear to
one that is already being dreamed. Without support, the dream will
fade away without effects. For it is your support that strengthens it
(T-28.III.1:6-8).
[The world] will remain no longer than the thought that gave it
birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been
changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite
another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world
must disappear and all its errors vanish (W-pII.3.1:3-4).
What remains then is the love of God that was always there. The third
step, therefore, is really not a step at all. It is the natural and inevitable
result of the acceptance (the first two steps) of the Holy Spirit’s correc-
tion that has already been accomplished. That is why the Course
teaches that the first two steps are our responsibility, and the third is
not:
… you are not trapped in the world you see, because its cause can
be changed. This change requires, first, that the cause be identified
and then let go [second], so that it can be replaced [third]. The first
two steps in this process require your cooperation. The final one
does not (W-pI.23.5:1-4).
The three steps are summarized in another fashion in Lesson 196,
“It can be but myself I crucify.” Here we are asked to recognize again
that our pain comes from within ourselves, and not from outside. This
process is not without its terror, for bringing the guilt back within our
minds is to confront directly the ego’s story of God’s furious wrath
waiting impatiently in our minds for our return. Thus this process is
placed within the larger metaphysical context we have been consider-
ing. I have added the numbered steps in brackets:
[1] To question it [the belief that our salvation is won through at-
tack] at all, its form must first be changed at least as much as will
permit fear of retaliation to abate, and the responsibility returned to
some extent to you. … Until this shift has been accomplished, you
can not perceive that it is but your thoughts that bring you fear, and

506
 The Meaning of Salvation

your deliverance depends on you. … For once you understand it is

impossible that you be hurt except by your own thoughts, the fear
of God must disappear. You cannot then believe that fear is caused
without. And God, Whom you had thought to banish, can be wel-
comed back within the holy mind He never left.
Salvation’s song can certainly be heard in the idea we practice
for today. If it can but be you you crucify, you did not hurt the
world, and need not fear its vengeance and pursuit. Nor need you
hide in terror from the deadly fear of God projection hides behind.
… [2] There is an instant in which terror seems to grip your mind
so wholly that escape appears quite hopeless. When you realize,
once and for all, that it is you you fear, the mind perceives itself as
split. And this had been concealed while you believed attack could
be directed outward, and returned from outside to within. It seemed
to be an enemy outside you had to fear. …
Now, for an instant, is a murderer perceived within you, eager
for your death, intent on plotting punishment for you until the time
when it can kill at last. [3] Yet in this instant is the time as well in
which salvation comes. For fear of God has disappeared. And you
can call on Him to save you from illusions by His Love, calling
Him Father and yourself His Son (W-pI.196.7:1,3; 8:3–9:3; 10:1-4;
11:1-4).21
Salvation, as observed earlier, is basically accomplished by our own
work, done in union with the Holy Spirit. However, the Holy Spirit is
not conceived of as an external agent, magically sent by God to undo
our fear and solve our problems. As Jesus states near the beginning of
the text, addressing the traditional view of his “doing it for us”:
Fear cannot be controlled by me, but it can be self-controlled. Fear
prevents me from giving you my control. … The correction of fear
is your responsibility. When you ask for release from fear, you are
implying that it is not. You should ask, instead, for help in the con-
ditions that have brought the fear about. These conditions always
entail a willingness to be separate. At that level you can help it
(T-2.VI.1:4-5; 4:1-5).
Jesus thus can help us in making another choice, but he cannot make
that choice for us.

21. For further discussion of the three steps of forgiveness, see “The Process of
Forgiveness: Three Steps” in Chapter 2 of Forgiveness and Jesus.

507
Chapter 15 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

As we have seen, the Holy Spirit is actually the abstract and form-
less memory of God’s perfect love “buried” within the Son’s split
mind. That love is seemingly lost forever, but in reality is always pres-
ent, simply awaiting our return. The continual “call” to us of love’s
presence provides the means by which we return to it:
Our Love awaits us as we go to Him, and walks beside us show-
ing us the way. He fails in nothing. He the End we seek, and He the
Means by which we go to Him (W-pII.302.2).
Like a lighthouse, the Holy Spirit casts His beam into the guilt-darkened
waters of our mind, as a mark of safety and direction for all those lost
in the ego’s sea. Gently, His love reminds us of the truth of our unity
with God, and heals us of all thoughts of fragmentation. The workbook
states:
The Thought of peace was given to God’s Son the instant that his
mind had thought of war. There was no need for such a Thought
before, for peace was given without opposite, and merely was. But
when the mind is split there is a need of healing. So the Thought
that has the power to heal the split became a part of every frag-
ment of the mind that still was one, but failed to recognize its one-
ness. Now it did not know itself, and thought its own Identity was
lost (W-pII.2.2).
To summarize, the process of salvation in A Course in Miracles is
internal, because there is in truth no external theater in which to act.
Salvation appears to be something we do (in the body), but it is in truth
a process of undoing (in the mind), as is seen in these three quotations:
Forgiveness … is still, and quietly does nothing. … It merely
looks, and waits, and judges not (W-pII.1.4:1,3).
Salvation is undoing in the sense that it does nothing, failing to
support the world of dreams and malice. Thus it lets illusions go.
By not supporting them, it merely lets them quietly go down to
dust (W-pII.2.3:1-3).
A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at
all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what
it sees is false. It undoes error … . [and] paves the way for the re-
turn of timelessness and love’s awakening … (W-pII.13.1:1-4,6).
The process of salvation returns the mind to the point at which the
original choice was made, and enables it to choose again. The Son’s

508
 The Meaning of Salvation

choice to hear the ego instead of the Holy Spirit is not past but ongoing,
continually reflected in what appears to be our present choices. Recall
that there is no time and so all is happening now. A decision to forgive
an enemy is simply the outer expression of an inner shift in which the
Son uses time—originally made by the ego to attack God—to allow his
fear of God’s wrath to dissipate. Each time we choose to forgive on this
illusory physical plane, we express the choice to accept at last the sal-
vation that is the principle of the Atonement.
Before proceeding to the figure of the redeemer, the subject of the
next chapter, additional mention should be made of some of the parallels
of the Course’s language with Gnosticism. In the previous chapter we
cited the metaphor of sleep. It would logically follow therefore that the
correction or salvation from sleep would be awakening. Of the many
references to our awakening, I quote the beginning of Chapter 17 in the
text:
The betrayal of the Son of God lies only in illusions, and all his
“sins” are but his own imagining. His reality is forever sinless. He
need not be forgiven but awakened. In his dreams he has betrayed
himself, his brothers and his God. Yet what is done in dreams has
not been really done. … Only in waking is the full release from
them … (T-17.I.1:1-5,7).
In Chapter 11 we discussed the Course’s use of the word knowledge
as synonymous with Heaven, paralleling the Gnostic usage. This
awakening to knowledge is the ultimate goal of the spiritual journey,
yet the Course emphasizes that its goal is the correction of the original
error, the step immediately preceding the awakening:
This course will lead to knowledge, but knowledge itself is still
beyond the scope of our curriculum. Nor is there any need for us
to try to speak of what must forever lie beyond words. … Where
learning ends there God begins, for learning ends before Him
Who is complete where He begins, and where there is no end. It is
not for us to dwell on what cannot be attained. There is too much
to learn. The readiness for knowledge still must be attained
(T-18.IX.11:1-2,4-7).
Your chosen home is on the other side, beyond the veil. It has
been carefully prepared for you, and it is ready to receive you
now. … Your home has called to you since time began, nor have
you ever failed entirely to hear. … In you the knowledge lies, ready

509
Chapter 15 THE MEANING OF SALVATION

to be unveiled and freed from all the terror that kept it hidden
(T-20.II.8:1-2,5,8).
Another prominent Gnostic theme, as seen in Part II-A, is rest, used
synonymously with Heaven and attained by the reception of the saving
gnosis. A Course in Miracles uses the term similarly, as seen in the fol-
lowing examples:
Rest in His Love and protect your rest by loving (T-7.VII.6:4).
Your relationship is now a temple of healing; a place where all the
weary ones can come and rest. Here is the rest that waits for all, af-
ter the journey. And it is brought nearer to all by your relationship
(T-19.III.11:3-5).
For the whole new world rests in the hands of every two who enter
here to rest. And as they rest, the face of Christ shines on them and
they remember the laws of God, forgetting all the rest and yearn-
ing only to have His laws perfectly fulfilled in them and all their
brothers. Think you when this has been achieved that you will rest
without them? (T-20.IV.7:3-5)
The most extensive use of the rest imagery comes in Lesson 109,
“I rest in God,” and we close this chapter with excerpts from this beau-
tiful Lesson:
“I rest in God.” This thought will bring to you the rest and quiet,
peace and stillness, and the safety and the happiness you seek. …
This thought has power to wake the sleeping truth in you, whose vi-
sion sees beyond appearances to that same truth in everyone and
everything there is. … This is the day of peace. You rest in God,
and while the world is torn by winds of hate your rest remains com-
pletely undisturbed. Yours is the rest of truth. … You call to all to
join you in your rest, and they will hear and come to you because
you rest in God. … In timelessness you rest, while time goes by
without its touch upon you, for your rest can never change in any
way at all. … You rest within the peace of God today, and call upon
your brothers from your rest to draw them to their rest, along with
you. … We rest together here, for thus our rest is made complete … .
We give to those unborn and those passed by, to every Thought of
God, and to the Mind in which these Thoughts were born and
where they rest. And we remind them of their resting place each
time we tell ourselves, “I rest in God” (W-pI.109.2:1-2,4; 4:1-3,5;
5:2; 8:1; 9:3,5-6).

510
 Chapter 16

THE REDEEMER – JESUS

The words “redeemer” or “savior” are used in different ways in

A Course in Miracles, so we begin by exploring these usages before
specifically discussing the person of Jesus. We have seen how redemp-
tion ultimately is our responsibility, for we must change our minds
which had originally chosen wrongly. We ultimately then are our own
redeemer or savior, for salvation cannot come from anywhere but our-
selves. On another level, however, since the ego has convinced us to
deny the problem of guilt from which we need to be saved, we cannot
save ourselves because we do not recognize the problem that has been
hidden through the dynamic of repression. Therefore, we need the help
of those who appear to be outside ourselves to mirror to us what is
really inside our own minds.
We have already discussed that our unconscious guilt has been pro-
jected onto others, thus allowing the Holy Spirit the opportunity to
point out to us that the sin we are accusing another of is really nothing
more than the sin we have successfully screened from our awareness.
In this sense, then, other people become our saviors, for we see in them
what needs to be forgiven in ourselves. Without their presence in our
lives (however illusory that presence ultimately is), we would never
have this opportunity of being saved from our belief in guilt. This is
why the Course so frequently uses the word “savior” to denote this
other person, our special love or hate partner:
Within the darkness see the savior from the dark, and understand
your brother as his Father’s Mind shows him to you. He will step
forth from darkness as you look on him, and you will see the dark
no more. … His sinlessness but pictures yours (T-25.II.8:1-2,4).
We can see then that at one important level the savior is not a super-
natural being, but simply some aspect of our own minds (whether per-
ceived in one’s own body or in another’s). Recall yet again that in truth
there is no person outside us. What appears to be a person to whom we
are relating in specialness is simply a projection of the part of our
minds we wish to split off and deny in ourselves. Within this dream of
a relationship, however, we are nonetheless able to perceive that person

511
Chapter 16 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

as not separate from us; this reflects the deeper thought that we are not
separate from our Self. The relationship (and therefore the persons in
the relationship) thus serves as the savior from (or correction for) this
thought of separation of which we are no longer conscious.
However, the “person” of the Holy Spirit in the Course is also ac-
corded an essential part in the process of salvation. We have discussed
already how the Holy Spirit is not really a person, as the term is usually
defined. Rather, the Holy Spirit is the pure and abstract Thought of
love that is always present in our separated minds. Yet, as we have ob-
served, A Course in Miracles has been written at a level that we can
understand and use. To quote from the Course in another context:
This does not necessarily mean that this is the highest level of com-
munication of which he [the receiver of the Atonement] is capable.
It does mean, however, that it is the highest level of communica-
tion of which he is capable now. The whole aim of the miracle is to
raise the level of communication, not to lower it by increasing fear
(T-2.IV.5:4-6).
Therefore, similar to what we have seen in other contexts in the
Course, the Holy Spirit is spoken of as if He were a Person: loving,
guiding, and teaching us in the form of a Voice in our minds. This is
necessary for us who have been brought up to believe in God as an
anthropocentric being, with all the attributes of our ideal of the perfect
Father. So too with the Holy Spirit. The Course, coming to us on the
ego level at which we function, uses the language and conceptual
framework belonging to that level. However, when one carefully ex-
amines the metaphysical basis for its teachings, as we have been doing
throughout this book, one can recognize the metaphoric nature of the
Course’s presentation. We shall return to this theme in Chapter 19,
which deals with the mistakes that have already arisen regarding the
Course, both in conceptual understanding and practical application.
Thus, speaking on the level on which the Course is written, we may
say that the Holy Spirit is our savior, for this Thought of perfect love
is what saves us from the ego’s belief that our sin of separation from
God is truly irreparable, love having been forever banished from our
minds. The Holy Spirit is the experienced evidence that this has not oc-
curred, and represents what the Course, again, refers to as the principle
of the Atonement. However, His help is not magically dispensed to us;
rather His Voice is continually urging us to make another choice, for

512
 The Redeemer – Jesus

He does not and cannot make the choice for us. His is the Voice that
speaks to us of truth, gently explaining—in the face of the ego’s loud
and recurring voice of sin, guilt, and fear—that the separation never
occurred. Thus, for example, the Holy Spirit’s gentleness does not
“fight back”:
The Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because it is in-
capable of arrogance. It does not demand, because It does not seek
control. It does not overcome, because It does not attack. It merely
reminds. It is compelling only because of what It reminds you of. It
brings to your mind the other way, remaining quiet even in the
midst of the turmoil you may make. The Voice for God is always
quiet, because It speaks of peace (T-5.II.7:1-7).
In this sense the Holy Spirit is a “passive” presence in our minds be-
cause, as there is nothing that has to be done, He does not actively do
anything. Salvation is achieved simply by the quiet recognition or re-
membrance that there is nothing from which we have to be saved.
Nothing has happened. At one point the Course says of its means of
attaining the goal of peace:
… when the goal is finally achieved … it always comes with just
one happy realization; “I need do nothing” (T-18.VII.5:7).
In the context of healing, the Course teaches:
To them [those who believe they are sick] God’s teachers come,
to represent another choice which they had forgotten. The simple
presence of a teacher of God is a reminder. … As God’s messen-
gers, His teachers are the symbols of salvation. … They stand for
the Alternative. With God’s Word in their minds they come in ben-
ediction, not to heal the sick but to remind them of the remedy God
has already given them. It is not their hands that heal. It is not their
voice that speaks the Word of God. They merely give what has
been given them. … And they remind him [their sick brother] that
he did not make himself, and must remain as God created him (M-
5.III.2:1-2,4,6-10; 3:4).
This, then, is the principle of the Holy Spirit, and we are asked as His
messengers in the world to be this simple reminder for others. We shall
return to this theme at the end of this chapter, and again in more depth
in the following chapter when we discuss what it means to be a teacher
of God.

513
Chapter 16 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

To summarize, then, the Holy Spirit is our savior by representing

the Atonement principle. His presence of love in our minds is the
proof that the separation from love could not have occurred. We thus
become a savior to each other by demonstrating this principle of total
forgiveness: There is nothing to forgive because nothing happened. It
is only the ego’s tale that speaks of “something” happening, what it
calls sin. The Holy Spirit’s gentle Voice speaks only of the love of
Heaven that could never be shattered by the sin that would render the
Son homeless. Our one responsibility then is to accept the truth about
who we are. It is this the Course refers to in its reiteration of our “sole
responsibility,” which receives its first statement in this form:
The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the
Atonement for himself (T-2.V.5:1; italics omitted).
However, A Course in Miracles also explains that the separated
world needed a concrete manifestation of this principle, for while the
Atonement came into existence with the creation of the Holy Spirit
(T-5.I.5:2), some figure within the Son’s dream had to represent it for
us:
The Atonement principle was in effect long before the Atonement
began. The principle was love and the Atonement was an act of
love. Acts were not necessary before the separation, because belief
in space and time did not exist. It was only after the separation that
the Atonement and the conditions necessary for its fulfillment were
planned (T-2.II.4:2-5).
The life of Jesus was this “act of love,” for he was the “thought”
within the separated mind that first remembered its relationship with
God and Identity as Christ (along with the rest of the Sonship). He has
been “placed” by the Holy Spirit as head of the overall plan, in charge
of the Sonship and the Atonement. We may note at this point that all
the Course’s statements about Jesus come directly in the first person
(i.e., Jesus himself being the speaker), except for three sections in the
manual for teachers where Jesus is spoken about in the third person,
as in the following quote:
[The Holy Spirit] has established Jesus as the leader in carrying out
His plan [of the Atonement] since he was the first to complete his
own part perfectly. … The Atonement principle was given to the
Holy Spirit long before Jesus set it in motion (C-6.2:2,4).

514
 The Redeemer – Jesus

To continue this idea, we find elsewhere in the Course Jesus saying:

I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook
to begin. … I am the Atonement (T-1.III.1:1; 4:1).
Incidentally, the Course is here clearly speaking metaphorically, as if
the Holy Spirit were the Commander-in-Chief of the troops, appoint-
ing Jesus to be His General. In reality of course this “appointment”
occurred on quite a different level, since there is no time and all of
what we know of time is happening in this one instant, now. The one
we call Jesus is also existing within that instant. Moreover, as already
discussed, there is no world at all, only outpictures of thoughts which
are all present simultaneously: “There is no world! This is the central
thought the course attempts to teach” (W-pI.132.6:2-3).
Jesus thus, as the thought of perfect love, is the light of that love
shining throughout the mind of the Sonship, bearing a message differ-
ent from the world’s manifestations of the ego’s voice. The Voice of
the Holy Spirit that ontologically spoke to the Son is now given a spe-
cific name and form: Jesus, who walked the land of Palestine over two
thousand years ago. To say any more is to inhabit the world of myth:
God sending His Son into the world, Jesus choosing the crucifixion as
a means of teaching the invulnerability of love, or any of the countless
theories about him—all miss the point if taken literally, in reality, for
they speak of Jesus as if he actually lived in a world of time and space.
He did not truly live, we do not truly live, because individual existence
is part of the ego’s magic show. Within such a magical world the vari-
ous myths about Jesus play an important role, and the Course’s ver-
sion, by virtue of the consistency of its message, comes closest to the
meaning of the truth reflected in that life we identify as Jesus. On this
level, then, Jesus too is our savior, because he lived out before our
dreaming eyes the principle of the Atonement. We return to this point
later in the chapter.
We now begin our discussion of Jesus with the origin of A Course
in Miracles itself. As was mentioned in the Preface, it was Jesus’ voice
which was “heard” by the scribe Helen Schucman, dictating the Course
to her over a seven-year period. Again, much of the material is written
in the first person and, whether or not a reader accepts Jesus as the
source, it is clear that that is how the Course presents itself, not to men-
tion it being an important part of Helen’s own experience. Controversy
about Jesus as the source of the material is ultimately meaningless

515
Chapter 16 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

because, in the end, as we have just seen, we are merely speaking of a

symbol, just as our individual identities are symbols; he being a symbol
of love and, for the most part, our personalities being symbols of guilt
and fear.
We thus find the same issue present with the figure of Jesus as we
found with the Holy Spirit, for the Course basically presents Jesus
within the framework of the two-thousand-year tradition. Many pas-
sages specifically address the crucifixion and resurrection, or refer to
words Jesus supposedly “said” as reported in the four gospels, correct-
ing what from the perspective of the Course are serious misunderstand-
ings of the original message he presented to the world. Therefore,
because it meets our need on this level of Christian symbolism, it is im-
portant to work with the Course at the level on which it is written, just
as the Course itself chooses to remain within its own context: “ … we
will not go beyond the names the course itself employs” (C-5.1:6). To
skip over such a need and solution will simply perpetuate the problem
through denial, not solve it. However, on the metaphysical level it is
nonetheless important that we remain consistent, recognizing that Jesus
too is a symbol. We shall have more to say regarding this issue in
Part III when we compare the Course with Platonism, Christianity, and
Gnosticism. Ultimately it makes no difference whether one believes in
this or any other specific expression of the thought of Atonement. What
does matter, however, is the acceptance of this thought in whatever
form one can accept. The “universal course” the Course refers to in the
manual, already quoted in the Preface, is the remembering of perfect
love. Jesus represents a specific expression of this love, and A Course
in Miracles represents a still more specific expression of his teaching.
Throughout the Course, Jesus speaks of himself as being no differ-
ent from all of us, except in time. He is basically presented as having
separated with the rest of the Sonship—the Son’s mind being unified
—but the first to have awakened from the dream of separation by re-
membering his Identity as Christ. In other words, he has already com-
pleted the Atonement path that all of us must complete in time. There
has been a continual unofficial discussion within some of the tradi-
tional Churches as to when in his life Jesus actually knew who he was
(the Christ). Similarly, a student of A Course in Miracles may wonder
when in his Palestinian incarnation, or “earlier,” did Jesus “remember
to laugh” and awaken from the dream. The discussion of course is in-
trinsically meaningless, because there is no time in which to remember,

516
 The Redeemer – Jesus

and we are simply talking about different aspects of the one illusion of
time’s linearity. From our previous discussion of time, all we can truly
say is that Jesus represents the fragment of the Son’s mind that listened
to the Holy Spirit and “remembered to laugh.” That fragment’s life as
Jesus reflects the ongoing choice to deny the reality of the ego’s story,
joining instead with the presence of love that awakens us from the
dream. Thus the Course would take strong exception to the Church
doctrine of the Incarnation, wherein the perfect God sends His perfect
Son into the world, through the virgin birth. Regarding this teaching,
referring to the famous prologue to John’s gospel, the Course states:
The Bible says, “The Word (or thought) was made flesh.”
Strictly speaking this is impossible, since It seems to involve the
translation of one order of reality into another. Different orders of
reality merely appear to exist … . Thought cannot be made into
flesh except by belief, since thought is not physical. Yet thought is
communication, for which the body can be used. This is the only
natural use to which it can be put. To use the body unnaturally is to
lose sight of the Holy Spirit’s purpose, and thus to confuse the goal
of His curriculum (T-8.VII.7).
Jesus is therefore not the exclusive Christ of traditional Christianity,
but a part of that one Self of which we all are a part; he, however, to
state it once again, is the name given to that fragment of the whole who
first remembered who he was. The Course states:
The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw
the face of Christ [the symbol of forgiveness] in all his brothers
and remembered God. So he became identified with Christ, a man
no longer, but at one with God. … In his complete identification
with the Christ—the perfect Son of God … Jesus became what all
of you must be. He led the way for you to follow him. He leads
you back to God because he saw the road before him, and he fol-
lowed it. … Is he the Christ? O yes, along with you (C-5.2:1-2;
3:1-3; 5:1-2).
Jesus consistently teaches in the Course that he is no different from us
in reality, but in the illusory and symbolic world of time he can be our
teacher and guide if we so allow him. He is our
elder brother … entitled to respect for his greater experience, and
obedience for his greater wisdom. He is also entitled to love be-
cause he is a brother, and to devotion if he is devoted. It is only my

517
Chapter 16 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

devotion that entitles me to yours. There is nothing about me that

you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God.
The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. … I
bridge the distance [between ourselves and God] as an elder
brother to you on the one hand, and as a Son of God on the other
(T-1.II.3:7-12; 4:5).
In this sense, then, Jesus is unlike us in having no ego thoughts of
separation—guilt, fear, or attack—to cloud his mind of the clear light
of Christ. He is a pure manifestation of this clarity, for only the love of
Christ is present in his mind. Therefore, while Jesus walked this illu-
sory earth Christ’s love was the only source of his actions. That is why
he is described as being the manifestation of the Holy Spirit (C-6.1:1).
Jesus thus reflects into the separated mind—of which he too is a part—
this living witness to the love of God that we have never left. He, like
the Holy Spirit, is the link back to God: the way, the truth, and the life
that is described in the Bible. Therefore:
It means that in remembering Jesus you are remembering God. The
whole relationship of the Son to the Father lies in him. His part in
the Sonship is also yours, and his completed learning guarantees
your own success. … The Name of Jesus Christ as such is but a
symbol. But it stands for love that is not of this world. … It be-
comes the shining symbol for the Word of God, so close to what it
stands for that the little space between the two is lost, the moment
that the Name is called to mind. … Jesus has led the way. … in his
eyes your loveliness is so complete and flawless that he sees in it
an image of his Father. … [He is] one who laid all limits by, and
went beyond the farthest reach of learning. He will take you with
him, for he did not go alone. … Jesus has come to answer yours
[need]. In him you find God’s Answer. Do you, then, teach with
him, for he is with you; he is always here (M-23.3:2-4; 4:1-2,4;
5:1,5; 6:8-9; 7:6-8).
When we examine the life and teachings of Jesus as understood
through the Course, we can see how he specifically addressed the
problem of the separation and resultant guilt, and provided its solu-
tion. In my Forgiveness and Jesus (Chapter 9), I discussed the mis-
understandings of his message, and how these evolved into a theology
of suffering, sacrifice, and guilt, which only served to reinforce the very
mistake that was Jesus’ purpose to correct. In his words and actions he
demonstrated that the phenomenal world, along with all its conse-

518
 The Redeemer – Jesus

quences, was inherently illusory and not at all what it seemed. His total
forgiveness was the conclusive witness to the causelessness of the world
of sin. Undoing sin’s effects he demonstrated sin could not be a cause,
and therefore could not exist. Thus were all sins forgiven, and the ego’s
fundamental premise along with it.22 In other words, Jesus is the name
we give to that part of the Sonship who knew the separation was illusory,
thus manifesting the Atonement principle: the total unreality of separa-
tion and guilt. The realization of this truth is the end product of forgive-
ness, symbolized in the Course by seeing the “face of Christ” in another.
To state the meaning of Jesus’ life another way, and as has been dis-
cussed elsewhere,23 Jesus exemplified the principle of the Atonement
by directly refuting the ego’s original tale to the Son of sin, guilt, and
fear, and the need for projection and attack as defense against God’s
wrath. Within the dream, the memory of God’s love the Course calls
the Holy Spirit extended into the Son’s mind as an ongoing correction
for the ego’s thoughts. The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus thus
became this behavioral correction: the symbolic form in which the
Holy Spirit’s thought manifested itself in the dream as the undoing of
the Son’s belief that the love of God could be destroyed.
Recall still again the ego’s story: The Son sins against his Father, for
which he feels guilty and then fearful of the Father’s retaliatory punish-
ment. To escape this vengeance, the Son makes a world and flees into
the body. However, not fully believing in the efficacy of the body as a
defense, he then seeks to punish his body through sacrificial suffering
as proof to God of his contrition, thereby hoping to ward off the pun-
ishment of Heaven. Thus the ego’s plan for salvation is this life of pun-
ishment and pain to appease the wrath of God, whose vengeance is
justified by our original sin against Him. A world of attack and defense,
of suffering and sacrifice, is the expression of this plan, all of which is
symbolized in the Course by the term “crucifixion.” Finally, the ego
convinces us that we, and not others, are justified in seeing ourselves as
victims. We are innocent for we have suffered, not by our own choices
but by the actions of others. The ultimate paradigm for the victimizer,
of course, is God, for within the ego’s insanity He is perceived as the

22. For a more extensive discussion of the principle of cause and effect, and its con-
nection with the redeeming role of Jesus in the Holy Spirit’s plan of salvation, see
Forgiveness and Jesus, 7th ed., pp. 56-57; 183-212.
23. See Awaken from the Dream, 3rd ed., pp. 87-89.

519
Chapter 16 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

great enemy who has caused our distress. This thought system is the
foundation for the making and sustaining of the world; and each who
seems to inhabit a body here, separate from all other bodies, carries
within the fragmented mind this microcosm of a thought system.
As we have seen, however, along with this thought system is its cor-
rection, which Jesus manifested in his death and resurrection. Of his
crucifixion, Jesus says in the Course:
The crucifixion is nothing more than an extreme example. … [Its]
real meaning … lies in the apparent intensity of the assault of some
of the Sons of God upon another. This, of course, is impossible, and
must be fully understood as impossible. … The message the cruci-
fixion was intended to teach was that it is not necessary to perceive
any form of assault in persecution, because you cannot be
persecuted. … I have made it perfectly clear that I am like you and
you are like me …. You are free to perceive yourself as persecuted if
you choose. When you do choose to react that way, however, you
might remember that I was persecuted as the world judges, and did
not share this evaluation for myself. … I therefore offered a differ-
ent interpretation of attack, and one which I want to share with
you. … I elected, for your sake and mine, to demonstrate that the
most outrageous assault, as judged by the ego, does not matter. As
the world judges these things, but not as God knows them, I was be-
trayed, abandoned, beaten, torn, and finally killed. … My one les-
son, which I must teach as I learned it, is that no perception that is
out of accord with the judgment of the Holy Spirit can be justified. I
undertook to show this was true in an extreme case, merely because
it would serve as a good teaching aid to those whose temptation to
give in to anger and assault would not be so extreme. … The mes-
sage of the crucifixion is perfectly clear: “Teach only love, for that
is what you are” (T-6.I.2:1; 3:4-5; 4:6; 5:1-3,5; 9:1-2; 11:5-6; 13).
Jesus’ crucifixion, therefore, became the world’s greatest manifesta-
tion of the Holy Spirit’s Atonement principle: the invulnerability of
God’s love. For what, then, must the world’s reaction be when con-
fronted by this perfect manifestation of God’s love? Recall the Allegory
of the Cave, and Plato’s similar question concerning the freed prisoner’s
return to the dark cave with his message of light and truth. And so Jesus,
himself such a messenger, states of himself in the Course:
Many thought I was attacking them, even though it was apparent I
was not. … What you must recognize is that when you do not share

520
 The Redeemer – Jesus

a thought system, you are weakening it. Those who believe in it

therefore perceive this as an attack on them. This is because every-
one identifies himself with his thought system, and every thought
system centers on what you believe you are (T-6.V-B.1:5,7-9).
The outcome thus was inevitable, given the ego’s attraction to the
dynamics of guilt and fear:
To the ego, the guiltless are guilty. Those who do not attack are its
“enemies” … . When it was confronted with the real guiltlessness of
God’s Son it did attempt to kill him [Jesus], and the reason it gave
was that guiltlessness is blasphemous to God (T-13.II.4:2-3; 6:2).
Jesus’ perfect defenselessness undid the root of the ego’s thought
system by showing that attack has no meaning. If attack had no power
to destroy God’s love, as manifested in Jesus, then the Son’s seeming
attack on God in the separation also had no effect. As he wrote in the
Course at Christmas time:
The Prince of Peace was born to re-establish the condition of love
by teaching that communication remains unbroken even if the
body is destroyed … . The lesson I was born to teach, and still
would teach to all my brothers, is that sacrifice is nowhere and
love is everywhere (T-15.XI.7:2,5).
The lie the ego tells the Son thus has been exposed to the light of truth,
in which it must disappear.
Jesus, to state the point still another way, was simply the Voice of the
Holy Spirit given form, so it could be heard. This is the meaning of the
Course’s statement, based upon the verses of the Acts of the Apostles
(1:8- 9).
Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called
down upon the earth after he ascended into Heaven … . He [the
Holy Spirit] was “called down upon the earth” in the sense that it
was now possible to accept Him and to hear His Voice (C-6.1:1,3).
This brings us to the heart of the matter: the resurrection. Strictly
speaking of course, there can be no physical resurrection. If the body is
illusory, then obviously it does not live. We have already discussed in
Chapter 14 how the body is nothing more than a puppet, whose strings
are pulled by the mind. Thus the body not only does not live, but it ob-
viously also cannot die. On the physical plane, life must automatically
presuppose death. The body is the expression in form of the thought of

521
Chapter 16 THE REDEEMER – JESUS

separation, of sin, guilt, and fear. Since God and spirit alone are life,
anything separate from God must be its opposite and therefore lifeless,
as we also saw in Chapter 14. Therefore, if the body does not live, it
cannot die, and quite obviously then, it cannot come back to life or res-
urrect. The very term makes no sense.
Restating the issue, it is not the body that is the problem, but the
mind that has conceived the body in the first place, and then made the
body to be the locus of sin and thus the object of salvation. The Son
has again fallen into the ego trap of being distracted from where the
problem truly is, as well as the corresponding solution. Resurrection
thus has meaning only within the mind that has believed that it is
capable of dying. If crucifixion is the tale of guilt, attack, and death the
Son believed in, then resurrection is the change of mind that accepts
the Holy Spirit’s truth instead. It is the remembrance in the Son’s mind
of the love that was always there:
Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of
death. It is a reawakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the
meaning of the world. It is the acceptance of the Holy Spirit’s inter-
pretation of the world’s purpose; the acceptance of the Atonement
for oneself. … the single desire of the Son for the Father (M-28.
1:1-3,10).
Your resurrection is your reawakening. I am the model for re-
birth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your mind of
what is already in it. God placed it there Himself, and so it is true
forever. I believed in it, and therefore accepted it as true for me
(T-6.I.7:1-4).
Thus as the Gnostics taught almost two thousand years earlier, the
Course would have us learn that the resurrection of Jesus occurred
before the crucifixion. It was Jesus’ “remembering to laugh” at the
silliness of the ego’s tale that enabled him to be the defenseless man-
ifestation of the Holy Spirit’s truth, not making real the error of be-
lieving in separation and attack. It is this defenselessness in the face
of apparent attack—the basis for forgiveness—that was his ultimate
message to the world. It is the lived message that allows the Son’s
fragmented mind to begin the process of remembering its Identity as
the wholeness of Christ. As Jesus asks of us:
Teach not that I died in vain. Teach rather that I did not die by
demonstrating that I live in you (T-11.VI.7:3-4).

522
 The Redeemer – Jesus

We demonstrate Jesus’ resurrection by exemplifying its principle of

total forgiveness. Thus is the world truly redeemed from the thought
system that never was, as we remember at last the love that we truly
are. Jesus symbolizes this love for us in our separated mind, and our
resurrection is simply awakening to the truth of the Atonement that has
always been present.

523
 Chapter 17

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

One of the unique qualities of A Course in Miracles is its strict con-

sistency, from the underlying non-dualistic metaphysical principles to
its discussion of our experience in the physical world. This consistency
is the reflection of the logic on which the Course builds its theory,
summed up succinctly in the introduction to the text, a passage quoted
earlier:
Nothing real can be threatened. 
Nothing unreal exists. 
Herein lies the peace of God.
(T-in.2:2-4, italics, boldface omitted)
God and Christ alone are real, and therefore cannot be threatened by
the “tiny, mad idea” of separation that is not of God, and so cannot be
real and does not exist. Any and every problem thus must also be non-
existent, since a problem in the presence of God is inconceivable:
“There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent” (T-29.I.1:1).
The true “problem,” then, must lie in the belief that there is a problem.
In other words, the problem is the way that I am perceiving an apparent
problem in the world (which includes my personal physical and/or
psychological world). The direct implication of this principle for the
solution to our perceived problems is the subject of this chapter.
We begin by returning to the story that the ego told the Son, restat-
ing it in terms relevant to this discussion. The ego convinced the Son
that he was in a problematic situation, and a serious one at that. This
problem the ego called sin, which was projected on to God, so that His
avenging wrath now became the problem requiring immediate solu-
tion or defense. As A Course in Miracles would have us understand,
all defenses are forms of magic, being the ego’s attempts to provide a
solution to a problem that simply does not exist. From that moment on,
the ego’s strategy became to perpetuate the illusion in the Son’s mind
of real problems that required real solutions. However, the ego did not
want the Son to know that his only problem was believing in a non-
existent situation; his mistaken way of looking at the “tiny, mad idea.”
Thus, taken in by the ego, the Son is continually convinced that his

525
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

problem is outside his mind, in the body—whether his or someone

else’s is irrelevant. Once believing that his problems are in the world
(made real by the ego thought system), the Son must also believe it is
in the world of form and behavior that solutions (or salvation) are to
be found.
This chapter is organized around the two classes of solutions that
religions or spiritualities have typically advocated as salvation: the
practice of sacraments and rituals, and ethical norms. The underlying
premise in all solutions, stated or unstated, is that God is angry and
must be appeased before His wrath destroys us. Thus in one sense, all
religious practices and rituals are magical attempts to strike a bargain
with God. They are statements that if we offer to God our suffering,
sorrow, and sacrifice, He will forgive and love us. Thus the underlying
content behind the form of religious devotion is this bargain or sacri-
fice, which serves only to convince us that the problem of separation
is real (otherwise there would be no need for the bargain). Likewise
with systems of morality, which attempt to govern our problematic be-
havior so that the underlying thought of separation in the mind is left
untouched and unhealed.

Religious Practice

Many passages in the Course are subtly aimed at the sacraments and
teachings found in the Roman Catholic Church, and illustrate this con-
fusion of form with content that had turned a message of love into one
of special love: the triumph of form over content. It is certainly true
that since the Second Vatican Council, convened by Pope John XXIII
in 1962, major changes have occurred within the Church regarding the
practice surrounding some of these sacraments. Nonetheless, the basic
premises underlying them have not been seriously questioned, cer-
tainly not in official channels. We now examine these references in the
Course which are aimed at the official Church dogmas and teachings.

1. Eucharist
The most important sacrament to the Roman Catholic of course is
the Eucharist, which is the heart of the celebration of Mass. It refers
specifically to that part of the ritual when the priest consecrates the

526
Religious Practice

bread and wine on the altar. These are transubstantiated into the literal
body and blood of Jesus, constituting the Real Presence of the risen
Lord referred to as the Blessed Sacrament. This “Presence” is then in-
gested by those properly prepared for the sacred ritual, thereby achiev-
ing communion with Jesus’ body. On another level, the Mass re-enacts
the sacrifice and death of Jesus which gave salvation to the world,
atoning for the world’s sin by repaying the Father through the cruci-
fied Lord’s blood. Thus the Eucharist is frequently referred to as the
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: daily is Jesus sacrificed at the altar, vicar-
iously bringing salvation to the faithful. One product of the Protestant
Reformation, incidentally, was the reinterpretation of the Mass into a
symbolic re-enactment of the crucifixion and joining with Jesus; a
shift which brings the ritual more in harmony with the principles of
the Course by shifting the emphasis from the form to the content of
joining in communion with Jesus.
While A Course in Miracles was being taken down by Helen
Schucman, Jesus frequently expanded on some of the teachings that
would be personally meaningful and helpful to her and William
Thetford. Because many of these comments were meant for them
alone, and not for the general readership, they were removed before
publication. These included some specific references to Catholicism,
for since her early childhood Helen had been an ambivalent observer
of the Roman Catholic Church, and at different times in her life a reg-
ular attender (though not participant) at Mass. She never believed or
subscribed to the teachings of the Church, yet found herself strangely
fascinated by its rituals and often drawn to them.24 Jesus made several
comments to her bearing on the particular sacrament of the Eucharist,
and these are quoted now, appearing for the first time in print:25
The idea of cannibalism in connection with the [Blessed] Sacrament
is a reflection of a distorted view of sharing. I told you before that
the word “thirst” in connection with the Spirit was used in the Bible
because of limited understanding of those to whom I spoke. I also
told you not to use it.

24. For a fuller discussion of Helen and her religious experiences, see my Absence
from Felicity.
25. In 1992 when the second edition of the Course was published, part of the second
paragraph was included (see T-7.V.10:7-9; T-19.IV-A.17:5-7).

527
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

I do not want to share my body in communion because this is to

share nothing. Would I try to share an illusion with the most holy
children of a most holy Father? But I do want to share my mind
with you. … Yet would I offer you my body, you whom I love,
knowing its littleness? Or would I teach that bodies cannot keep us
apart? Mine was of no greater value than yours … . Communion
comes with peace, and peace must transcend the body.
Many passages in the Course also reflect this association of the
Mass with sacrifice and reification of the body. Perhaps the strongest
are those dealing with special relationships, which glorify form at the
expense of content. The language here is deliberately reminiscent of
the Church ritual, for the heart of the special relationship is the secret
wish to kill God so that the ego may live. It is this secret wish that also
lies within the specific form of the special relationship expressed in
the sacrifice of the Mass. I might mention here that participation in
the sacraments, or any formal means of worship or ritual, is directly
antithetical to the study and practice of the Course—if one believes
that the form of the ritual is salvific—for by affirming that spirit can
exist in form, one makes real the error of believing in the reality of
the world. Several passages in the Course reflect, directly or indi-
rectly, this mistake of ritualization, and we shall return to these in a
separate section below. The mistake is more usually spoken of in the
Course as the confusion of form with content, most clearly seen in the
discussion of special love relationships, where the content of hate and
guilt is concealed behind the form of love. These passages, as seen in
some representative examples, clearly demonstrate the Course’s writ-
ing on different levels, so that those with eyes to see and ears to hear
may understand:
Knowing His Son as he is, you realize that the Atonement, not sac-
rifice, is the only appropriate gift for God’s altar, where nothing
except perfection belongs (T-3.I.8:3).
Suffering and sacrifice are the gifts with which the ego would
“bless” all unions. And those who are united at its altar accept suf-
fering and sacrifice as the price of union. … The central theme in its
litany to sacrifice is that God must die so you can live. And it is this
theme that is acted out in the special relationship. Through the death
of your self you think you can attack another self, and snatch it from
the other to replace the self that you despise. … You think it safer to

528
Religious Practice

endow the little self you made with power you wrested from truth,
triumphing over it and leaving it helpless. See how exactly is this
ritual enacted in the special relationship. An altar is erected in be-
tween two separate people, on which each seeks to kill his self, and
on his body raise another self to take its power from his death. Over
and over and over this ritual is enacted. And it is never completed,
nor ever will be completed. The ritual of completion cannot com-
plete, for life arises not from death, nor Heaven from hell. … The
special relationship is a ritual of form, aimed at raising the form to
take the place of God at the expense of content. There is no mean-
ing in the form, and there will never be. The special relationship
must be recognized for what it is; a senseless ritual in which
strength is extracted from the death of God, and invested in His
killer as the sign that form has triumphed over content, and love has
lost its meaning (T-15.VII.9:1-2; T-16.V.10.4-6; 11:3-8; 12:2-4).
By its very nature, the special relationship altar of the Mass must ex-
clude those that are not confessed believers in Jesus, which fact belies
the seeming love of Jesus’ “sacrifice” that in truth would only unify.
This exclusion exposes the ego’s avenging desire to separate, and
therefore kill, that is the content underlying the form of the ritual, as
the above passage describes. The distorted communion of the body ob-
viously denies the true communion with the love in Jesus’ mind that
comes by joining with others in the forgiveness found in the holy rela-
tionship. This true joining is expressed in the following passage:
Love, too, would set a feast before you, on a table covered with a
spotless cloth … . This is a feast that honors your holy relationship,
and at which everyone is welcomed as an honored guest. And in a
holy instant grace is said by everyone together, as they join in gen-
tleness before the table of communion. And I [Jesus] will join you
there, as long ago I promised and promise still. For in your new re-
lationship am I made welcome. And where I am made welcome,
there I am. … Salvation is looked upon as a way by which the Son
of God was killed instead of you. Yet would I offer you my body,
you whom I love, knowing its littleness? Or would I teach that bod-
ies cannot keep us apart? Mine was of no greater value than yours;
no better means for communication of salvation, but not its Source.
No one can die for anyone, and death does not atone for sin. …
Communion … goes beyond guilt, because it goes beyond the body
(T-19.IV-A.16; 17:5-7,15, my italics in 16:2).

529
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

2. Martyrdom
Though not a sacrament, the practice and tradition of martyrdom
has always been central to orthodox Christian teaching, being the ideal
way of identifying with the sacrificial suffering and death of Jesus that
is commemorated in the Mass. We have already explored the Church’s
position vis à vis the Gnostics who, for the most part, downplayed the
historical life of Jesus, and therefore felt martyrdom missed the whole
point and was essentially irrelevant. A Course in Miracles makes sev-
eral direct references to this tradition. Early in the text, in the context
of his crucifixion and not seeing God’s children as sinners deserving
of punishment, Jesus says: “I do not call for martyrs but for teachers”
(T-6.I.16:3). Later he states: “I have emphasized many times that the
Holy Spirit will never call upon you to sacrifice anything”; the attitude
of the martyr of course is that “God demands sacrifice. … [and] is cru-
cifying him” (T-9.I.5:1; 8:3-4).
In back of this strange belief that suffering is salvation lies the un-
conscious desire to blame others for the suffering that can come only
from our own decisions. Two sections especially treat this powerful
theme, “The Picture of Crucifixion” and “Self-Concept versus Self.”
We present brief excerpts from these, illustrating this choice for mar-
tyrdom as a means of punishing another, thereby escaping our own
condemnation and reinforcing the ego’s defensive system of denial
and projection. Our suffering body thus accuses another and becomes
“martyred to his guilt”:
… every pain you suffer do you see as proof that he [your brother]
is guilty of attack. … Wish not to make yourself a living symbol of
his guilt, for you will not escape the death you made for him. …
Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly
treated or in need of anything, you but accuse your brother of at-
tack upon God’s Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before
his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood
and death, and go before him, closing off the gate and damning him
to hell. … A sick and suffering you but represents your brother’s
guilt; the witness that you send lest he forget the injuries he gave,
from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry
picture you accept, if only it can serve to punish him (T-27.I.2:2,6;
3:1-2; 4:3-4).

530
Religious Practice

We then adopt a “face of innocence,” wherein we escape our own re-

sponsibility for hatred, blaming others for having forced us to become
angry. We discussed this in Chapter 15, and amplify on it now:
This aspect [of our self-concept] can grow angry, for the world is
wicked and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence
deserves. … The face of innocence the concept of the self so
proudly wears can tolerate attack in self-defense, for is it not a well-
known fact the world deals harshly with defenseless innocence?
(T-31.V.3:1; 4:1)
But beneath this face lies another, which holds the betrayal that is the
true source of our guilt: our secret wish to attack others through our
martyrdom as a means of escaping responsibility for our pain, and ul-
timately for our separation from God:
Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept
of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displace-
ment [i.e., projection], and a fear so devastating that the face that
smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treach-
ery it hides. The lesson teaches this: “I am the thing you made of
me, and as you look on me, you stand condemned because of what
I am.” … If you can be hurt by anything, you see a picture of your
secret wishes. … And in your suffering of any kind you see your
own concealed desire to kill (T-31.V.5:1-3; 15:8,10).
In The Song of Prayer, companion pamphlet to the Course, we also
read of
those who seek the role of martyr at another’s hand. Here must the
aim be clearly seen, for this may pass as meekness and as charity
instead of cruelty. Is it not kind to be accepting of another’s spite,
and not respond except with silence and a gentle smile? Behold,
how good are you who bear with patience and with saintliness the
anger and the hurt another gives, and do not show the bitter pain
you feel. … [This face of innocence] shows the face of suffering
and pain, in silent proof of guilt and of the ravages of sin
(S-2.II.4:2-5; 5:2).
Martyrdom, thus, far from being a witness (the etymological root
of “martyr”) to forgiveness and love, has in fact witnessed to the ha-
tred of the ego. It has “given up” nothing, but rather has unconsciously
reinforced the ego’s defensive system against the very love it seeks to

531
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

emulate. One is reminded of William Thackeray’s apothegm in

The History of Henry Esmond: “‘Tis not the dying for a faith that’s so
hard … every man of every nation has done that—’tis the living up to
it that’s difficult.”

3. Holy Structures
Logically following from the Roman Catholic Church’s confusion
of form with content, as seen in its sacraments and rituals, is the tre-
mendous emphasis traditionally placed by all Christian Churches on
“holy” structures such as churches, altars, shrines, etc. The notion that
the Bible is God’s only book also falls into this category of worship-
ping a form of truth at the expense of content. As we saw in the exclu-
sive practice of Communion, we can also recognize love’s distortions
in the contradictions found in the Bible itself, not to mention in the
centuries of bloodshed committed in the name of God, venerated
through His “Holy Word” which had to be affirmed lest He or His self-
appointed defenders would wreak punishment on all non-believers.
The reader may recall the discussion in Chapter 3 of justification for
such unchristian actions based on the Johannine writings.
One of the key scriptural passages repeatedly cited by Christians to
substantiate this deification of the ego’s world is St. Paul’s reference
to the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Co 6:19). Referring to
this famous teaching, the Course states in the context of the “distorted
belief that the body can be used as a means for attaining ‘atonement’”:
Perceiving the body as a temple is only the first step in correcting
this distortion, because it alters only part of it. It does recognize that
Atonement in physical terms is impossible. The next step, how-
ever, is to realize that a temple is not a structure at all. Its true holi-
ness lies at the inner altar around which the structure is built. The
emphasis on beautiful structures is a sign of the fear of Atonement,
and an unwillingness to reach the altar itself. The real beauty of the
temple cannot be seen with the physical eye. … For perfect effec-
tiveness the Atonement belongs at the center of the inner altar,
where it undoes the separation and restores the wholeness of the
mind (T-2.III.1:5-10; 2:1).
The Course later deepens this teaching by denoting the temple of
the Holy Spirit as the holy relationship. We may note here another ex-
ample of the Course’s references to the sacraments of the Catholic

532
Religious Practice

Church. The recurrent word “mystery” in the following passage is a

clear reference to Church usage, and we also find a subtle reference to
the Blessed Sacrament—the body of Christ—kept locked in a taber-
nacle and worshipped and “perceived in awe and held in reverence”:
Love has no darkened temples where mysteries are kept obscure
and hidden from the sun. … The Holy Spirit’s temple is not a body,
but a relationship. The body is an isolated speck of darkness; a hid-
den secret room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless
enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing. … Here it [the
unholy relationship] is “safe,” for here love cannot enter. The Holy
Spirit does not build His temples where love can never be. Would
He Who sees the face of Christ choose as His home the only place
in all the universe where it can not be seen?
You cannot make the body the Holy Spirit’s temple, and it will
never be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater, and of love’s
condemnation. For here is love made fearful and hope abandoned.
Even the idols that are worshipped here are shrouded in mystery,
and kept apart from those who worship them. This is the temple
dedicated to no relationships … . Here is the “mystery” of separa-
tion perceived in awe and held in reverence. What God would have
not be is here kept “safe” from Him (T-20.VI.4:1; 5:1-2,5-7; 6:1-7).
An altar therefore is defined, not by its form but by its content: “Altars
are beliefs” (T-6.V-C.7:2), and earlier:
The Voice for God comes from your own altars to Him. These al-
tars are not things; they are devotions. Yet you have other devo-
tions now [i.e., to the ego]. Your divided devotion has given you
the two voices, and you must choose at which altar you want to
serve (T-5.II.8:6-9).
A church, too, is redefined in the Course in terms of its purpose, having
nothing at all to do with a formal structure. The context of this passage
is Jesus’ gospel words to Peter that the apostle will be the rock on
which he shall build his church (Mt 16:18):
… it is still on them [my brothers] that I must build my church.
There is no choice in this, because only you can be the founda-
tion of God’s church. A church is where an altar is, and the pres-
ence of the altar is what makes the church holy. A church that
does not inspire love has a hidden altar that is not serving the
purpose for which God intended it. I must found His church on

533
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

you, because those who accept me as a model are literally my

disciples (T-6.I.8:2-6).
In contrast, the ego’s church is founded upon sin, and the existence of
the traditional Christian churches would be inconceivable without it.
As the Course states:
There is no stone in all the ego’s embattled citadel that is more
heavily defended than the idea that sin is real; the natural expres-
sion of what the Son of God has made himself to be, and what he
is. … Sin is but error in a special form the ego venerates. It would
preserve all errors and make them sins. For here is its own stability,
its heavy anchor in the shifting world it made; the rock on which its
church is built, and where its worshippers are bound to bodies, be-
lieving the body’s freedom is their own (T-19.II.7:1; T-22.III.4:5-7).
We shall expand on this error of making sin real in Part III.
Finally, we cite one of the poems Helen Schucman had taken down,
“Dedication for an Altar,” which nicely expresses the true nature of a
temple (church) and its altar:
Temples are where God’s holy altars are,
And He has placed an altar in each Son
Whom He created. Let us worship here
In thankfulness that what He gives to one
He gives to all, and never takes away.
For what He wills has been forever done.
Temples are where a brother comes to pray
And rest a while. Whoever he may be,
He brings with him a lighted lamp to show
My Savior’s [Christ’s] face is there for me to see
Upon the altar, and remember God.
My brother, come and worship here with me [Jesus].
(The Gifts of God, p. 93)

4. Penance
Another Catholic sacrament that A Course in Miracles discusses,
albeit in veiled terms, is Penance (also known as the Sacrament of
Reconciliation, and popularly referred to as Confession). The Course’s
criticisms are essentially two-fold: The first is that the attitude to-
wards forgiveness is based upon the reality of sin, therefore requiring
atonement and penance. This is the mistake the Course refers to as

534
Religious Practice

“making the error real,” and leads to what is called in The Song of
Prayer forgiveness-to-destroy. Second, the practice of the sacrament
is based upon the power of the priest to administer the forgiveness of
Heaven, as if: 1) there were indeed something to forgive; and 2) that
the priest possessed some special power not given to anyone else.
While clearly it is not the Church alone that has misunderstood for-
giveness, the Course frequently utilizes Church language to make its
more general point because of Christianity’s tremendous influence in
Western civilization. It is patently clear how the institutionalization of
a theology of forgiveness-to-destroy justified countless wars that af-
fected the course of Western history. We begin with a discussion of the
traditional distortions of forgiveness:
No gift of Heaven has been more misunderstood than has for-
giveness. It has, in fact, become a scourge; a curse where it was
meant to bless, a cruel mockery of grace, a parody upon the holy
peace of God. … Forgiveness-to-destroy … suit[s] the purpose of
the world far better than its true objective, and the honest means by
which this goal is reached. Forgiveness-to-destroy will overlook no
sin, no crime, no guilt that it can seek and find and “love.” Dear to
its heart is error, and mistakes loom large and grow and swell
within its sight. It carefully picks out all evil things, and overlooks
the loving as a plague … (S-2.I.1:1-2; 2:1-4).
Forgiveness-to-destroy makes error real by asserting that the sin of
separation against God has actually been accomplished. This is cer-
tainly not unfamiliar to us, for we recall the ego’s original tale to the
Son, the opposite to what the Holy Spirit’s presence represented. As
A Course in Miracles teaches:
To sin would be to violate reality, and to succeed. Sin is the proc-
lamation that attack is real and guilt is justified. It assumes the Son
of God is guilty, and has thus succeeded in losing his innocence
and making himself what God created not. Thus is creation seen as
not eternal, and the Will of God open to opposition and defeat. Sin
is the grand illusion underlying all the ego’s grandiosity. … Any
attempt to reinterpret sin as error is always indefensible to the ego.
The idea of sin is wholly sacrosanct to its thought system, and
quite unapproachable except with reverence and awe. It is the
most “holy” concept in the ego’s system; lovely and powerful,
wholly true, and necessarily protected with every defense at its

535
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

disposal. For here lies its “best” defense, which all the others serve
(T-19.II.2:2-6; 5:1-4).
Common to all forms of false forgiveness is the perception that sep-
aration is truth and that the unity of Christ is illusory. From such an un-
healed mind, only attack can result, regardless of the form of
forgiveness that is adopted:
The unhealed cannot pardon. For they are the witnesses that par-
don is unfair. They would retain the consequences of the guilt they
overlook. Yet no one can forgive a sin that he believes is real. And
what has consequences must be real, because what it has done is
there to see. Forgiveness is not pity, which but seeks to pardon
what it thinks to be the truth. Good cannot be returned for evil, for
forgiveness does not first establish sin and then forgive it. Who can
say and mean, “My brother, you have injured me, and yet, because
I am the better of the two, I pardon you my hurt.” His pardon and
your hurt cannot exist together. One denies the other and must
make it false (T-27.II.2).
True forgiveness (pardon) on the other hand does not ask us
to offer pardon where attack is due, and would be justified. For that
would mean that you forgive a sin by overlooking what is really
there. … You do not forgive the unforgivable, nor overlook a real
attack that calls for punishment. Salvation does not lie in being
asked to make unnatural responses which are inappropriate to what
is real. Instead, it merely asks that you respond appropriately to
what is not real by not perceiving what has not occurred. … Unjus-
tified forgiveness is attack. And this is all the world can ever give.
It pardons “sinners” sometimes, but remains aware that they have
sinned. And so they do not merit the forgiveness that it gives.
This is the false forgiveness which the world employs to keep
the sense of sin alive (T-30.VI.1:6-7; 2:3-5; 3:5–4:1).
The ego’s purpose of keeping sin real, and thus forever uncorrect-
able, is the premise underlying the Church position on the Sacrament
of Penance. It is a practice that clearly serves the ego’s defensive sys-
tem. Sin can be punished or atoned for, yes, but this simply rein-
forces the guilt that something sinful has indeed been accomplished;
and so the vicious cycle of sin, guilt, fear, and punishment remains
inviolate. From this belief in the reality of sin, seen as outside the
mind and therefore incapable of correction by the mind, results the

536
Religious Practice

inevitable “correction” which must then be seen as coming from the

outside:
The belief in sin is necessarily based on the firm conviction that … .
the mind is guilty, and will forever so remain unless a mind not
part of it can give it absolution (T-19.II.1:4-5).
Forgiveness-to-destroy comes in many forms, and the one most rel-
evant to our discussion is a person assuming the role of forgiver; this
specialness of the forgiver in its Church form is the priest who grants
absolution, the
“better” person [who] deigns to stoop to save a “baser” one from
what he truly is. Forgiveness here rests on an attitude of gracious
lordliness so far from love that arrogance could never be dis-
lodged. Who can forgive and yet despise? And who can tell an-
other he is steeped in sin, and yet perceive him as the Son of God?
(S-2.II.2:1-4)
Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice, the first companion
pamphlet to A Course in Miracles, reiterates the point in the context
of the psychotherapist who must avoid the temptation of specialness,
and instead truly join with the patient:
For this, one thing and one thing only is required: The therapist
in no way confuses himself with God. All “unhealed healers” make
this fundamental confusion in one form or another, because they
must regard themselves as self-created rather than God-created. …
he [the therapist] thought he was in charge of the therapeutic pro-
cess, and was therefore responsible for its outcome. … To under-
stand there is no order of difficulty in healing, he must also
recognize the equality of himself and the patient. There is no half-
way point in this. Either they are equal or not (P-2.VII.4:1-2,4;
P-3.II.9:4-6).
Clearly, however, one need not be a priest or therapist to demonstrate
the arrogance of practicing forgiveness-to-destroy. The integrity of the
ego’s thought system rests on our all continuing to forgive the sin that
really happened, regardless of our personal roles.

5. Prayer
Another important religious practice that has formed the heart of
the Judaeo-Christian tradition is prayer. Here too we see that prayer

537
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

in the usual sense—importuning God (or His representatives) to

somehow make things come out all right—simply is another form of
making the error real. This prayer is based on the assumption that
there is a real problem here, that needs correction or “fixing” here.
One does not need a doctorate in psychology to recognize that almost
all prayer, directly or indirectly, is based upon an image of an anthro-
pomorphic God who will magically meet our needs (grant requests
to punish enemies, avert disasters, heal illness, bring material gains,
etc.)—in other words, serving the role of the ideal parent none of us
ever had. In this sense, certainly, Freud was correct in recognizing
that our belief in God was a projection of our experience of our own
parents—positively or negatively. Incidentally, while Freud was cor-
rect in terms of the ego’s distortions of God, he missed the mark en-
tirely by generalizing these distortions to all experiences of God. In
truth, of course, our experiences of our parents, not to mention all
relationships, are projections of our own deeply repressed experi-
ence of God.
A Course in Miracles’ view of prayer logically follows from its
metaphysical foundation. If there is no world outside of our collec-
tive mind, and no problem other than the belief that there is a prob-
lem, then prayer in the traditional sense is irrelevant. Why pray for
something or for the amelioration of a condition that is inherently il-
lusory? Our prayer, then, should be only for help in accepting the
truth that is already there. In this sense, then, prayer is no different
from forgiveness or the miracle, for they all reflect the process of un-
doing the ego thought system that never was, leaving to be itself the
love of God that has always been. Prayer, therefore, is not asking for
things or special favors. Rather it is an attitude of forgiveness, asking
the Holy Spirit’s help in joining with another in a holy relationship
and correcting the special relationship that is the home of the ego’s
guilt.
The best account of the Course’s view on prayer is found in
The Song of Prayer, where it is described as a ladder, the top rung
being the true meaning of prayer—union with God:
… the single voice Creator and creation share; the song the Son
sings to the Father, Who returns the thanks it offers Him unto the
Son. … The love they share is what all prayer will be throughout
eternity … (S-1.in.1:2,7).

538
Religious Practice

At the bottom of the ladder, prayer “takes the form that best will suit
your need” (S-1.in.2:1) for the ladder reflects the process of prayer, “a
way offered by the Holy Spirit to reach God” (S-1.I.1:1). It is
the means by which God’s Son leaves separate goals and separate
interests by, and turns in holy gladness to the truth of union in his
Father and himself (S-1.in.2:4).
Taking into consideration our discussion of the Holy Spirit in ear-
lier chapters, we can better understand the meaning of certain passages
in the Course that speak of the Holy Spirit’s answering all of our needs:
What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that
happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by
One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have mis-
understood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your
defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step
you ever took (W-pI.135.18:1-3).
The Holy Spirit will answer every specific problem as long as you
believe that problems are specific. His answer is both many and
one, as long as you believe that the one is many (T-11.VIII.5:5-6).
And in this passage, derived in part from the famous passage in
Isaiah 40:3, the Course states:
Once you accept His plan as the one function that you would ful-
fill, there will be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not arrange for
you without your effort. He will go before you making straight
your path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no ob-
stacles to bar your way. Nothing you need will be denied you. Not
one seeming difficulty but will melt away before you reach it. You
need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the
only purpose that you would fulfill. As that was given you, so will
its fulfillment be. God’s guarantee will hold against all obstacles,
for it rests on certainty and not contingency. It rests on you. And
what can be more certain than a Son of God? (T-20.IV.8:4-12)
A surface reading of such passages certainly leaves the impression of
a personal God, or His Spirit, who magically fulfills our special needs,
a “Sugar Daddy” whose love for us is measured by His beneficence.
Clearly this is not the Course’s teaching, as its metaphysical premise
is that God does not even know about the dream. The workbook
clearly states, for example:

539
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Think not He [God] hears the little prayers of those who call on
Him with names of idols cherished by the world. They cannot reach
Him thus. He cannot hear requests that He be not Himself, or that
His Son receive another name than His. … Sit silently, and let His
Name become the all-encompassing idea that holds your mind com-
pletely. Let all thoughts be still except this one. … Turn to the Name
of God for your release, and it is given you. No prayer but this is
necessary, for it holds them all within it. Words are insignificant,
and all requests unneeded when God’s Son calls on his Father’s
Name (W-pI.183.7:3-5; 8:3-4; 10:1-3).
Thus, the above passages on the Holy Spirit’s activity in our lives re-
flect, as we discussed in Chapter 12, the experience within our split
minds of the abstract presence of God’s love. The Holy Spirit’s “plan”
is the undoing, through His ongoing presence, of the ego’s script of fear
and pain. Our minds which are rooted in the ego’s plan thus interpret
our change of mind as being done for us by the Holy Spirit. Likewise,
“God’s guarantee … against all obstacles” reflects the care-free peace
that inevitably follows the undoing of guilt by accepting “His plan.”
With guilt gone, the demand for punishment goes as well. Thus all
seemingly outer events are perceived, following the Holy Spirit’s judg-
ment, as either expressions of love or calls for love (T-12.I; T-14.X.7:1),
and God’s certainty of us as His Son becomes our own as well.
Prayer, then, is content, not form—the content of love, our only
purpose:
Strictly speaking, words play no part at all in healing. The moti-
vating factor is prayer, or asking. What you ask for you receive.
But this refers to the prayer of the heart, not to the words you use
in praying. … God does not understand words, for they were made
by separated minds to keep them in the illusion of separation.
Words can be helpful, particularly for the beginner, in helping con-
centration and facilitating the exclusion, or at least the control, of
extraneous thoughts (M-21.1:1-4,7-8).
In other words, prayer is for our benefit, not God’s. As the Course
states, regarding praising God:
The Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God. This
hardly means that you should tell Him how wonderful He is. He
has no ego with which to accept such praise, and no perception
with which to judge it (T-4.VII.6:1-3).

540
Religious Practice

What we ask for, however, we do receive, but not from God. It is

the power of our minds that gives us what our minds request: love or
fear, peace or conflict, God or the ego:
The prayer of the heart does not really ask for concrete things. It
always requests some kind of experience, the specific things asked
for being the bringers of the desired experience in the opinion of
the asker. … The prayer for things of this world will bring experi-
ences of this world. If the prayer of the heart asks for this, this will
be given because this will be received. It is impossible that the
prayer of the heart remain unanswered in the perception of the one
who asks. … The power of his decision offers it to him as he re-
quests. Herein lie hell and Heaven. The sleeping Son of God has
but this power left to him (M-21.2:4-5; 3:1-3,5-7).
Thus, in the original instant, the Son prayed for release from the pres-
ence of love in his mind, and the world was made by this mind in an-
swer to his request for protection from God. He need only change his
request, and the love already present in his mind will be experienced
by him as well. This then is the only meaningful prayer, as we shall see
presently.
Yet while we believe we are really here in this dream state of a
world, there certainly appear to be needs that have to be met, and de-
cisions that need be made. The Song of Prayer addresses this:
You have been told [i.e., in the Course] to ask the Holy Spirit for
the answer to any specific problem, and that you will receive a spe-
cific answer if such is your need. … There are decisions to make
here, and they must be made whether they be illusions or not. You
cannot be asked to accept answers which are beyond the level of
need that you can recognize. Therefore, it is not the form of the
question that matters, nor how it is asked. The form of the answer,
if given by God, will suit your need as you see it. This is merely an
echo of the reply of His Voice. The real sound is always a song of
thanksgiving and of love.
You cannot, then, ask for the echo. It is the song that is the gift.
Along with it come the overtones, the harmonics, the echoes, but
these are secondary. In true prayer you hear only the song. All the
rest is merely added. You have sought first the Kingdom of
Heaven, and all else has indeed been given you (S-1.I.2:1,4-9; 3).
The echoes, overtones, and harmonics correspond to the needs we be-
lieve we have, and our requests for help that are “answered” by the

541
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Holy Spirit. However, “these are secondary”; what is primary is the

song: the Holy Spirit’s presence of love that, being abstract, is beyond
all needs:
The secret of true prayer is to forget the things you think you
need. To ask for the specific is much the same as to look on sin and
then forgive it. Also in the same way, in prayer you overlook your
specific needs as you see them, and let them go into God’s hands.
There they become your gifts to Him, for they tell Him that you
would have no gods before Him; no Love but His. What could His
answer be but your remembrance of Him? Can this be traded for a
bit of trifling advice about a problem of an instant’s duration? God
answers only for eternity. But still all little answers are contained
in this (S-1.I.4).
The question might be raised, then, as to why A Course in Miracles
uses this language—i.e., that the Holy Spirit will meet our needs—if
it means something else. The answer lies in the idea mentioned ear-
lier, that the Course meets the needs of its readers on the level they
can accept and understand, since its focus and purpose is always on
the practical:
You have surely begun to realize that this is a very practical
course, and one that means exactly what it says. … This is not a
course in the play of ideas, but in their practical application. …
This course is always practical. … and it is the practical with which
this course is most concerned (T-8.IX.8:1; T-11.VIII.5:3; M-16.4:1;
M-29.5:7).
Given this emphasis, it would certainly make no sense to present meta-
physical truths that cannot be implemented. Speaking of the Oneness
of Christ that teaches us within our separated minds, the Course states:
Yet must It use the language that this mind can understand, in the
condition in which it thinks it is. And It must use all learning to
transfer illusions to the truth, taking all false ideas of what you
are, and leading you beyond them to the truth that is beyond them
(T-25.I.7:4-5).
Thus A Course in Miracles comes on two levels, as observed earlier
in the book. It is in their integration that the Course’s true power and
scope can in time be realized by the student. This double level is evident
in this passage dealing with time which, as previously pointed out, is
clearly taught by the Course to be illusory: linearity merely being a

542
Religious Practice

magic trick or ploy on the part of the ego to convince the Son of the
reality of the separation and the physical world. Yet the Course speaks
a great deal about the need to save time, to forgive the past and, in this
lovely Lesson, to “place the future in the Hands of God.” Logically, of
course, it makes no sense to trust a non-existent future to a timeless
God. And so the workbook states:
God holds your future as He holds your past and present. They
are one to Him, and so they should be one to you. Yet in this world,
the temporal progression still seems real. And so you are not asked
to understand the lack of sequence really found in time. You are
but asked to let the future go, and place it in God’s Hands. And you
will see by your experience that you have laid the past and present
in His Hands as well, because the past will punish you no more,
and future dread will now be meaningless (W-pI.194.4, my italics).
In other words, time is unreal, there being in God only the eternal
present. However, since all of us in this world must believe in it other-
wise we would not be here,26 it would not be particularly helpful to de-
mand that we practice a principle that is beyond our ability to
understand. Therefore, the Course begins where we are, believing in
the ego tale of past sin demanding God’s punishment, making our fu-
ture dread a justified reality. This Lesson, then, particularly addresses
the Son’s mind that believes it would be foolish to trust a God who will
inevitably, so the ego counsels, destroy us. The terror would be too
great. Thus the lesson here is that it is safe to trust God with our future,
for the ego’s story of sin, guilt, and fear is untrue. By our learning this
lesson of trusting our future to God (Level II), we will come eventually
to learn that all of time is one, and thus we are gently led back to the
timeless God we now can trust and love (Level I). This gentle process
of correcting our errors through intermediate steps is what makes
A Course in Miracles unique in the history of non-dualistic spirituali-
ties. Its correction for the ego’s story is not real, yet this correction does
not oppose reality. It merely gently undoes the ego’s voice, allowing the
Son to hear the only Voice in this world that can lead him beyond it:

26. The only exception would be the very isolated examples of truly enlightened be-
ings, whom the East calls avatars or bodhisattvas, and the Course, “Teachers of
teachers” (M-26.2:2). These however, are “so rare” that it is hardly necessary to dis-
cuss them here.

543
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, he [the Son of God] could

not waken to reality without the sweat of terror and a scream of
mortal fear, unless a gentler dream preceded his awaking, and al-
lowed his calmer mind to welcome, not to fear, the Voice that calls
with love to waken him; a gentler dream, in which his suffering
was healed and where his brother was his friend. God willed he
waken gently and with joy, and gave him means to waken without
fear (T-27.VII.13:4-5).
This means is forgiveness which, the Course emphasizes, is illusory,
as shown in the following passages:
Illusion makes illusion. Except one. Forgiveness is illusion that is
answer to the rest.
Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is it-
self a dream, it breeds no others. … this is where illusions end. For-
giveness is the end of dreams, because it is a dream of waking. It is
not itself the truth. Yet does it point to where the truth must be, and
gives direction with the certainty of God Himself. It is a dream in
which the Son of God awakens to his Self and to his Father, know-
ing They are one (W-pI.198.2:8–3:1; 3:3-7).
Forgiveness might be called a kind of happy fiction; a way in
which the unknowing can bridge the gap between their perception
and the truth. They cannot go directly from perception to knowl-
edge because they do not think it is their will to do so. This makes
God appear to be an enemy instead of what He really is. And it is
just this insane perception that makes them unwilling merely to
rise up and to return to Him in peace.
And so they need an illusion of help because they are helpless; a
Thought of peace because they are in conflict (C-3.2:1–3:1).
Therefore, it appears in our experience here that the Holy Spirit
meets our specific needs on the level of form, seemingly justifying a
life of praying to Him for help. In reality, as mentioned, the Holy Spirit
is pure content, without form. Yet that content of God’s love, automat-
ically as it were, is present in our minds along with the ego’s content
of fear, and adapts itself to the needs arising from that fear. To quote
again:
God knows what His Son needs before he asks. He is not at all con-
cerned with form, but having given the content it is His Will that it
be understood. And that suffices. The form adapts itself to need;
the content is unchanging, as eternal as its Creator (C-3.3:2-5).

544
Religious Practice

The mind of God’s Son is one, both in Heaven as Christ and on earth
as the ego, and so the thoughts of love and fear coexist in each
fragment of this ego mind. We are free to choose which thought we
identify with: When we choose the thought of love we experience it as
the Holy Spirit’s intervention on our behalf; when we choose the
thought of fear we experience it as an outside force’s intervention
against us. The former has given rise to centuries of belief in a magical
God, while the latter has resulted in the corresponding belief in a devil
or evil forces. Both are opposite forms of the same error, denying the
power of our minds to choose. We believe that we are the recipients of
God’s grace or the devil’s curse, both external to our minds. The lan-
guage of the Course mirrors that tradition in the figures of the Holy
Spirit and the ego, yet brings them back within our minds, repeatedly
emphasizing the importance of our power to choose.
To summarize the ladder of prayer, then, the top rung is true prayer,
the song of Heaven flowing endlessly between Father and Son. On this
level “there is nothing to ask because there is nothing left to want”
(S-1.I.5:6). However, this is not the level of the world’s experience, and
so the Course presents prayer as a process, beginning on the ladder’s
bottom rung. Thus the pure content of prayer, like the Holy Spirit’s
love, becomes adapted to our needs as we perceive them:
Prayer has no beginning and no end. It is a part of life. But it does
change in form, and grow with learning until it reaches its form-
less state, and fuses into total communication with God. In its ask-
ing form it need not, and often does not, make appeal to God, or
even involve belief in Him. At these levels prayer is merely want-
ing, out of a sense of scarcity and lack.
These forms of prayer, or asking-out-of-need, always involve
feelings of weakness and inadequacy, and could never be made by a
Son of God who knows Who he is. No one, then, who is sure of his
Identity could pray in these forms. Yet it is also true that no one who
is uncertain of his Identity can avoid praying in this way. … It is also
possible to reach a higher form of asking-out-of-need, for in this
world prayer is reparative, and so it must entail levels of learning.
Here, the asking may be addressed to God in honest belief, though
not yet with understanding. A vague and usually unstable sense of
identification has generally been reached, but tends to be blurred by
a deep-rooted sense of sin. It is possible at this level to continue to
ask for things of this world in various forms, and it is also possible
to ask for gifts such as honesty or goodness, and particularly for for-

545
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

giveness for the many sources of guilt that inevitably underlie any
prayer of need. Without guilt there is no scarcity. The sinless have
no needs (S-1.II.1:1–2:3; 3).
Praying out of need, therefore, is really praying to the ego, for we
have substituted its voice for God’s. The ego’s original story to the Son
is one of scarcity and deprivation, necessitating his seeking outside his
mind for protection from the wrathful God, fulfillment of imaginary
needs, and salvation from the pain of guilt. Such prayer merely rein-
forces the “truth” of the ego’s words to the Son, especially when these
prayers appear to be answered:
It is not easy to realize that prayers for things, for status, for
human love, for external “gifts” of any kind, are always made to
set up jailers and to hide from guilt. These things are used for
goals that substitute for God, and therefore distort the purpose of
prayer. The desire for them is the prayer. One need not ask ex-
plicitly. The goal of God is lost in the quest for lesser goals of
any kind, and prayer becomes requests for enemies. The power of
prayer [i.e., of the mind] can be quite clearly recognized even in
this. No one who wants an enemy will fail to find one. But just as
surely will he lose the only true goal that is given him. Think of
the cost, and understand it well. All other goals are at the cost of
God (S-1.III.6).
Thus, our asking for help on one level reinforces the belief that we
are sinful, guilty, and lacking in what we need. On another level,
however, sincerely asking God’s help facilitates the process whereby
we learn that the Holy Spirit’s Voice speaks truth, while the ego’s tale
is false. This undoes the ego’s basic assertion that the presence of the
Holy Spirit in our minds is a grave danger to us, and so He should not
be trusted and must be avoided at all costs. Thus we are asked to trust
this presence of love who wants only to help us. That is why A Course
in Miracles, true to its practical emphasis, speaks of asking the Holy
Spirit’s help. This asking is the bottom rung of the ladder, where we
believe we are. And of such asking and learning is the Kingdom of
Heaven on earth, at least the beginning of the attainment of the King-
dom. Prayer, then, is like forgiveness:
Prayer in its earlier forms is an illusion, because there is no need
for a ladder to reach what one has never left. Yet prayer is part of
forgiveness as long as forgiveness, itself an illusion, remains

546
Religious Practice

unattained. Prayer is tied up with learning until the goal of learn-

ing has been reached. … The stages necessary to its attainment,
however, need to be understood … (S-1.II.8:3-5,8).
The text states:
Prayer is a way of asking for something. It is the medium of
miracles. But the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, be-
cause those who have been forgiven have everything. Once for-
giveness has been accepted, prayer in the usual sense becomes
utterly meaningless. The prayer for forgiveness is nothing more
than a request that you may be able to recognize what you already
have (T-3. V.6:1-5).
In other words, one cannot pray for something that is not there. One
can only legitimately pray to remember or to accept the truth that is al-
ready within, to “Ask … to receive what is already given; to accept
what is already there” (S-1.I.1:7). We pray for help to forgive (undo)
the illusion that there was ever anything but the perfect unity of God
and Christ.
Forgiveness, as we have seen, is a process, and its stages, which
constitute the ladder of prayer, need not detain us too long here. True
to the Course’s emphasis on the healing of relationships the rungs of
the ladder represent different aspects of our attitudes toward others. It
begins with the “curious contradiction in terms of praying for one’s en-
emies” (S-1.II.4:1), which clearly makes the idea of victim and victim-
izer real. We proceed up the ladder by recognizing that
prayer is always for yourself … . Why, then, should you pray for
others at all? … [which] rightly understood, becomes a means for
lifting your projections of guilt from your brother, and enabling
you to recognize it is not he who is hurting you (S-1.III.1:1-2,4).
Thus, forgiveness switches the ego’s purpose for relationships and the
world in general. Made to be the object of guilt’s projection and thus a
smokescreen in back of which the ego hides, the world now becomes
the means whereby these projections are returned to our minds where
we can then make another choice:
The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of
forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it. It
is the temptation to abandon God and His Son by taking on a phys-
ical appearance. It is this the body’s eyes look upon.

547
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Nothing the body’s eyes seem to see can be anything but a form
of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself. Yet we
have learned that the Holy Spirit has another use for all the illu-
sions you have made, and therefore He sees another purpose in
them. To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to
forgive yourself what you think of as your sins. In this perception,
the physical appearance of temptation becomes the spiritual recog-
nition of salvation (W-pI.64.1:2–2:4).
Here [forgiveness] is the only purpose that gives this world, and
the long journey through this world, whatever meaning lies in
them. Beyond this, they are meaningless (T-19.IV-D.21:4-5).
Next follows praying with others, recognizing that we—our brothers,
sisters, and ourselves—share a common goal. This stage is reflected in
the Course’s central emphasis on joining with another in forgiveness.
“The Answer to Prayer” in the text specifically addresses this meaning
of prayer:
Everyone who ever tried to use prayer to ask for something has
experienced what appears to be failure. This is not only true in
connection with specific things that might be harmful, but also in
connection with requests that are strictly in line with this course
(T-9.II.1:1-2).
This is the case because we often are not in touch with the deep level
of fear present in our minds that caused our need for defense, either in
the form of pain (special hate relationships with others or our own
bodies) or pleasure (special love relationships), both of which would
mask the anxiety of our fear. Thus in these cases we are not really ask-
ing that God help free us from our fear, but rather unconsciously ask-
ing that God reinforce our magical defenses against our fear. The
Course states:
The Bible emphasizes that all prayer is answered, and this is in-
deed true. The very fact that the Holy Spirit has been asked for
anything will ensure a response. Yet it is equally certain that no re-
sponse given by Him will ever be one that would increase fear
(T-9.II.3:1-3).
Thus the answers to our requests for help are “waiting” for us until
the instant we truly desire them. What facilitates our desire for God
is having the “little willingness” to begin the process of changing our
perceptions of those we have judged to be outside us, forgetting that

548
Religious Practice

they, like us, are a part of Christ. Our distrust of them mirrors our dis-
trust of God, and ultimately our distrust of our minds that we believe
originally chose to attack God and His Son. Therefore, the Course
tells us:
If you would know your prayers are answered, never doubt a Son
of God. Do not question him and do not confound him, for your
faith in him is your faith in yourself. If you would know God and
His Answer [the Holy Spirit], believe in me [Jesus] whose faith in
you cannot be shaken. Can you ask of the Holy Spirit truly, and
doubt your brother? Believe his words are true because of the truth
that is in him. You will unite with the truth in him, and his words
will be true. … Your brother may not know who he is, but there is a
light in his mind that does know. This light can shine into yours,
giving truth to his words and making you able to hear them. His
words are the Holy Spirit’s answer to you. Is your faith in him
strong enough to let you hear? … If you would hear me, hear my
brothers in whom God’s Voice speaks. The answer to all prayers
lies in them. You will be answered as you hear the answer in every-
one. Do not listen to anything else or you will not hear truly. …
Hear only God’s Answer in His Sons, and you are answered
(T-9.II.4:1-6; 5:8-11; 7:5-8; 8:7).
This, of course, does not mean that we should trust our brother’s ego;
“frightened people can be vicious,” the Course reminds us (T-3.I.4:2),
and we are certainly not asked to deny the sometimes vicious forms of
people’s calls for help. However, we are asked, when in the presence
of such expressions of fear, to look beyond them to the love of God that
is truly being called for—to have faith that even in the midst of the
ego’s dark camouflage, the light of Christ remains undimmed.
In summary, then, true prayer is merely the Son’s changing his mind
about the ego’s story of separation and attack. In the holy instant, the
Holy Spirit’s Voice is seen as speaking the only truth: the truth of a
union—Father and Son—that has never been broken, and that is now re-
flected in our experience as union between the seemingly separated
fragments of the Sonship. By choosing to join with one I have excluded
from my mind, I am indeed “listening” to the Holy Spirit’s Voice and
rejoining with my Self and with my Creator. By learning how not to
doubt (i.e., how to forgive) the Son of God I had perceived as treacher-
ous, I am learning how not to doubt the Son of God I am, the Son of love
who has never left his Source. This learning is the process of climbing

549
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

up the ladder separation had led me down. The final rung, after which
the ladder disappears, is remembering that our brothers and sisters are
part of us; we are one mind, one Christ: “Prayer has become what it was
meant to be, for you have recognized the Christ in you” (S-1.V.4:6).

6. Rituals
Finally, we more specifically consider rituals as they are discussed
in the Course, especially in the workbook which, given its structured
exercises, could easily lend itself to ritual. Yet, it clearly cautions
against such practices:
… these exercises should not become ritualistic. … Learning will
not be hampered when you miss a practice period because it is im-
possible at the appointed time. Nor is it necessary that you make
excessive efforts to be sure that you catch up in terms of numbers.
Rituals are not our aim, and would defeat our goal (W-pI.1.3:5;
W-pI.rIII.in.2:2-4).
However, in order to accomplish the Course’s purpose of retraining
our minds, some structure is obviously necessary:
An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of this
workbook to train your mind to think along the lines the text sets
forth (W-pI.in.1:3-4).
Such structure is particularly important in the early stages of one’s
growth, and it is obviously between the individual and the Holy Spirit
to determine the parameters of “early.” The students uncertain of their
spiritual progress
are not yet ready for such lack of structuring on their own part.
What must they do to learn to give the day to God? There are some
general rules which do apply, although each one must use them as
best he can in his own way. Routines as such are dangerous, be-
cause they easily become gods in their own right, threatening the
very goals for which they were set up (M-16.2:2-5).
Jesus addresses these uncertain students in Lesson 95 of the work-
book, explaining the purpose behind the more structured lessons at this
stage of the training:
It is difficult at this point not to allow your mind to wander, if it
undertakes extended practice. You have surely realized this by now.

550
Religious Practice

You have seen the extent of your lack of mental discipline, and of
your need for mind training. It is necessary that you be aware of
this, for it is indeed a hindrance to your advance. … In addition to
recognizing your difficulties with sustained attention, you must also
have noticed that, unless you are reminded of your purpose fre-
quently, you tend to forget about it for long periods of time. …
Structure, then, is necessary for you at this time, planned to include
frequent reminders of your goal and regular attempts to reach it.
Regularity in terms of time is not the ideal requirement for the most
beneficial form of practice in salvation. It is advantageous, how-
ever, for those whose motivation is inconsistent, and who remain
heavily defended against learning (W-pI.95.4:2-5; 5:2; 6).
However, anyone familiar with spiritual practice can easily recognize
the two-edged-sword aspect to this kind of structure, especially in the
context of the Course where the authority for the practice is no less a
figure than Jesus. The “danger” to this kind of instruction comes when
people forget structured times, as they almost all inevitably do, and
feel guilty over failing to be properly mindful of God. Thus, this gentle
advice follows:
Do not, however, use your lapses from this schedule as an excuse
not to return to it again as soon as you can. There may well be a
temptation to regard the day as lost because you have already
failed to do what is required. This should, however, merely be rec-
ognized as what it is; a refusal to let your mistake be corrected, and
an unwillingness to try again.
The Holy Spirit is not delayed in His teaching by your mistakes.
He can be held back only by your unwillingness to let them go
(W-pI.95.7:3–8:2).
In other words, the problem would not be the mistake of forgetting a
practice period, but taking the mistake seriously and feeling guilty.
This is no different, then, from saying that the problem was not the
“tiny, mad idea” of separation, but rather remembering not to laugh
and taking the separation thought seriously, calling it a sin; that is, lis-
tening to the ego’s interpretation rather than the Holy Spirit’s.
Let us therefore be determined, particularly for the next week or
so, to be willing to forgive ourselves for our lapses in diligence,
and our failures to follow the instructions for practicing the day’s
idea. This tolerance for weakness will enable us to overlook it,
rather than give it power to delay our learning. If we give it power

551
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

to do this, we are regarding it as strength, and are confusing

strength with weakness (W-pI.95.8:3-5).
Not only, of course, would our guilt be giving an ego thought a
strength it does not have, it would be giving it a reality it does not have
as well. Again, it is one thing to make a mistake, it is quite another to
give it power by labeling it a sin which demands our guilt and punish-
ment as retribution. Thus, Jesus’ instructions here can be taken as sym-
bolic of how we should look at the original separation. Recall again
how all experiences are occurring simultaneously: Since there is no
hierarchy of illusions, feeling guilty over a missed practice period is
no different from feeling guilty over separating from God: a “small”
illusion is no different from a “large” one. Moreover, ideas leave not
their source, and the idea of feeling guilty over anything has its source
in the guilt over the separation from God. Therefore, learning to for-
give ourselves for our “failure” against God over a missed practice
period is, at the same time, forgiving ourselves for our “failure”
against Him in the separation. Thus Jesus tells us:
When you fail to comply with the requirements of this course,
you have merely made a mistake. This calls for correction, and for
nothing else. To allow a mistake to continue is to make additional
mistakes, based on the first and reinforcing it. It is this process that
must be laid aside, for it is but another way in which you would
defend illusions against the truth.
Let all these errors go by recognizing them for what they are.
They are attempts to keep you unaware you are one Self, united
with your Creator, at one with every aspect of creation, and limit-
less in power and in peace. This is the truth, and nothing else is
true (W-pI.95.9:1–10:3).
The ease with which spiritual devotees can slip into the worship of
rituals is illustrated by this story from the East. A certain guru gathered
his disciples together every morning at the ashram for meditation. A cat
belonging to the community liked to join in as well, to the distraction
of the others. Thus the guru asked that before morning meditation the
cat be tied to a post so as not to disturb the meditators. Time passed and
the guru died, as evidently did the cat. The community meanwhile con-
tinued its meditative practices; however, the older members recalled
that the revered guru had asked that before the meditation the cat be tied
to a post. Therefore, the members of the community searched for a cat

552
Ethics – Morality

to be tied to a post, so that the guru’s instructions could be followed.

Obviously the very practical content of the guru’s original purpose was
swallowed up by the form.
The power of our belief in establishing the sacredness of rituals or
objects was also described by Krishnamurti in the following instruc-
tion on how to render an object holy:
Take a piece of stick, put it on the mantelpiece and every day put a
flower in front of it … and repeat some words—“Coca-cola,”
“Amen,” “Om,” it doesn’t matter what word—any word you
like … . If you do it, after a month you will see how holy it has be-
come. You have identified yourself with that stick, with that piece
of stone or with that piece of idea and you have made it into some-
thing sacred, holy. But it is not. You have given it a sense of holi-
ness out of your fear … giving yourself over, surrendering yourself
to something, which you consider holy. The image in the temple is
no more holy than a piece of rock by the roadside (The Awakening
of Intelligence, pp. 214-15).
Clearly, in this example, the focus once again has shifted from the con-
tent to the form, thereby rendering the activity meaningless and decep-
tively holy. All the while, the ego thought system in the devotee’s mind
remains unchanged, impervious to the “threat” of truth’s content
which has been successfully walled in by the worship of form.

Ethics – Morality

Serious students of A Course in Miracles recognize forgiveness as

the principle that guides their behavior in their daily lives, and as the
principle underlying the moral stance of the Course. Strictly speaking,
all morality is of the ego, since it is based upon certain prescribed
standards of behavior or conduct. Just as “a universal theology is im-
possible” (C-in.2:5), so too is a universal morality, as values differ
from one culture to the next, and change within individual cultures
over time. This relative nature of morality is proof that it cannot be of
God, in whom only the changeless and universal reality of truth can
exist. Therefore it is more appropriate to speak of the amorality (or
new morality) of A Course in Miracles. We have already seen how the
Course’s treatment of forgiveness (content) differs radically from the

553
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

conventional one, and therefore so must its understanding of ethical

behavior (form). In this section we begin to explore the differences be-
tween the Course and other spiritualities regarding the issue of
morality. The discussion will be concluded in Part III.
Through our forgiveness of all people we have seen as either spe-
cial hate objects—those we treat as scapegoats for our own sins—or
special love objects—those we see as our saviors and on whom we feel
dependent for our own salvation, peace, and happiness—we find the
Course’s central norm for all behavior. Jesus has become the model
and symbol for this forgiveness, continually reminding us to think of
his lesson whenever we are tempted to make our own (or others’) suf-
fering and pain the condemning effect of someone else’s sin. We are to
see our one function here as demonstrating that our sins against each
other have had no effect, and therefore do not exist. Thus does forgive-
ness heal. Once our minds are cleared of the investment in maintaining
the ego’s thought system, we are free to be guided by the gentle Voice
of the Holy Spirit’s love. It is this freedom from the tyranny of the
ego’s voice that allows all our behavior to be “moral” and loving. As
St. Augustine taught, love and do what you will: When love is in our
minds, all our thoughts and therefore actions will be loving. Forgive-
ness is thus the great moral and ethical principle we follow, for it re-
moves all the barriers to the awareness and extension of love.
One of the Course’s most important sections is “The Laws of
Chaos,” and after these five laws of the ego are described we read:
“No law of chaos could compel belief but for the emphasis on form
and disregard of content” (T-23.II.16:5). This emphasis on form is the
essential ingredient in the ego’s “smokescreen” plan, for it continu-
ally reinforces the belief that reality is external, of the body, and there-
fore unlike God. On one level, then, any ego involvement or
investment with the body must lead to futility, since it is involvement
with an inherent illusion. Yet, because we have made this illusion real
for ourselves, as we have seen, we must begin where we believe we
are. Through the process of forgiveness, we correct our mispercep-
tions one by one until we have at last retraced our steps back to the
original misperception—the separation from God and from our true
Identity as Christ.
Thus, A Course in Miracles teaches that it is important how we live
in this world, however illusory in nature it is. It describes how the
Holy Spirit joins in our misbeliefs, correcting the interpretations of

554
Ethics – Morality

separation we have made to His interpretations of joining (forgive-

ness). The Course emphasizes, again, that forgiveness too is an illu-
sion, for it corrects a mistake that is not there. Unlike the illusions of
the world, however, forgiveness does not breed further ones, but leads
us beyond them all to the truth of God.
Since we have already chosen to be here, it is necessary to live in
the world of illusion, but with a changed perception. The world now
takes on a mighty purpose—that of teaching us that there is no world.
From being a place of hell, the world is converted into a classroom of
joy, for what can be a more joyous lesson than learning that the pain
and misery we thought was real was nothing but a bad dream? Now the
dream is happy. Into this “dry and dusty world, where starved and
thirsty creatures come to die” (W-pII.13.5:1), there is hope:
Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring
up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has
immortality (W-pII.13.5:3-4).
In an important passage in Lesson 184, partially quoted in the
Preface, the Course discusses the Holy Spirit’s use of the illusory
names and symbols of the world:
It would indeed be strange if you were asked to go beyond all
symbols of the world, forgetting them forever; yet were asked to
take a teaching function. You have need to use the symbols of the
world a while. But be you not deceived by them as well. They do
not stand for anything at all, and in your practicing it is this
thought that will release you from them. They become but means
by which you can communicate in ways the world can understand,
but which you recognize is not the unity where true communica-
tion can be found.
Thus what you need are intervals each day in which the learning
of the world becomes a transitory phase; a prison house from
which you go into the sunlight and forget the darkness. Here you
understand the Word, the Name Which God has given you … . And
then step back to darkness, not because you think it real, but only
to proclaim its unreality in terms which still have meaning in the
world that darkness rules.
Use all the little names and symbols which delineate the world
of darkness. Yet accept them not as your reality. The Holy Spirit
uses all of them … . Use all the names the world bestows on them

555
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

but for convenience, yet do not forget they share the Name of God
along with you (W-pI.184.9-11).
Thus we are urged, again echoing the words of John’s gospel, to be
in the world, yet knowing we are not of it. “The Special Function” is
one of the key sections in the text that bears on this issue of reinterpret-
ing the forms or symbols of the world, providing perhaps the clearest
statements in the Course in this regard. The context is the special rela-
tionship that, as we have seen, is the ego’s most powerful weapon in
its war against God. In this sense, then, specialness becomes a symbol
of the entire physical world, which the ego made as an attack on God’s
love. It is no surprise then that we find such ambivalence—special
love and hate—in our physical experience here. Yet because we be-
lieve this love-hate world is our reality, symbolized again by our spe-
cial relationships, it is within this belief system that the correction
must be made: “In crucifixion is redemption laid” (T-26.VII.17:1), the
Course teaches. Let us therefore consider this section, finding here the
perfect blend of metaphysical truth with gentle and loving correction.
“The Special Function” begins with a restatement of the Holy
Spirit’s message to the sleeping Son, urging him to look on his sin with
forgiving eyes, washed with the grace of God:
The grace of God rests gently on forgiving eyes, and everything
they look on speaks of Him to the beholder. He can see no evil;
nothing in the world to fear, and no one who is different from
himself. … He would no more condemn himself for his mistakes
than damn another. He is not an arbiter of vengeance, nor a pun-
isher of sin. … And being in accord with what God wills, he has
the power to heal and bless all those he looks on with the grace of
God upon his sight (T-25.VI.1:1-2,4-5,8).
Of course, the Son can be free from the role of avenger only because
his Father is, since what is true of one must be true of the other. The
Holy Spirit’s loving message to the Son was not only about God, but
about himself as well.
The Son, however, does not believe this, setting into motion the in-
sane drama of specialness, which began with his original special rela-
tionship with God (as was seen in Chapter 14). Thus was a world of
specialness made, a world of hatred and murder. It is this world that
becomes the Holy Spirit’s classroom, inspiring an attitude of gratitude
and appreciation, in contrast to the bitter resentment and despair that

556
Ethics – Morality

usually characterizes our experience here, and which is described in so

many moving passages in the Gnostic literature.
The Voice of love in our minds continually provides the correction
for the ego’s voice of hate. Again, as we have seen, the Holy Spirit
does not really do anything; He simply is, and this presence of pure,
abstract love is transformed into the correction of forgiveness when
confronted by the ego’s unforgiveness. Special relationships, when
brought to forgiveness, become transformed into holy relationships.
Both are equally illusory, based as they are upon separation, yet when
brought together they dissolve together, leaving only the memory of
love in the Son’s holy mind, its altar cleansed. As the manual states:
This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected
out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear. For there
the altar to the Son is set, and there his Father is remembered. Here
are all illusions brought to truth and laid upon the altar. … seen
within your mind, guilt and forgiveness for an instant lie together,
side by side, upon one altar. There at last are sickness and its single
remedy joined in one healing brightness. God has come to claim
His Own. Forgiveness is complete. … Gone is perception, false and
true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are
bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God
(C-4.6:1-3,7-10; 7:2-4).
When the world of the special relationship gives way to the holy re-
lationship, it becomes
the Holy Spirit’s kind perception of specialness; His use of what
you made, to heal instead of harm. To each He gives a special func-
tion in salvation he alone can fill; a part for only him. … Here,
where the laws of God do not prevail in perfect form, can he yet do
one perfect thing and make one perfect choice. And by this act of
special faithfulness to one perceived as other than himself, he learns
the gift was given to himself, and so they must be one. Forgiveness
is the only function meaningful in time. It is the means the Holy
Spirit uses to translate specialness from sin into salvation. … The
specialness he chose to hurt himself did God appoint to be the
means for his salvation, from the very instant that the choice was
made. His special sin was made his special grace. His special hate
became his special love. … The Son of God can make no choice the
Holy Spirit cannot employ on his behalf, and not against himself.
Only in darkness does your specialness appear to be attack. In light,

557
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

you see it as your special function in the plan to save the Son of
God from all attack, and let him understand that he is safe, as he has
always been, and will remain in time and in eternity alike. This is
the function given you for your brother. Take it gently, then, from
your brother’s hand, and let salvation be perfectly fulfilled in you.
Do this one thing, that everything be given you (T-25.VI.4:1-2;
5:1-4; 6:6-8; 7:5-10).
This different attitude towards the world—that it is neither to be
avoided nor sought after—leads to an amorality, as discussed at the be-
ginning of this section. Our function in the world is therefore not to
feed the hungry, free the oppressed, or serve any other social cause.
How can we serve a world that is not there? Since there is no body, no
world, no problem, any moral position or stance would be falling into
the same trap we have described throughout the book. There can be no
right behavior, because in truth there is no body that can behave. How
then could we properly judge any behavior? The focus, as we have
continually seen, is on the thoughts that lead to the behavior, and it is
these thoughts that must be changed, not the behavior. There is an in-
teresting parallel in the Gnostic “Acts of John,” where the same prin-
ciple is underscored. The scene is a bizarre one, as is often the case in
these legendary Acts. John comes upon a young man who has killed
his father for objecting to the son’s sexual affair with a married
woman. John resurrects the father, causing such contrition in the
young man that the son quickly cuts off his own genitals with a sickle
and presents them to his lover, exclaiming: “There you have the …
cause of all this!” The young man proudly reports to John what he has
done, but is quickly reproved by the apostle:
the one [the devil] who tempted you to kill your father and com-
mit adultery with another man’s wife, he has also made you take
off the unruly members as if this were a virtuous act. But you
should not have destroyed the place of your temptation, but the
thought which showed its temper through those members; for it is
not those organs which are harmful to man, but the unseen springs
through which every shameful emotion is stirred up and comes to
light (AJ 54, in NTA II, p. 241, my italics).
These “unseen springs” are the belief in separation and resultant guilt
(the content), which manifest in behavior (the form) designed to wit-
ness to the reality of these thoughts, thereby reinforcing them.

558
Ethics – Morality

On the level of the mind, therefore, one can indeed speak of “right”
or “wrong”: a “right” thought (what the Course calls right-minded
thinking) is forgiveness or joining; a “wrong” thought (wrong-minded
thinking) is guilt and separation. These, however, are not moral judg-
ments, but simply judgments based on their effect: A thought of for-
giveness leads to peace as inevitably as does a thought of guilt lead to
pain.
The Course emphasis is thus always on the level of the mind,
where the problem and solution lie, and not the illusory world. It is the
purpose of our actions that give them their meaning or value. A pow-
erful example of this teaching is found in the Bhagavad Gita, one of
the pearls of Hindu scripture. The setting is a battlefield, where the
warrior Arjuna dialogues with Lord Krishna. Arjuna asks whether
doing battle is defensible, and Krishna’s answer constitutes the heart
of the Gita. Speaking within the non-dualistic framework with which
we are familiar, Krishna asks how Arjuna could kill someone who is
already dead, for how can the immortal die (students of A Course in
Miracles will recognize this line cited in the text: see T-19.II.3:6). If
it is Arjuna’s dharma (his life’s path) to be a warrior, Krishna explains,
then he must be the best warrior he can; not because the battlefield is
holy, but because it is the stage on which he has chosen to learn a spir-
itual lesson. As with the Course, the Gita is clearly not for the spiritu-
ally immature who seek to use spiritual teachings to justify ego
motivations (Chapter 19 discusses this issue in greater depth). Thus
the Gita is not condoning killing; rather the purpose of its teaching is
to shift our perspective of the world that we may better understand the
difference between truth and illusion. It is within this same context
that the Course states:
Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your
mind about the world (T-21.in.1:7).
Further, we are urged:
To learn this course requires willingness to question every value
that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will
jeopardize your learning (T-24.in.2:1-2).
All our values, therefore, need to be questioned in light of the meta-
physical principles of truth and illusion, helping us to understand and
experience the causal relationship between mind and body.

559
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

It would thus be a misreading of A Course in Miracles to believe

that it advocates a life of careless disregard for others; however, the
basis for its caring is not that a hostile action is wrong, but rather that
the wish to hurt another will only bring the aggressor pain and guilt.
The distinction here is crucial. Remember our metaphysical founda-
tion: there is literally nothing and no one that exists outside our minds.
In this sense, then, the Course could be seen as adopting a moderate
position between asceticism and libertinism. However, again, its rea-
sons would differ from the moderate stances we have discussed. The
Course’s “ethical” teaching is not based on behavioral consequences,
because any extreme position, for example, must dogmatically hold
that a specific form of behavior is salvific. Stated another way, the
Course would echo Hamlet’s famous line: “ … for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (II,ii,255-257).
In Part III we shall explore in more depth some of the common
errors students of A Course in Miracles have made in seeking to apply
its teachings to specific experiences and problems in the world. Suffice
it to say for now, an ego identification with any cause, movement, or
concern in the world—personal or international—can only be due to
this confusion of form and content, illusion and truth. Once again, the
Son would have fallen for the ego’s lies about what is real and what is
not, where the problem is and its solution as well. It certainly does not
appear to be the case that our concern for the welfare of human beings,
or members of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, not to mention the
planet and universe, is an ego ploy. And yet what else could it be when
our concern is rooted in the premise that there is danger, hurt, pain, or
suffering? No compromise is possible in this regard without falling
into the same trap that ensnared Plato and the Platonists, as well as the
Gnostics and orthodox Christians we have considered.
The Course can appear insensitive at first when we are told that it
does not recognize as problems the very concerns that people have held
from the beginning of time: sickness, poverty, starvation, death, etc. It
is here that we observe the power and cleverness of the ego system.
Once deluded into believing the phenomenal world is real, one must in-
evitably make physical and/or psychological suffering real as well.
However, because we believe our bodies are the locus of our experi-
ence, A Course in Miracles does not ask us to deny our bodily expe-
riences in this world, or the experiences of others. Such denial merely
serves the ego by having made something terrible appear to be real

560
Ethics – Morality

and external to our minds, thereby protecting the thought of guilt that
is the only problem. As the Course teaches in an important passage
that highlights its gentle practicality, even within the context of an un-
compromising non-dualism:
The body is merely part of your experience in the physical world.
Its abilities can be and frequently are overevaluated. However, it is
almost impossible to deny its existence in this world. Those who
do so are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial. The
term “unworthy” here implies only that it is not necessary to pro-
tect the mind by denying the unmindful. If one denies this unfortu-
nate aspect of the mind’s power, one is also denying the power
itself (T-2.IV.3:8-13).
Thus we are asked to respect the power of our minds to make illusions,
so that over time we can use this power to change our minds about
truth and illusion. Later in the text Jesus says to us:
I will love you and honor you and maintain complete respect for
what you have made, but I will not uphold it unless it is true
(T-4.III.7:7).
However, we are asked not to take the world so seriously, as we find
in an incisive passage dealing with the dreamlike nature of the world we
caused, a world whose origin lay in believing the ego’s story when “the
Son of God remembered not to laugh” (T-27.VIII.6:2). The cause of the
world’s suffering rests not with the physical forms of suffering, which
are merely effects. The cause rather lies with our having been fooled by
the ego in the first place. Here, then, we are asked to bring our minds
back to the point at which we listened to the wrong voice, and to choose
again. Specifically, we understand this request to be the Course’s guide
for all behavior, for we are asked to bring to the Holy Spirit every pain
and concern, and together with Him laugh at the silliness of it all:
It is not easy to perceive the jest when all around you do your eyes
behold its heavy consequences, but without their trifling cause.
Without the cause do its effects seem serious and sad indeed. Yet
they but follow. And it is their cause that follows nothing and is but
a jest.
In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and
looks not to effects. How else could He correct your error, who
have overlooked the cause entirely? He bids you bring each terrible
effect to Him that you may look together on its foolish cause and

561
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

laugh with Him a while. You judge effects, but He has judged their
cause. And by His judgment are effects removed. Perhaps you come
in tears. But hear Him say, “My brother, holy Son of God, behold
your idle dream, in which this could occur.” And you will leave the
holy instant with your laughter and your brother’s joined with His
(T-27.VIII.8:4–9:8).
The same theme is reiterated in a passage from the workbook which,
if taken out of context, seems harsh and unfeeling indeed. Properly
understood, however, in the context of our discussion of reality and il-
lusion, the passage expresses the theme of salvation from all forms of
suffering and distress. The immediate context is sacrifice as the under-
lying dynamic of all problems:
Never forget you give but to yourself. Who understands what
giving means must laugh at the idea of sacrifice. Nor can he fail to
recognize the many forms which sacrifice may take. He laughs as
well at pain and loss, at sickness and at grief, at poverty, starvation
and at death. He recognizes sacrifice remains the one idea that
stands behind them all, and in his gentle laughter are they healed
(W-pI.187.6).
Thus, regardless of the behavior we seek to espouse, whether it be
for pleasure (material salvation) or pain (religious salvation), or be-
havior in others we find objectionable, our task remains the same: to
bring our concern or desire to the Holy Spirit, asking His help to look
at the issue as being but a manifestation of an internal thought. And it
is that thought that needs correction. The principle is simple; its uni-
versal application, however, is difficult, for we are here talking about
the total undoing of the defensive system we identified as necessary
for salvation. Each and every circumstance in our lives that concerns
us becomes an opportunity for returning to the root of that concern.
Only an uncompromising non-dualistic metaphysics can present such
a simple plan for salvation:
How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not
true now, and never will be. The impossible has not occurred, and
can have no effects. And that is all (T-31.I.1:1-4).
It is a plan that has no exceptions, and thus “there is no order of diffi-
culty in miracles” (T-1.I.1:1): They are all the same because “there is
likewise no hierarchy in illusions; they are all the same as well:

562
Ethics – Morality

One problem, one solution. Salvation is accomplished. … It is in

this that the simplicity of salvation lies (W-pI.80.1:5-6; 5:6).
Therefore, it is not the world that needs redemption, preservation,
or plans for peace, but the mind that believes in a world that needs re-
demption. This, then is the new morality of A Course in Miracles: act
not out of concern or misplaced empathy, but out of the love of God
that knows not of pain or suffering. And from that place of love within
our minds, love itself will act, gently guiding our bodies to an interac-
tion with the world devoid of ego, and so devoid of problems. It is an
interaction such as Jesus demonstrated when he walked the earth; an
interaction with others and the world that was invested only with the
Father’s love: a love that literally does nothing, but simply is.27
From this new moral position regarding injustice we can deduce
similar conclusions regarding the traditional spiritual emphases on as-
ceticism and detachment from the world and the body. Clearly, if there
is no body to begin with, what is there to detach from? Moreover, to
practice any form of asceticism, believing that it is rooting out “the
world, the flesh, and the devil,” merely reinforces the body’s reality,
thus fulfilling the ego’s plan for its salvation. We recall part of the quo-
tation sited earlier: “It is not necessary to protect the mind by denying
the unmindful [the body]” (T-2.IV.3:12). The more ascetically suc-
cessful spiritual aspirants are, the more they are deluded into believing
that they have actually accomplished something (by “denying the un-
mindful”), while all the time their unconscious guilt remains safe and
secure behind the body’s armor, requiring still greater effort to undo it.
The Course comments on this in two places. In the text it says:
It is extremely difficult to reach Atonement by fighting against sin.
Enormous effort is expended in the attempt to make holy what is
hated and despised. Nor is a lifetime of contemplation and long
periods of meditation aimed at detachment from the body neces-
sary. All such attempts will ultimately succeed because of their
purpose. Yet the means are tedious and very time consuming, for
all of them look to the future for release from a state of present un-
worthiness and inadequacy (T-18.VII.4:7-11).
With our sense of unworthiness and inadequacy made real, these as-
cetic practices become almost self-defeating. Lesson 155 provides

27. For further discussion, see Forgiveness and Jesus, Chapter 3.

563
Chapter 17 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

practical guidelines for one’s life in the world, advocating the middle
path indicated above between asceticism and libertinism. The Lesson
speaks to all would-be teachers of God:
If truth demanded they give up the world, it would appear to
them as if it asked the sacrifice of something that is real. Many
have chosen to renounce the world while still believing its reality.
And they have suffered from a sense of loss, and have not been re-
leased accordingly. Others have chosen nothing but the world, and
they have suffered from a sense of loss still deeper, which they did
not understand.
Between these paths there is another road that leads away from
loss of every kind, for sacrifice and deprivation both are quickly left
behind. This is the way appointed for you now (W-pI.155.4:1–5:2).
Thus, choosing to fight against the body, or choosing to indulge the
body, end up as opposite sides of the same coin:
The body does appear to be the symbol of sin while you believe
that it can get you what you want. While you believe that it can
give you pleasure, you will also believe that it can bring you
pain. … It is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body and
not find pain. It is essential that this relationship be understood, for
it is one the ego sees as proof of sin. It is not really punitive at all.
It is but the inevitable result of equating yourself with the body,
which is the invitation to pain. … It [the body] will share the pain
of all illusions, and the illusion of pleasure will be the same as pain
(T-19.IV-A.17:10-11; T-19.IV-B.12:1-4,7).
The “middle path” of A Course in Miracles has nothing to do with
behavior, neither ascetic withdrawal nor physical or psychological at-
traction. It deals only with the absence of guilt in one’s mind, leading
inevitably to absence of projection in the world. These teachers of God,
therefore, look no different from anyone else, and do nothing different
from anyone else. The difference comes from the peace they feel
within:
There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it
seems to be. You do not change appearance, though you smile
more frequently. Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. And
the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. … You
walk this path as others walk, nor do you seem to be distinct from
them, although you are indeed (W-pI.155.1:1-4; 5:3).

564
Ethics – Morality

An earlier Lesson makes the same point:

The body is your only savior. … This is the universal belief of the
world you see. Some hate the body, and try to hurt and humiliate it.
Others love the body, and try to glorify and exalt it. But while the
body stands at the center of your concept of yourself, you are at-
tacking God’s plan for salvation … that you may not hear the Voice
of truth and welcome It as a Friend (W-pI.72.6:8; 7:1-4).
Therefore the true students of the Course who learn and live its les-
sons will look and act normally. They will not necessarily give up cer-
tain foods, sexuality, enjoying a pretty sunset, etc.; their clothing will
usually not be different. What does change, however, is the purpose
given to these and other human activities. The forms remain the same;
the content changes. If their forms shift, it is only to fulfill the content
of love that has been guiding them. We shall discuss the teacher of God
again in Part III.

565
 PART III

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

 INTRODUCTION TO PART III

Our journey is almost complete. Having traversed large terrains of

theoretical speculation and spiritual experience, we are better able to
understand the nature of the mind and its relation to the physical
world. It has been a journey, not of distance nor even time, but of a ver-
tical descent through the layers of fog that have concealed the truth.
Truth’s light shines more brightly now, for we no longer believe we are
the victims of external conditions beyond our control. Our minds are
indeed the ruler of the world we see and experience, and indeed, have
made. Thus is the cause of the world returned to its source, where it
can be gently undone at last. In this concluding Part of the book, we
re-examine A Course in Miracles in the light of the ancient traditions
of Platonism, Christianity, and Gnosticism, realizing the ultimate pur-
pose of our study: learning how to live in this illusory world without
becoming trapped in the thought that it is really there. Thus does the
Holy Spirit’s gentle thought of love correct the ego’s thought of hate,
and we are home, where we have always been and where God “would
have us be” (T-31.VIII.12:8).
Throughout the dream’s expansion into time and space, the shining
presence of perfect love that we call the Holy Spirit has continually
illuminated the Son’s mind, made accessible to that mind whenever its
individual fragments chose to listen. In this book we have limited our
discussion of the manifestations of this truth to the development (or
counter-development) of the non-dualistic aspect of Western philoso-
phy and theology. However, it is worth reiterating that it would be a
glaring example of the error of spiritual specialness, to be reconsidered
in Chapter 19, to limit expressions of the Holy Spirit only to these spir-
itual teachings. Love is the content that is beyond all forms, and only
that abstract presence in our minds is true. As was mentioned in the
Preface, the Hindus teach that truth is one but the sages know it by
many names. The specific names used in this study are merely a few
among “many thousands.”
Returning to our myth, we recall the Son’s unquestioning accep-
tance of the ego’s tale of sin, guilt, and fear, which acceptance was the
cause of the world and all the suffering that has been experienced ever
since. Thus, salvation is ultimately complete when the Son accepts the
Holy Spirit’s message, undoing the ego’s underlying thought system.

569
INTRODUCTION TO PART III

Jesus is the name we give to the concrete manifestation of this one

thought of acceptance and undoing—the principle of the Atonement—
and we have seen how traditional Christianity greatly distorted his
teaching. In the Western tradition, Jesus’ non-dualistic message of sal-
vation was prefigured, albeit in a flawed manner, in the work of the
pre-Socratics and Platonists, carried forward—still flawed—by the
great Gnostic teachers, the Neoplatonist Plotinus, and others, and
finally brought to fruition in A Course in Miracles. It might be hypoth-
esized, incidentally, that figures like Socrates, Plato, Valentinus, and
Plotinus, to name just a few, might have themselves been very ad-
vanced teachers, presenting truth to the world in the form and at a level
acceptable to their particular age. Thus, while a later age such as ours
may look back to the flaws of their respective systems, such flaws may
simply have been expressions of a limitation commensurate with the
needs of their time period, and not necessarily reflective of ego limita-
tions in the teachers themselves.
The orienting theme of this book has been what we have referred to
as the God-world paradox. We have seen that all Platonists, beginning
with Plato himself, agonized over the issue of how the perfect Good,
One, or God, could have extended into the obviously imperfect and
flawed material world of multiplicity. Orthodox Christians perceived
no problem, for they found no contradiction between God and His cre-
ated material world. The Gnostics, too, saw no contradiction in their
position of God not creating the world, yet the world being at the same
time real and powerful enough to imprison them.
Thus, from the perspective of A Course in Miracles, each tradition
in its own way has fallen into the trap of making the error real. It is the
unique contribution of the Course to avoid that trap, at the same time
providing a metaphysics and a guide for living in the body that does
justice to both levels of discourse. The Course’s use of psychodynamic
theory is the means whereby this integration of truth and our individual
experience is consummated. In Part III we review our earlier discus-
sions and present the full implications of the Course’s position. We
also consider, in a separate chapter, the various errors observed in stu-
dents of A Course in Miracles, in which the ego has attempted to divert
attention from the Course’s truth, even while appearing to uphold its
teachings. Notably, most of these errors parallel those historical ones
we have already pointed out.

570
 Chapter 18

A COURSE IN MIRACLES RE-EXAMINED

The journey through the Platonic-Christian-Gnostic world has il-

lustrated the strange compromises the ego has devised to protect its
thought system, even in the face of experience and thoughts that con-
tradict it. This is what we have been referring to, again, as the God-
world paradox: the incongruity of the perfect God coexisting with, if
not causing—directly or indirectly—the imperfect world; stated an-
other way, it is the paradox of holding as equally real—materially
and/or psychologically—the unified and undifferentiated spiritual
perfection of God, and the fragmented and differentiated material im-
perfection of the world. Our study has demonstrated the struggles that
non-orthodox Christian theologians and “pagan” philosophers alike
have experienced in dealing with this paradox, while never success-
fully resolving it, either from a theoretical or pragmatic point of view.
The orthodox Christian of course, handled this paradox by outrightly
denying any problem at all, as we have seen.
Let us begin by restating the basic cosmogonic premise of this
study: The physical universe was made by the split-off part of the
mind (the ego), attempting to solidify its own illusory existence by
rooting its identity in a fortress called the body and the world. This
separated self now appeared to be prey to forces outside its control,
forever doomed to a victimized existence within a victimizing and
threatening world. As a cover for this cosmic subterfuge, the ego con-
tinually speaks of the world’s and body’s reality to the part of our
minds that chooses to believe in it. Part of the ego’s tricks of “magic”
and “sleight of hand” (W-pI.158.4:1) is the development of philoso-
phies and theologies that ultimately support this belief by placing the
world’s creation in the Mind of God. This of course has nothing what-
soever to do with the true God, whose truth has now become hidden
by the “divine” belief system that properly belongs to the ego, as is
discussed in “The Laws of Chaos” in the text of A Course in Miracles.
Once the thought that God created this world is accorded truth, the
ego can safely rest. Whatever inconsistencies may from time to time
appear within the consciousness of individuals are quickly disposed
of, either by the ego’s “appeal to ‘mysteries,’ insisting that you must

571
Chapter 18 A COURSE IN MIRACLES RE-EXAMINED

accept the meaningless to save yourself ” (T-9.IV.4:7), or by repres-

sion. Once pushed out of awareness, these inconsistent thoughts are
no longer accessible to question and revision:
The ego has no real answer to this [the mind’s question of the ego’s
inconsistency] because there is none, but it does have a typical
solution. It obliterates the question from the mind’s awareness.
Once out of awareness the question can and does produce uneasi-
ness, but it cannot be answered because it cannot be asked (T-
4.V.4:9-11).
Indeed, one of the thoughts the ego would violently oppose is found in
these lines from A Course in Miracles:
There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:
I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am
doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself.
Yet in this learning is salvation born. And What you are will tell
you of Itself (T-31.V.17:8-9; italics omitted).

Stages of the Myth

We turn now to the seven stages of the myth presented in Part II,
discussing them within the specific context of the God-world paradox
we have been exploring from the beginning of the book. This will en-
able us to discuss A Course in Miracles in the light of the other three
traditions, showing how the Course alone within the Western tradition
exemplifies the purity of this ancient message of Atonement. Thus we
review all that we have traversed, bringing, as the Course would state,
the illusions of past mistakes to the truth. We group some of the stages
together for ease of discussion, beginning with the first three that rep-
resent the Course’s metaphysics.

1. Stages One, Two, and Three

The first stage of the story involves the nature of God and His cre-
ation. The key to our whole discussion rests at this pre-cosmic level,
because the premises implicit here directly affect what is to come. We
have seen how non-dualistic apophaticism contrasts sharply with
dualistic thinking; the latter begins by making evil real, coexisting

572
Stages of the Myth

with God, which evil must then be defeated or at least defended

against. However, the war against this enemy can never be successful
because the thought of evil remains within the mind, to be continually
projected out and fought where the thought can never be undone. In a
pure non-dualism, such as we find in A Course in Miracles, this evil
or sinful thought cannot occur, and therefore has not occurred in
reality. There is no compromise in this position. We have seen that the
other non-dualisms, such as exist in certain strands of Christian mys-
ticism or in Plotinus, end up compromising their teachings by attrib-
uting reality or even divinity to non-spiritual being, evil or otherwise.
Thus, while the Course is in agreement with many Christian mystics
and Neoplatonists about the nature of God, the origin of the physical
world remains a point of serious divergence; it is really only with the
Gnostics that there is virtual agreement about God’s purely acosmic
nature.
The separation or fall from God is the watershed that divides
A Course in Miracles from all the spiritualities we have been consid-
ering in this book. The Course keeps the thought of separation outside
the Mind and Will of God, and therefore it is outside reality and in the
realm of illusion. Following the principle “Ideas leave not their
source,” all the ideas resulting from this thought, such as the physical
world, must also be illusory and outside reality.
We have seen that Valentinus, of all the Gnostic theologians, came
closest to this understanding of the fundamental unreality of the world,
though without developing a full-blown psychological context for his
insights. Nonetheless, the seeds of the Course’s twentieth-century sys-
tem can be found latent in the work of the Valentinian school. In pas-
sages quoted from “The Gospel of Truth” we have seen reference to the
“terror and disturbance and instability and doubt and division” that led
to the “many illusions at work … empty fictions, as if they were sunk in
sleep … in disturbing dreams.” And yet upon waking, the dreamers
“see nothing,” for “all these disturbances … are nothing” (GT I.29.30,
in NHL, p. 43). The Valentinian author of this startling passage, let
alone Valentinus himself, would clearly not have gone as far as
A Course in Miracles in declaring the absolute unreality of the physical
world, along with the ethical consequences of this position. However,
he powerfully depicts the experience and knowledge of its psycholog-
ical unreality, within the larger anti-cosmic Gnostic framework.

573
Chapter 18 A COURSE IN MIRACLES RE-EXAMINED

Plotinus’ heart is in the right place when he describes the absolute

undifferentiation of the One as compared with the gradual emanations
and declinations from it. And yet to him everything that comes from the
One is ultimately real, regardless of his struggles with the baseness and
“non-being” of matter. Thus on one level we can observe that the
Course’s description of the ego’s process of fragmentation parallels
Plotinus’ tale of the downward emanation. In this sense we can say that
A Course in Miracles is Neoplatonism psychologized: It takes the dec-
lination from the One, which is ultimately a negative event for Plotinus,
his rationalizations to the contrary, and explains from a psychological
point of view—i.e., from the dynamics of the separated mind of sin,
guilt, and fear—how and why this seemed to occur.
Thus, we can see again how the Course is an amalgam of different
approaches, yet a successful integration of them: It is Neoplatonic in
terms of describing the downward procession (or projection) from the
One; Gnostic in its clarity on the world not coming from the Divine at
all, exposing the ego’s trickery in back of it; and Christian, not only in
its language, but through its recognizing a benevolent presence of God
experienced in the world—the memory of His love (the Holy Spirit) in
the split mind—not to mention the central place accorded to Jesus.
Through its integration of the metaphysical and practical levels,
A Course in Miracles is able to retain a metaphysical purity, at the
same time providing a gentle and loving correction for the mind’s er-
rors and miscreations. Jesus as its source and teacher is the Course’s
great symbol for the loving gentleness of God, thus bridging the gap
between our abstract, undifferentiated, and utterly impersonal Source,
and our childlike need for a loving Father and Mediator while we re-
main imprisoned in our minds’ dreams.
We are thus speaking about an almost unique approach and attitude
towards the phenomenal universe. The closest parallel is found in cer-
tain non-dualistic (advaita) Hindu systems, as seen in Sankara, for ex-
ample, the great eighth-century A.D. Indian mystic and scholar. There,
the absolute Reality, Brahman, is understood to be totally unrelated to
the phenomenal world, as is the Course’s God in relation to the ego and
its world. However, in most other forms of Eastern thought, which
nonetheless see the world as illusory, matter and form are still con-
ceived of—to use Neoplatonic language—as being implicit in the
Absolute undifferentiated unity of the Godhead; the phenomenal world
being a reflection of the non-material Ideas, from which they are ulti-

574
Stages of the Myth

mately derived. As Bede Griffiths observes, speaking of the total tran-

scendence yet immanence of the Divine Reality:
… the absolute Reality is beyond words and thought … totally
transcendent … [yet] totally immanent. The one Reality is manifest-
ing itself in every particle of matter, in every living thing, in every
human being (Griffiths, p. 83).
We are not far at all from the same paradox we have been considering
throughout the book: how the pure oneness of reality can be manifest
in the imperfect multiplicity of the world of forms and bodies.
Yet we see in the Course many passages sharing the Gnostic and
Platonic expressions of rejection of the physical world:
You do not want the world. The only thing of value in it is what-
ever part of it you look upon with love. This gives it the only reality
it will ever have. Its value is not in itself, but yours is in you. … For
this world is the opposite of Heaven, being made to be its opposite,
and everything here takes a direction exactly opposite of what is
true (T-12.VI.3:1-4; T-16.V.3:6).
God’s Name reminds me that I am His Son, not slave to time, un-
bound by laws which rule the world of sick illusions …
(W-pI.204.1:2; italics omitted).
In light of this totally acosmic stance, however, we also note that
unlike the Gnostic position, A Course in Miracles is not anti-cosmic.
To refer back to the sophisticated psychological base we have been ex-
amining, we see that it makes no sense to fight against something that
has not been created by God and so is not real. To see the world or the
body as the locus of sin is simply to fall into the trap of making the
error real. As the Course states:
Everyone who follows the world’s curriculum, and everyone here
does follow it until he changes his mind, teaches solely to con-
vince himself that he is what he is not. Herein is the purpose of the
world (M-in.4:4-5).
The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear.
And what is fear except love’s absence? Thus the world was
meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His
Son could be apart from Him. … [Illusions’] aim is to fulfill the
purpose which the world was made to witness and make real
(W-pII.3.2:1-4; 3:3).

575
Chapter 18 A COURSE IN MIRACLES RE-EXAMINED

Therefore the Course urges us to look at the world benevolently: since

we believe we are here, the world can be seen as kind, offering us itself
as a classroom in which we learn the lessons that will lead us beyond
the world entirely:
The real purpose of this world is to use it to correct your unbe-
lief [i.e., not believing in the unreality of a world of time and
space]. … The only purpose worthy of your mind this world con-
tains is that you pass it by, without delaying to perceive some hope
where there is none (T-1.VI.4:1; W-pI.128.2:3).
The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time con-
structively. It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. Time
will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning. …
The Holy Spirit interprets time’s purpose as rendering the need for
time unnecessary. He regards the function of time as temporary,
serving only His teaching function, which is temporary by defini-
tion (T-1.I.15:2-4; T-13.IV.7:3-4).
These lines echo the spirit of Origen, for whom the world was also a
classroom. This idea, however, would have been anathema to almost
all Gnostics, who of course saw absolutely nothing redeeming about
the world.

2. Stage Four
We can thus see that implicit in the Course’s presentation of the dy-
namics of the ego thought system—which underlie our physical exis-
tence in this world—is the view that the separated mind and hence the
body are a far cry from our divine and spiritual nature. In this respect
A Course in Miracles is quite Gnostic, and we can hear the angry voice
of Plotinus inveighing against its teachings with the same vehemence
he directed against the Gnostics who “infiltrated” his lecture rooms.
There is, however, a major difference that distinguishes the Course not
only from the Gnostics but also, ironically enough, from the attitude or
tone of Plotinus, not to mention Plato. Despite the Course’s insistence
on the unreality of the body, it never makes the mistake of attacking
the body that ensnared the Platonists and Gnostics alike, who per-
ceived the body as repulsive. Rather, to the Course, the body is per-
ceived as neutral—“My body is a wholly neutral thing” (W-pII.294)—
neither to be venerated or rejected, but simply to be used for learning
purposes as long as we believe we are in it.

576
Stages of the Myth

The central aspect to the ego’s life in the body is of course the spe-
cial relationship, and it is interesting to note, as was done in Part II, the
statements in “The Gospel of Truth” and Plotinus that so insightfully
foreshadow the teachings on special relationships found in A Course
in Miracles. These should come as no surprise as it is precisely the
Valentinian and Plotinian schools that on another level most closely
approximate the spirit and insights of the Course, both metaphysically
and psychologically. The Gnostic tract describes the same double
dream layer of the ego that is found in the Course: victim and victim-
izer. Note these two passages, presented successively here, though
separated by almost eighteen centuries of time:
Either there is a place to which they are fleeing … or they are in-
volved in striking blows, or they are receiving blows themselves,
or they have fallen from high places … . Again, sometimes it is as
if people were murdering them … or they themselves are killing
their neighbors, for they have been stained with their blood
(GT I.29.11-26, in NHL, p. 43).
A brother separated from yourself, an ancient enemy, a mur-
derer who stalks you in the night and plots your death … of this
you dream. Yet underneath this dream is yet another, in which you
become the murderer, the secret enemy, the scavenger and the de-
stroyer of your brother and the world alike (T-27.VII.12:1-2).
And from Plotinus we read, again, of our deficiency or lack—the
foundation of the special relationship—and the illusion of loving what
is external:
This universe … is many and divided into a multiplicity, and one
part stands away from another and is alien to it, and there is not
only friendship but also enmity because of the separation, and in
their deficiency one part is of necessity at war with another. … by
which it is preserved (Enn. III.2.2).
So therefore when we look outside that on which we depend we do
not know that we are one … . as long as it is in that which has the
impression received by the senses [i.e., what has form: the body],
the lover is not yet in love … . But if he [the lover] should come to
understand that one must change to that which is more formless
[i.e., what is “not perceptible by the senses”], he would desire that;
for his experience from the beginning was love of a great light
from a dim glimmer (Enn. VI.5.7; 7.33).

577
Chapter 18 A COURSE IN MIRACLES RE-EXAMINED

Paralleling its Platonic ancestor, the Course first describes the “army
of the powerless,” silently afraid and alone in the world:
They are indeed a sorry army, each one as likely to attack his
brother or turn upon himself. … In hatred they have come to-
gether, but have not joined each other (T-21.VII.2:8; 3:3).
[For] Fear … is love’s replacement. … [and] is both a fragmented
and fragmenting emotion. It seems to take many forms … . [in
which a very] serious effect lies in the fragmented perception from
which the behavior stems. No one is seen complete (T-18.I.3:2-6).
As for the search without for what can only be found within:
Seek not outside yourself. … Heaven cannot be found where it is
not, and there can be no peace excepting there. … For all your pain
comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting
where it must be found (T-29.VII.1:1,3,7).
You see the flesh or recognize the spirit. There is no compro-
mise between the two. … If you choose flesh, you never will es-
cape the body as your own reality …. But choose the spirit, and all
Heaven bends to touch your eyes and bless your holy sight …
(T-31.VI.1:1-2,7-8).
Let us briefly consider now the traditional Christian and Platonic
conception of the body which, though at times an object of derision
and disgust, was nonetheless seen as part of the divine creation. The
framework of our brief discussion is the chapter by Verbeke on “Man
as a ‘Frontier’,” treating St. Thomas Aquinas’ theology of man within
the Platonic tradition.
To Plato, humanity must choose between its spiritual and corporeal
selves, as we have discussed at length. Aquinas, on the other hand,
understands that the choice is not so much between two oppositional
realities, as it is a choice of which of the two is to be dominant:
… man is considered to be a subject where the spiritual and the
corporeal, the temporal and the eternal are … closely united … and
they constitute one single substance. … He is neither alienated
from the world nor from the intelligible nor from the purely spiri-
tual because he encompasses everything. … his activities always
imply a dual nature, they never completely go beyond the corpo-
real and temporal nature (Verbeke, p. 215).

578
Stages of the Myth

Plato and his followers believed that some amount of force was
needed to reconcile these oppositional elements, as in the image from
the Phaedrus of the charioteer and the two horses. The Gnostics also
believed in the opposition of body and spirit; yet this opposition could
never be reconciled. Aquinas, however, saw the issue as being more
one of cooperation. Rather than advocating the ultimate repudiation of
the physical self, Aquinas idealized its integration with the spiritual:
As man is on the frontier of the spiritual and the corporeal he should
not strive to eliminate one of the two dimensions but to combine
them and develop into a harmonious symbiosis … (Verbeke,
pp. 222-23).
A Course in Miracles, interestingly enough, agrees with both posi-
tions, but in a manner obviously quite different from each. On what we
have called Level I (the metaphysical), the Course agrees with the
Platonic and Gnostic notions of two contradictory realities, but states
that only one is true. On Level II (based in our experience of the illusory
world), on the other hand, the Course calls for the integration (or cor-
rection) of the ego’s “lower” mind within the Holy Spirit’s “higher”
mind. Thus the ego dimension of our lives—our physical identification
—is not denied or repudiated, but reinterpreted. In the end this identifi-
cation too will disappear. However, as long as we believe we are in this
world, we are challenged not to deny our experience here but to shift
our perception of this experience.
Thus there is a double duality: the difference between our spiritual
and ego-body selves, and the difference between two interpretations of
this ego-body self. It is in this integration of Levels I and II that the
Platonic, Christian, and Gnostic traditions are ultimately reconciled in
A Course in Miracles.

3. Stages Five and Six

A Course in Miracles’ internal process of salvation is directly anti-
thetical to the Christian and many Gnostic theologies. The Christian
theologian makes sin real, and then saves us through atonement and
sacrifice, as discussed in Chapter 17, while the Course sees sin as illu-
sory right from the beginning, and therefore requires “atonement”
through corrected thinking. Thus the Course is closer to the Platonic
and Neoplatonic insistence on the cultivation of virtue (in which cate-
gory we can include the training of the mind). The focus is not on plac-

579
Chapter 18 A COURSE IN MIRACLES RE-EXAMINED

ing one’s faith in an external salvation figure who will magically undo
our egos for us. Rather, we are urged to place our faith in the process
whereby we bring the illusions within our own minds to the loving
presence of the Holy Spirit’s truth. It is this process of changing our
minds that is truly salvific, for it reflects our acceptance of the healing
that has already occurred and is present within us, patiently waiting, as
it were, our return to it. Likewise, Valentinus’ teachings, as reflected
in “The Gospel of Truth” especially, and almost unique in the Gnostic
corpus, emphasize the mental process of knowledge correcting the de-
ficiency. In a passage quoted from earlier, we read:
Since the deficiency came into being because the Father was not
known, therefore when the Father is known, from that moment on
the deficiency will no longer exist. As with the ignorance of a per-
son, when he comes to have knowledge his ignorance vanishes of
itself, as the darkness vanishes when light appears, so also the defi-
ciency vanishes in the perfection (GT I.24.28-25.3, in NHL, p. 41).
While it appears that A Course in Miracles is talking about the
same concept of God and the Holy Spirit as are traditional Christians,
in reality its view is quite different. As we have frequently seen, the
Course’s purpose of correcting illusions before totally undoing them
leads it to speak often of the benevolent and personal aspects of the
Creator. Thus, God as our loving friend, and not a vengeful enemy to
be feared, is certainly a central theme in A Course in Miracles. This
is not the case with the Gnostic or Christian message, where God is
both loving and vengeful: the Final Judge who rewards the good and
punishes the bad. Needless to say, since the Neoplatonic God is ab-
stract and impersonal, any discussion of God in anthropomorphic
terms would be irrelevant; the thought would have been scandalous to
Plotinus. We thus see once again the importance of the distinction
made between the Course’s metaphysical teachings on one level, and
their presentation within a context that meets us at our level of expe-
rience and understanding.
Likewise, the Course’s treatment of the redeemer figure, whether
spoken of as the Holy Spirit or Jesus, often strikes the reader as similar
to the traditional Christian one. Yet on closer examination the Course
is really much nearer to the Platonic notion. Jesus is actually a shining
example and paradigm of Plato’s philosopher king, Philo’s lover of
genuine philosophy, and Plotinus’ Sage—all different expressions that

580
Stages of the Myth

describe the ideal teacher of God of A Course in Miracles. We shall re-

turn to this concept at the end of this chapter. Thus, the Holy Spirit is
not a person of God who acts in this world, nor is Jesus the Son whom
God sent to save us; quite the contrary: the Holy Spirit is the abstract
and unchanging presence of God’s love in our minds’ memory that is
as a shining light, whose brilliance continually reminds us of our
choice between darkness or light, while Jesus is a symbol for us within
the dream of what the light looks like when it is chosen over the ego’s
darkness. Both figures therefore serve the same function as do Plato’s
Ideas, or Plotinus’ ongoing, formless, and abstract Call of the One; in
fact, these are but differing expressions of the Divine Presence that has
been buried within our separated minds by the ego. Thus, one of the
purposes of this book has been to present the Platonic position as an
aid to understanding the principles (content) expressed beneath the
Course’s language (form).
Interestingly, the Gnostic view of Jesus is, in this regard at least,
closer to the orthodox Church, for not a single Christian Gnostic saw
Jesus as being other than divine. For the Gnostic, therefore, he was
ontologically different from the rest of humanity (the sole exception to
this position, as we have seen, is Origen who, however, never identi-
fied himself with the Gnostics at all).
A specific expression of this difference between the Course’s and
the orthodox Christian’s views of Jesus is in the understanding of the
resurrection. We have observed that this was a point of real contention
between the Gnostics and the orthodox Church, the roots of which go
back as far as the middle of the first century, as witnessed to by Paul’s
first letter to the Corinthians. The position of A Course in Miracles, as
previously discussed, is strikingly similar to the Gnostic. Jesus says,
for example:
I am your resurrection and your life. You live in me because you
live in God. … Believe in the resurrection because it has been ac-
complished, and it has been accomplished in you. This is as true
now as it will ever be, for the resurrection is the Will of God,
which knows no time and no exceptions. But make no exceptions
yourself, or you will not perceive what has been accomplished for
you. For we ascend unto the Father together, as it was in the begin-
ning, is now and ever shall be, for such is the nature of God’s Son
as his Father created him (T-11.VI.4:1-2,6-9).

581
Chapter 18 A COURSE IN MIRACLES RE-EXAMINED

The focus of the orthodox Church on the physical resurrection of

Jesus is senseless from the perspective of the Course. It misses the
whole point by shifting the focus of salvation to the body, obscuring
the changing of the mind that is the only saving agent. It places the sav-
ing act as being not only within the physical realm but, through its
identification with the death and resurrection of Jesus as historical
events, also places it within the past. Yet, if the present is the only time
there is, a saving event that occurred in the past can have no meaning
or relevance. The reader can recall Basilides’ Jesus, laughing in a tree
while the crowd watched Simon’s crucifixion. We can therefore see
that the shift in focus from the mind to the body is another example of
the Apostles’ “upside-down thinking” Jesus refers to in the Course
(T-6.I.15). We shall return to the further implications of this shift in the
next chapter.

4. Stage Seven
While A Course in Miracles inhabits the same metaphysical world
as do most Gnostics, albeit a more sophisticated one, with very few ex-
ceptions they part company when it comes to their religious practices
and ethical teachings. We have noted this several times before in this
book, and now explore the Course’s position regarding the spiritual
life and its practice in this world, in contrast to the other traditions.
We have seen the important role that sacrament and ritual played in
many Gnostic systems, not to mention in the orthodox Church. In ad-
dition to the more obvious sacraments and rituals, we can include the
orthodox Christian’s reliance on the Bible as a sacred book, and the
regular (daily, weekly, seasonal) times of worship. In all of these the
underlying premise is that the world is real, God is present in it—at
least in certain places and at certain times—and that our spiritual prog-
ress is enhanced by manipulating the world in some way, pleasing God
in the process. Thus we find the same confusion between the real and
unreal: viewing the perfect, eternal, and infinite God as somehow in-
volved in the imperfect, temporal, and finite world. This is the trap
fallen into by the Course’s Neoplatonic and Gnostic predecessors, not
to mention orthodox Christians: making the error real by seeing some
aspect of our experience here as evil and to be escaped from or, at best,
a problem to be solved here, whether through divine intervention or
the pursuit of a virtuous, ascetic life.

582
Stages of the Myth

Therefore, to state the point again, while the Course appears to

agree with traditional Christian thinking on seeking the help of the
Holy Spirit (or God, Jesus, or Christ), this agreement is really only on
the level of form or language. Its content or meaning is much closer to
the Neoplatonic and Valentinian philosophers, who were clear about
not seeking outside (divine) aid for problems that must be resolved at
their own level: in the mind.
This emphasis on the reinterpretation of the forms of the world—
shifting the ego’s content of separation and attack to the Holy Spirit’s
meaning of joining through forgiveness—is essential to understanding
some of the differences between the Course on the one hand, and
Gnosticism and Christianity on the other. Stating that the world is illu-
sory is not to say that it is sinful. Thus unlike these two other systems,
A Course in Miracles does not teach that the world, the flesh, and the
devil are to be avoided, indulged in, or fought against. Rather, its cen-
tral teaching is to forgive the world, loving it for its gift of forgiveness.
In a passage frequently misunderstood, the Course states:
The statement “For God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish
but have everlasting life” [Jn 3:16] needs only one slight correc-
tion to be meaningful in this context; “He gave it to His only be-
gotten Son” (T-2.VII.5:14).
The context of this quotation is the Atonement purpose of time (and
therefore the world). The world that God gave “to” us is the real world,
which reflects the Holy Spirit’s purpose in helping us shift from the
ego’s purpose for being here—hatred and separation—to the Holy
Spirit’s of forgiveness and joining. Thus, we are encouraged to feel
grateful for our experiences in the illusory world, for they serve as the
classroom in which we can truly learn that the world and its underlying
thought system are illusory. An important passage from the Course,
used twice before in this book, succinctly summarizes the Course’s
metaphysical view and its attitude towards the phenomenal and illu-
sory world:
The body was not made by love. Yet love does not condemn it and
can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of God has made and
using it to save him from illusions (T-18.VI.4:7-8).

583
Chapter 18 A COURSE IN MIRACLES RE-EXAMINED

It is here that we see the central divergence of the Course from prac-
tically every other spirituality that has been taught, for it reflects a
purely non-dualistic metaphysics that nonetheless does not denigrate,
dismiss, nor deify the physical world. Thus, any Gnostic would agree,
as did Plato and Plotinus, that this material world is not our home. How-
ever, the means for remembering and returning to our true home differs
markedly among the Platonists, Gnostics, and A Course in Miracles.
The Platonists and the Course, as we have seen, are similar in their em-
phasis on seeking within, rather than outside oneself for truth. How-
ever, the Platonic focus on pursuing a life of study, contemplation, and
virtue as the means of attaining truth stands in sharp contrast to that of
the Course, which focuses on changing one’s mind within the context
of interpersonal relationships. When properly understood, the Course’s
central message of forgiveness does not make the error of believing in
the reality of the phenomenal world, which must inevitably follow from
the Platonic and Gnostic hatred of the body. On the metaphysical level
(Level I), there is nobody out there to forgive. However, on the level of
our experience (Level II), our projected internal guilt appears to be
present in another person. And so it is with that experience that we must
begin the process of forgiveness.
We thus may conclude that the paradox between the Platonic and
Gnostic philosophy/theology and personal experience results from a
not-fully-integrated spirituality, reflecting the ego’s unconscious need
and investment to perpetuate at least some semblance of belief in the
reality of the material world and the body.
The Course’s goal for its students is that they become teachers of
God which, as observed earlier, is roughly analogous to Plato’s and
Philo’s philosopher and Plotinus’ enlightened Sage. Each of these is
asked to be fully present to the world and its citizens, to be a messenger
and model. The remembrance of the truth, once attained, becomes the
goal for all people. Just as Plato’s prisoner must return from the light
to awaken his fellow prisoners still chained in darkness, so are we
asked by A Course in Miracles to be instruments of that light’s exten-
sion for the world:
In your [holy] relationship you have joined with me [Jesus] in
bringing Heaven to the Son of God, who hid in darkness. You have
been willing to bring the darkness to light, and this willingness has
given strength to everyone who would remain in darkness. … You

584
Stages of the Myth

who are now the bringer of salvation have the function of bringing
light to darkness. … And from this light will the Great Rays [of
Christ] extend back into darkness and forward unto God, to shine
away the past and so make room for His eternal Presence, in which
everything is radiant in the light (T-18.III.6:1-2; 7:1; 8:7).
While the Gnostic revealer of many of the texts that we have considered
urges the Gnostics to give the saving message to the world, the context
is almost always a polemic one. The reader never comes away from
these texts with the feeling of a genuine Gnostic concern for others,
truly caring about the benighted ones to whom they are to deliver the
saving gnosis. Rather, the feeling is: “Here is my message of truth; take
it or leave it, but at your own risk.” As we have seen earlier, an excep-
tion to this insensitivity appears to be the Valentinian moderateness,
most apparent in the gentle teaching of Ptolemaeus in his letter to Flora.
A principal difference between the Platonists and the Course on the
one hand, and the traditional Christians and most Gnostics on the
other, can be found in how the ideal person is seen. The more reli-
giously oriented—Gnostic and Christian alike—see themselves in the
role of savior, whose mission is to save the world. Those who do not
accept the saving message are condemned to death and hell, to be pun-
ished for their benightedness in the final conflagration. The philoso-
phers, however, and we can include A Course in Miracles in this
category, see their role primarily as a teacher, with there being no re-
wards or punishments from on high, other than those internal experi-
ences of joy or pain that inevitably follow from the acceptance or
denial of the truth. The Course is thus strictly consistent in its emphasis
on seeing all problems and concerns as existing only within our minds.
The problem is never “out there,” but always within our own thoughts
and perceptions. Therefore, only by totally accepting the correction for
the belief in the world’s reality can one be truly freed from it. It is this
consistency of metaphysical principles with practical application that
is the Course’s unique contribution to contemporary spirituality.

585
 Chapter 19

ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

We turn now to the errors of practice that have sprung up around

A Course in Miracles, still in its early infancy, and actually have been
common throughout the histories of almost all spiritualities. Even
more specifically, we find interesting parallels between students of the
Course and the Gnostics of the early Christian centuries, not to men-
tion the orthodox Christians themselves. We can group these errors
into three general categories:
1) spiritual specialness: believing that one’s self or group is somehow
ontologically different or better than others, if not more beloved by God.
2) making the error real: establishing the world and the body as real
by assigning them negative or positive values; forms of this mistake
involve spiritualizing matter, developing ethical or moral systems of
asceticism, libertinism, or moderateness, and believing that spiritual
practices have meaning and power in and of themselves.
3) minimizing our investment in the ego’s thought system: believing
that any spiritual path is easy and requires little or no effort, for one
need only hear the Voice of the Holy Spirit.
In these three categories we will see that the misunderstandings of its
students have led to conclusions, both theoretical and practical, directly
opposite to what A Course in Miracles actually teaches. On one level we
should not expect otherwise. Following upon the basic premises of this
book and of the Course itself, we recognize the tremendous investment
our egos have in holding to the beliefs that 1) separation and thus spe-
cialness is real; 2) this world of error is real and created by a power out-
side our own mind; and 3) our guilt and fear are not the awesome “truth”
about ourselves we have made them out to be, and can easily be handled
by the ego’s plan. To remove our investment in these three “facts” of the
ego’s world is to undo the very foundation of the ego system.
Thus, in general, we can understand these errors to be defenses
against the truth that is found in the Course. As A Course in Miracles
points out, and as has been mentioned several times already, when the
ego is confronted by the loving truth of the Holy Spirit it becomes

587
Chapter 19 ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

afraid, for the truth of our reality as God’s Son is the greatest threat to
the integrity of its thought system. The Course explains:
The ego is … particularly likely to attack you when you react lov-
ingly, because it has evaluated you as unloving and you are going
against its judgment. … This is when it will shift abruptly from
suspiciousness to viciousness, since its uncertainty is increased. …
It remains suspicious as long as you despair of yourself. It shifts
to viciousness when you decide not to tolerate self-abasement and
seek relief. Then it offers you the illusion of attack as a
“solution.” … When the ego experiences threat, its only decision
is whether to attack now or to withdraw to attack later. … Even the
faintest hint of your reality literally drives the ego from your
mind, because you will give up all investment in it. … The ego
will make every effort to recover and mobilize its energies against
your release (T-9.VII.4:5,7; T-9.VIII.2:8-10; 3:4; 4:2,5).
Therefore, if the ego cannot attack directly—because the Son
would find that totally unacceptable—then it “withdraws” to attack
later through distortion; its form of passive resistance. Thus the ego
follows the axiom: “If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.” Unable to con-
vince us not to pursue A Course in Miracles, the ego nonetheless is
able to distort the Course’s teachings sufficiently to allow its truth to
be clouded over, protecting the ego’s belief system from ever being
looked at openly and honestly. Jesus asks each of us in the Course to
“Be very honest with yourself … for we must hide nothing from each
other” (T-4.III.8:2). Thus we must openly look at these errors and
bring them to his love, after which they can be released. Without such
honest examination, the truth will continue to be obstructed, and its
light “forbidden” entry into the hidden portals of the ego’s darkened
mind, where it would surely heal our mistaken thoughts.
This fear of the truth leading to the defense of distortion has striking
parallels to the early history of Christianity, where the followers of
Jesus quite clearly changed his teachings to suit their own fear and
guilt. As Jesus comments in the text, specifically referring to the afore-
mentioned “upside-down” interpretations given to his crucifixion:
If you interpret the crucifixion in any other way [i.e., than a
loving and unsacrificial act], you are using it as a weapon for as-
sault rather than as the call for peace for which it was intended.

588
 The Apostles often misunderstood it, and for the same reason that
anyone misunderstands it. Their own imperfect love made them
vulnerable to projection, and out of their own fear they spoke of
the “wrath of God” as His retaliatory weapon. Nor could they
speak of the crucifixion entirely without anger, because their
sense of guilt had made them angry. … I do not want you to al-
low any fear to enter into the thought system toward which I am
guiding you (T-6.I.14; 16:2).
Finally, we may recall again the Course’s statement that
To learn this course requires willingness to question every value
that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will
jeopardize your learning (T-24.in.2:1-2).
This important teaching refers to our willingness to generalize the
Course’s principles totally, without exception. To hold out any situa-
tion or belief from its uncompromising non-dualism is to make some
aspect of the illusory world real. A serious student of A Course in
Miracles recognizes the absoluteness of its thought system. To quote
again one of the Course’s statements about itself:
This course will be believed entirely or not at all. For it is wholly
true or wholly false, and cannot be but partially believed (T-22.
II.7:4-5).
Almost all mistakes students make regarding the Course result from
what we have earlier called level confusion; namely, not understand-
ing the important distinction and interface between the metaphysical
(Level I) and practical (Level II) levels on which A Course in Miracles
is written. It is from the metaphysical absoluteness of the Course’s
thought system that its practical teachings of forgiveness derive their
power and meaning.
We must therefore be careful not to bring the truth to the illusion,
but rather to bring our illusory beliefs to the truth A Course in Miracles
holds out to us. This requires an openness within ourselves to examine
our investments in perpetuating the ego’s thought system. The errors
we shall be discussing ultimately result from the unconscious unwill-
ingness to bring our fears to the Holy Spirit’s love and truth.

589
Chapter 19 ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

Spiritual Specialness

In Chapter 8 we explored the expression of spiritual specialness in

orthodox Christianity and Gnosticism, where it was seen that such
specialness was inherent in the theologies themselves. This is clearly
not the case with the teachings of A Course in Miracles, whose whole
message specifically corrects this kind of specialness. Nonetheless,
many of the Course’s students have not entirely escaped this subtle trap.
The we-they battlefield of the first two centuries between the
orthodox Church and the Gnostics—hating and attacking the other
group—that we explored in Chapter 3 is also finding its way into the
“community” already beginning to crop up around the Course. Thus
its students often confuse form with content, and forget Jesus’ state-
ment in the text that “All my brothers are special” (T-1.V.3:6), and
that the Course is only one path among “many thousands” (M-1.4:2).
We can see these errors occurring on two levels: First, students of
A Course in Miracles sometimes join together as if they were a group
unto themselves, part of a family or network, this groupiness some-
how making them and the Course special. Second, factions develop
within the Course community itself. We briefly examine these now.
1) To begin with, what truly unites people as a family is their common
Source, which is only of spirit. Our worldly families—biological, eth-
nic, religious, local community, country, sports allegiances, etc.—are
nothing more than classes we have chosen to attend, in which to learn
that there is in truth only one Family: Christ. Referring to our only
Name, the Lesson “The Name of God is my inheritance” states:
You live by symbols. You have made up names for everything
you see. Each one becomes a separate entity, identified by its own
name. By this you carve it out of unity. By this you designate its
special attributes, and set it off from other things by emphasizing
space surrounding it. This space you lay between all things to
which you give a different name; all happenings in terms of place
and time; all bodies which are greeted by a name (W-pI.184.1).
Rather, we are asked to
accept the Name for all reality, and realize the many names … [we]
gave its aspects have distorted what … [we] see, but have not
interfered with truth at all. One Name we bring into our practic-
ing. One Name we use to unify our sight.

590
Spiritual Specialness

And though we use a different name for each awareness of an as-

pect of God’s Son, we understand that they have but one Name,
Which He has given them (W-pI.184.13:3–14:1).
And so we pray:
Father, our Name is Yours. In It we are united with all living
things, and You Who are their one Creator. What we made and call
by many different names is but a shadow we have tried to cast
across Your Own reality. … Your Name unites us in the oneness
which is our inheritance and peace. Amen (W-pI.184.15:1-3,8-9;
italics omitted).
However, we are certainly not asked by the Course to deny our spe-
cific affiliations in this world. Instead, we are urged not to take them
seriously as realities to be upheld, justified, and defended, but simply
to be used for the Holy Spirit’s teaching purpose. Recall an earlier
quoted passage:
You have need to use the symbols of the world a while. But be you
not deceived by them as well. They do not stand for anything at
all … . They become but means by which you can communicate in
ways the world can understand, but which you recognize is not the
unity where true communication can be found (W-pI.184.9:2-5).
By now it should be clear to the reader that A Course in Miracles is
not the first spiritual thought system to have explored these metaphys-
ical issues, although it is certainly the first to have integrated psychol-
ogy and spirituality in the way that it has, thus leaving us with a
consistent message from start to finish. Yet this consistency does not
make its teachings nor its students ultimately any better or more de-
serving of Heaven’s blessing. The Course is quite clear about the dan-
gers of believing that a certain group is a more special recipient of the
Holy Spirit’s love:
Salvation cannot seek to help God’s Son be more unfair than he
has sought to be. If miracles, the Holy Spirit’s gift, were given spe-
cially to an elect and special group, and kept apart from others as
less deserving, then is He ally to specialness. What He cannot per-
ceive He bears no witness to. And everyone is equally entitled to
His gift of healing and deliverance and peace (T-25.IX.7:1-4).
The biblical text “For many are called, but few are chosen” (Mt 22:14),
a clear statement of specialness on the part of a God who chooses only

591
Chapter 19 ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

certain of His children, is corrected in the Course to place the respon-

sibility onto us: “All are called, but few choose to listen” (T-3.IV.7:12).
2) Students of the Course factionalize among themselves, as did the
early churches. Opposing camps of interpretation arise, battling with
each other over whose understanding of the Course is more correct, or
more faithful to the teachings, or to Jesus, etc. The point here again is
not to deny that differences among students do in fact exist, but to
avoid making the differences into an issue that divides and attacks. The
early history of Christianity, recounted in Chapter 3, should serve as a
model for how differences in interpretation or theology should not be
handled. It is silly for students to use A Course in Miracles, based on
principles of forgiveness and unity, as a weapon against other students,
simply because of differing interpretations or practices.
In general, these inter- and intra- mural divisions rest on the confu-
sion of form with content, the same confusion we have explored ear-
lier. Such confusion, in fact, is the heart of the ego’s defensive system
of protecting its special relationships, as we see in these excerpts from
passages already cited:
Whenever any form of special relationship tempts you to seek for
love in ritual, remember love is content, and not form of any kind.
The special relationship is a ritual of form, aimed at raising the form
to take the place of God at the expense of content (T-16.V.12:1-2).
And of the ego’s laws of chaos, grouped around the belief in special-
ness, the Course adds:
And yet, how can it be that laws like these can be believed?
There is a strange device that makes it possible. Nor is it unfamil-
iar; we have seen how it appears to function many times before. …
No law of chaos could compel belief but for the emphasis on form
and disregard of content (T-23.II.16:1-3,5).
Differences are inevitable in a world that was founded on differ-
ences, the world originating with the thought that there was a difference
between God and His Son. In a physical universe such differences are
the norm, and A Course in Miracles, again, does not ask us to deny our
physical experience in this world. It is the underlying investment in
maintaining the thought of separation that is the issue. Similarly, judg-
ments are unavoidable here; for example, I must have made a judgment
to write this book and not some other; you, the reader, likewise have

592
Spiritual Specialness

made a judgment to read this book and not some other. When the
Course says not to judge, it means not to condemn. Therefore, while on
the one hand we must inevitably identify with our groups of preference
(the form), we must on the other hand be vigilant against the special
love and/or hate judgments (content) that almost as inevitably creep
into our group identifications. In other words, differences in under-
standing and presentation of the Course’s teachings will inevitably
arise, and should be honored and respected, though not necessarily
agreed with. However, these differences need not carry with them an
emotional investment, a taking seriously which can be expressed
through opposition, for example. Rather, we “remember … to laugh” at
the silliness of making differences ultimately important. Moreover,
very often it can be a helpful experience to learn how to differ with an-
other without becoming upset, and not letting the ego make the differ-
ence into a major symbol of separation, attack, and guilt.
Another issue that frequently arises from this underlying belief in
specialness is making certain people associated with A Course in
Miracles, historically or currently, special or more holy than others.
This inevitably places them on the special love pedestal, whose out-
come of hate is obvious. The “special” person of the Course is Jesus or
the Holy Spirit; that is, the internal presence of God’s love that, again,
leads Jesus to state that all his “brothers are special” (T-1.V.3:6).
One final point regarding groups centering on A Course in Miracles:
The central process of studying the Course and following its particular
spiritual path is an individualized one. There can be no escaping the
work and dedication involved in individually studying and re-studying
the text, as well as doing the workbook exercises during the one-year
training program that is integral to the Course’s educational process.
All too often, joining a group or class can subtly interfere with this re-
sponsibility of the student, substituting the form of joining with the
group for the content of joining with the Holy Spirit within one’s own
mind. Thus again we see the error of mistaking form for content. The
joining with each other emphasized by A Course in Miracles comes
from undoing the barriers of separation that exist within our minds. This
process can occur regardless of whether or not we are in the presence
of others. External joining is an example of magic, if the value of sal-
vation is placed upon it; the joining in our minds through forgiveness is
the miracle. Our problems cannot be solved through the magical use of
external situations, but only through the use of the miracle’s ability to

593
Chapter 19 ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

heal our thoughts. Only on the level of the mind can true joining occur,
because it was only on the mind’s level that the separation occurred.
It is thus only a short step from the magical belief in the efficacy
of Course groups meeting together, to the investment in A Course in
Miracles organizations and networks. And before you know it we are
on the familiar road that leads to religious institutionalization and
churches, factionalism, judgments, and persecutions. To state the cen-
tral point again, the issue is not that groups in and of themselves are
mistakes, but rather that investment in their form as being necessary,
meaningful, or salvific is a mistake. The history of Christianity serves
as a glaring example of the unfortunate consequences of not recogniz-
ing the great potential for specialness inherent in forming groups,
cloaking the specialness in spiritual clothing.

Making the Error Real

This particular error of making the error real clearly strikes at the
heart of this book’s theme, for we have seen its presence in all the phil-
osophical and religious systems we have explored. Within the Platonic
and Christian traditions the error is inherent in the systems themselves.
The Platonic and Christian belief in the reality of the physical world is
an important part of their respective traditions, though we have seen the
paradox inherent there as well. In most of the Gnostic systems, how-
ever, the error is implicit, and was expressed psychologically, without
being consciously recognized by the Gnostics themselves. As was dis-
cussed earlier, the Gnostics were clear that God did not create the
world. However, they then proceeded to establish the world’s and
body’s psychological reality by making them the object of derision, rid-
icule, and attack.
With students of A Course in Miracles we find a similarly uncon-
scious error. We have discussed at length the tremendous investment the
ego has in maintaining its thought system, which is predicated on the
belief in the reality of the separated and physical world. This world’s
origin is usually ascribed to God or, in many secular systems, to forces
outside the mind. To doubt these cosmogonies is to raise the question:
If God (or other forces) did not create the world, who did? The answer
strikes sheer terror in our minds, for to recall the world’s origin in the
ego mind, and its purpose as a defense against God, is to confront our

594
Making the Error Real

own guilt and accept responsibility for the separation. The ego has con-
vinced us that such acceptance brings us face to face with our own de-
struction at the hands of our vengeful Creator. It therefore should come
as no surprise that many students of A Course in Miracles strongly resist
accepting completely what the Course is teaching. Therefore, what
creeps into these students’ understanding and practice of the Course are
subtle ways of making the world and the body real, thereby “protecting”
the ego’s existence. Let us examine some of these now.
There are many, many passages in the Course—some of which we
have presented in earlier chapters—that clearly state that God did not
and could not have created the physical world. Believing He did, di-
rectly flies against the integrity of the Course’s thought system, a basic
premise of which is that God could not create a being (or anything) un-
like Himself. Nonetheless, many students of A Course in Miracles
change its teachings to read that God did not create a world of pain, but
did create a world of physical beauty, not to mention a body that can
be improved upon and even made immortal. In this regard we can see
the close parallels—psychologically if not always philosophically—
with the Platonic tradition, wherein the physical beauty of the universe
is extolled, while the pain and sufferings of the body are abhorred. One
of the purposes of this book has been to help students recognize the
Platonic soil in which the Course has its philosophical roots, and to
distinguish the Course’s teachings from the God-world paradox that is
inherent within this Platonic tradition. Understanding this background
can then, it is hoped, alert the student of the Course to this error.
As has been emphasized, it is the Course’s uncompromising meta-
physical absoluteness that is deeply problematic for many people. One
of its stated goals, therefore, is to effect a total transfer of learning, for
“the impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial learning failure”
(T-12.V.6:4). As the workbook states in its introduction:
The purpose of the workbook is to train your mind in a system-
atic way to a different perception of everyone and everything in the
world. The exercises are planned to help you generalize the
lessons … . [If] Transfer of training in true perception … . has been
achieved in connection with any person, situation or event, total
transfer to everyone and everything is certain (W-pI.in.4:1-2; 5:1-2).
Because of this ego investment in our maintaining belief in the reality of
the illusory, it is difficult to accept the full implications of the Course’s

595
Chapter 19 ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

statements about God not creating the world. These implications include
not according reality at all to any aspect of the physical and/or
psychological world (one and the same really), including perceptions
of “pain and loss … sickness and … grief … poverty, starvation and
… death” (W-pI.187.6:4). These implications likewise include not ac-
cording efficacy to any of the world’s methods of healing or alleviat-
ing pain, traditional and non-traditional alike. Certain New Age
practices of visualizing healing, or sending light to diseased bodies or
to conflicted situations in the world, also fall into the same trap of
making the error real. Why would you send light or visualize healing
unless you believed there were a real darkness outside of you that
needed healing? As we have emphasized, the only problem is the
darkness of guilt in our minds that believe that darkness is real out-
side. To restate this important teaching: “ … seek not to change the
world, but choose to change your mind about the world” (T-21.in.1:7,
my italics).
What heals my pain or sickness is not the “healing energies” of
another or the universe, nor the arousal of the energy within myself
(kundalini), but the only true “healing energy” which is the correc-
tion of my thoughts of guilt through forgiveness. Physical or mental
energies can certainly affect the body’s electromagnetic field,
thereby bringing physical or mental relief, but we are still within the
domain of the ego/body world and dealing with effects, not the
cause. Imputing spiritual properties to matter, be it Mother Earth or
certain minerals such as crystals, likewise reflects the same error.
One would not think, moreover, that study of A Course in Miracles
would lend itself to rituals, given its clear statements about form and
content. However, as we have seen, a student’s practice of the work-
book can easily turn into a ritual that must be performed, and per-
formed properly with the “required” amount of repetitions of the day’s
idea successfully carried out. The truth and beauty of the Course’s
teaching, the loving gentleness of Jesus that comes through its words,
also can lead to a transfer of these thoughts to the actual books them-
selves, wherein people may believe that the mere touch of the blue
cover, or the running of one’s hands over its pages, promotes healing,
or that the simple repetition of its words magically infuses the message
into one’s self, without the necessity of challenging one’s thought sys-
tem and changing it. In addition, once groups form, it is quite easy to
fall into informal rituals that soon evolve into practices that, when not

596
Making the Error Real

performed, lead to anxiety and discomfort, if not feelings of depriva-

tion and anger.
Once again, the relevant issue here is not the use of, or belief in,
such practices, but the attempt to combine them with the teachings of
A Course in Miracles. Such attempts, conscious or otherwise, are
subtle ego ploys to minimize the radicalness of the Course and blur its
distinctiveness from other systems. This leads us to the next important
way in which the ego attempts to dilute the clarity of the Course’s mes-
sage: claiming that the Course is “just like” other spiritualities. To dis-
cuss this at any length would take us away from our central theme, but
very few contemporary or even ancient spiritualities have been exempt
from such attempts. These have included: Classical Hinduism and
Buddhism, Christian Science, Science of Mind, Unity, the Urantia ma-
terial, the writings of Edgar Cayce, Joel Goldsmith, and C. G. Jung,
transpersonal psychology, and an absolute plethora of contemporary
channeled writings. (Traditional Christianity—Roman Catholic and
mainstream Protestantism—and Gnosticism have of course also been
included in these “just like” statements.)
To be sure, many other spiritualities deal with forgiveness, the impor-
tance of our mind’s power, and faith in a loving and non-punitive God.
However, none presents these ideas in the metaphysical/psychological
framework as does A Course in Miracles, as seen, for example, in the
important statement quoted earlier: “The world was made as an attack
on God” (W-pII.3.2:1). Combining the Course with other paths also
blurs its unique teaching. As discussed in the Preface, and again in this
chapter, many students of A Course in Miracles confuse its asking us not
to judge with denying the differences that certainly do exist within the
illusory world. Thus, one can recognize and accept differences among
the many world spiritualities without judging against certain ones, or
playing the game of spiritual specialness. Thus, to state it still once
again, to teach that the Course is different from these other spiritualities
is not to judge against them.
Our final example of how students of the Course have made the
body real falls under the three ethical categories we discussed in
Chapters 10 and 17: asceticism, libertinism, and moderateness.
Again, despite the Course’s strong and consistent teaching of the fun-
damental unreality of the body, which literally does not exist and
therefore does not get sick or well, live or die, many students cannot
avoid the Gnostic error of making the body psychologically real. This

597
Chapter 19 ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

is done by seeing the body as the problem that has to be addressed

through the development of certain ethical or behavioral norms. Let
us take them in turn, first the ascetic.
As with the Gnostics, asceticism is by far the most common form of
this error into which students of A Course in Miracles fall. Passages in
the Course, already quoted above, that point out our investment in the
body, or describe our guilty and fearful experience of our bodies, are
wrenched from their context to suggest that the body should be avoided
or denied because it is sinful, evil, and the predominant obstacle to
achieving unity with God. Sexuality, food, and money, not surprisingly,
are the most widely used specific expressions of this belief that the
body is the problem. Thus, a thought system that was given to help us
learn how not to make the error real or, stated another way, how not to
take the ego’s world seriously, is transposed to say that the body is to be
taken very seriously. Followers of the Course, therefore, are urged,
among other things, to be celibate, thin, or vegetarian, not to drink cof-
fee, smoke cigarettes, or earn large amounts of money, or not to charge
money for activities relating to A Course in Miracles. The underlying
premise here, not always stated, is that sexuality, certain foods, and
money are inherently unspiritual. In one sense, to be sure, that is true,
for everything in the physical realm is unspiritual, being made, as we
have seen over and over again, to keep the spiritual out of our aware-
ness and memory. To isolate certain bodily functions or aspects of the
material world, however, as being particularly unholy is to fall into the
trap of the first law of chaos; namely, that there is a hierarchy of illu-
sions, wherein some aspects of the illusory world are seen to be holier
or better than others. Such differentiation, in and of itself, nicely serves
the ego’s purpose of establishing its creation (or miscreation) as real,
and God’s undifferentiated creation as not real.
Another form of the same error, though more subtle, is the notion
that the body can be immortal. The underlying premise of course is
that the body’s death is somehow bad, and is a fate that can and should
be overcome. The body thus has been made real (for as we saw when
we discussed the resurrection, if the body can live forever it must be
real) by placing a value on eternal physical life. This error also results
from the ego’s effective use of denial, so that we forget that the body
was made to keep the immortal hidden, immortality being a character-
istic totally beyond the ego:

598
Making the Error Real

Eternalness [immortality] is the one function the ego has tried to

develop, but has systematically failed to achieve. The ego compro-
mises with the issue of the eternal, just as it does with all issues
touching on the real question in any way (T-4.V.6:2-3).
Still another form of making the error real comes, in true Gnostic
spirit, through detaching oneself from the world that is perceived as
evil and contaminating. Some of the forms taken by this error of den-
igrating the physical world are professing indifference to world events
by avoiding radio or television news, or newspapers and news maga-
zines, saying, in effect: “I will not pollute my mind with the world’s
negativity or violence by allowing the news in. What goes on around
me does not concern me because it is too negative and might disrupt
my positive thinking and peace of mind.” Clearly, salvation does not
depend on one’s being kept abreast of world affairs. However, the feel-
ing of repulsion often present in such “detachment” gives the ego
away, for it has first convinced us that the world is real by virtue of its
negative valence, and then provides its own solution to a problem that
it has established.
If one is genuinely uninterested in the world news, so be it; the lack
of interest needs no justification. If one feels a sense of abhorrence to
the world or the body, so be it as well; this abhorrence needs no justifi-
cation either. What the latter does need, however, is an absence of jus-
tification based upon so-called spiritual ideals. This justification is the
problem, a shadow of the original problem of compounding the error
by witnessing to the separated world’s reality and justifying the defense
against it. Feeling an abhorrence is a mistake, to be sure, for one can
only dislike something that has first been judged as real. However, the
mistake’s correction is prevented by 1) taking the mistake seriously and
calling it a sin, and 2) justifying its defense through projection and ele-
vating the feeling of abhorrence to a spiritual principle. It is much wiser
and healthier to accept the negative emotion without judgment of one-
self. Then we are eventually able to bring its cause of fear to the Holy
Spirit’s love, at which point the negative investment disappears.
The second ethical form of the mistake of making the error real is
libertinism. Here, students of A Course in Miracles take the teaching
that the world and body are illusory as a justification for doing what-
ever they wish, especially in the areas of sexuality and aggression. I
myself have been quoted, totally out of context, as having said in

599
Chapter 19 ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

workshops that if you have no guilt in your mind, then anything that
you do will be loving. The true meaning of this principle echoes
St. Augustine’s aforementioned dictum: “Love and do what you
will.” However, misapplication of this principle, rather than giving
honor to the process of being an extension of the Holy Spirit’s love,
unfettered by our thoughts of guilt, results in excusing the practice of
sexual or sociopathic acting out, all done in the name of the spiritual-
ity of A Course in Miracles: the illusory world has no meaning for me
and therefore it does not matter what I do. A variation of this liberti-
nism, which also comes close to the old Gnostic libertines, is the
flouting of societal rules judged as being ego-based. Thus, in argu-
ments we are already familiar with, one may practice the Course in a
provocative manner, attempting to demonstrate one’s freedom by not
adhering to certain societal conventions. On rare occasions one can
even note a striking similarity of Course students, not only in content
but in form, to the Adamites we cited earlier. These Gnostics removed
their clothes (the encumbrance to the innocence of Eden—hence their
name) when they prayed, so that they could manifest a pure spiritual-
ity that would take them closer to God.
Similarly, it has not been unusual for students of A Course in
Miracles to demonstrate their “spirituality” or advancement in the
Course by divesting themselves of other symbols of society. Thus, they
might refrain from locking cars or house doors, carrying medical or life
insurance, etc., not because they are truly indifferent to the concerns
that “normal” people have. Rather, their actions are often motivated by
the need to force upon themselves the form of what they believe to be
signs of spiritual advancement, magically hoping that the content of
ego-freedom would infuse their minds through their behavior. Thus
they can avoid the at times painful process of having to look within at
the guilt and fear that is present, for now these have been covered over
by this veneer of holiness. Thus, still again, we can see here the uncon-
scious (and sometimes not so unconscious) flouting of the evil and un-
spiritual society through these defiant activities. The Gnostic error has
never been too far from our door. A more benign variation of this same
theme of judging spirituality by externals was demonstrated by a very
sincere young man who approached me after a workshop, saying: “I
know you must be a very holy person because you don’t smoke ciga-
rettes, don’t drink coffee, and don’t keep running to the bathroom.”
How he observed the final part of this trinity I still do not understand,

600
Minimizing the Ego

but it would be wonderful if one’s salvation were dependent only on

satisfying these three criteria for spiritual advancement.
Finally, we find those students who assume a moderate ethical po-
sition so as to avoid the mistakes of either the ascetic or libertine ex-
treme. While the form of this middle path appears consistent to what
would be advocated by the Course, the underlying content of the fear
of falling into a trap reflects having already done so by making the
body and behavior real. Readers may remind themselves at this point
of the psychoanalytic joke that suggests that one can never win, no
matter what is done: Patients who come early for sessions are anx-
ious, those who come late are resistant, while those who are on time
are compulsive. However, as discussed in Chapter 17, the Course’s
morality is not behavioral, but is rather based on an attitude within the
mind, i.e., the motivation for what we do.

Minimizing the Ego

As we have seen, one of the prominent Gnostic characteristics was

the belief in the availability of the gnosis or revelation only to certain
special people. This obviously meant that these Gnostics were beyond
their egos—hence their self-designation as the “perfect ones.” It was of
course this boast that was a particular thorn in the side of the orthodox
Church, for how can you rationally deal with someone claiming to have
a special connection to Heaven? One finds, interestingly enough, the
same phenomenon existing today, where it seems that almost everyone,
and his or her second cousin, is hearing or channeling the Holy Spirit.
In the phrase of Irenaeus, these “channelers” seem to be sprouting up
like mushrooms.
This recent infusion of an experienced “voice” that is claimed to be
the Holy Spirit has been widespread in the Pentecostal and Charismatic
Renewal movements within the Protestant and Catholic Churches re-
spectively. Almost as a rebellion to the hierarchical suppression of
people’s religious experience in the name of Church authority, the
faithful now were allowed and encouraged by these movements to
experience God for themselves, and to interpret scripture without the
benefit or at times even the blessing of a minister or priest. Clearly, the
removal of the domain of spiritual experience from the sole proprietor-
ship of the Church elite is a positive event; however, the point here is

601
Chapter 19 ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

the mistake in believing that the easiest thing in the world is to set aside
the ego and allow God’s Voice to speak to you. This particular phe-
nomenon has found an almost consummate expression in students of
A Course in Miracles.
This error among Course students finds its justification by many
lifting out of their context those passages, most often in the workbook,
that suggest an ease in listening to the Holy Spirit. Thus, Lesson 49
states: “God’s Voice speaks to me all through the day,” and begins:
It is quite possible to listen to God’s Voice all through the
day without interrupting your regular activities in any way
(W-pI.49.1:1).
A later Lesson tells us:
If you will lay aside the ego’s voice, however loudly it may seem
to call … then you will hear the mighty Voice of truth … . Listen,
and hear your Father speak to you through His appointed Voice … .
Hear and be silent. He would speak to you … . Hear Him today, and
listen to the Word which lifts the veil that lies upon the earth. …
Ask and expect an answer (W-pI.106.1; 2:1; 4:2-3; 5:1; 8:1)
And one Lesson even has us address God Himself, asking Him
to reveal His plan to us. Ask Him very specifically:
What would You have me do?
Where would You have me go?
What would You have me say, and to whom?
Give Him full charge … and let Him tell you what needs to be
done by you in His plan for your salvation (W-pI.71.9:1-6; italics
omitted).
In view of passages such as these, torn from the fabric of the entire
curriculum of the Course, it is understandable that students spend their
days believing that they are in constant communication with Heaven’s
Voice. Thus they are “told” when to get up in the morning, what to
wear, eat, and where to go; what God’s plan is, not only for themselves,
but also for everyone else ranging from world leaders to friends and
family members, fellow students and non-students alike. Given the
weight accorded such passages by these students, the overall thrust of
A Course in Miracles is lost. This thrust, as repeatedly discussed above,
emphasizes the tremendous unconscious investment our minds have in

602
Minimizing the Ego

holding on to the ego thought system, and the remarkably ingenious

ways we perpetuate this world of specialness we have constructed. One
passage in particular is easily overlooked:
Only very few can hear God’s Voice at all … . Do not forget that
truth can come only where it is welcomed without fear (M-12.3:3,7).
And how many walk this earth without fear?
A Course in Miracles is a unified curriculum, and the three books
need to be studied and used as a set, even though the actual sequence
of study is left to the individual student and the Holy Spirit—“The cur-
riculum is highly individualized, and all aspects are under the Holy
Spirit’s particular care and guidance” (M-29.2:6). The workbook,
therefore, is not meaningful without the text:
A theoretical foundation such as the text provides is necessary as
a framework to make the exercises in this workbook meaningful
(W-pI.in.1:1, my italics).
And in a passage cited earlier, the workbook clarifies its purpose:
… to train your mind to think along the lines the text sets forth
(W-pI.in.1:4).
On the other hand, the workbook provides the practical application of
the principles of the text:
… it is doing the exercises that will make the goal of the course pos-
sible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing (W-pI.in.1:2-3).
The workbook is meant to be a one-year training program; it is not
meant to supply the theoretical substance of the curriculum, which is
the purpose of any textbook. Part of the world’s curriculum, the undo-
ing of which is the goal of A Course in Miracles, is the aforementioned
belief that only a certain few—the religious elite—can be in commu-
nication with God. Only these few are seen to be worthy and chosen
by their Creator, while the sinfulness and deserved guilt of the rest of
the world’s population prevent such an open and loving relationship
with God. Such a belief clearly reinforces the ego’s tale of sin, guilt,
and fear of Heaven’s retributive wrath. And so it is the reversal of this
belief at which much of the workbook aims. It accomplishes this by
beginning the process of training our minds to believe that the love of
God is not absent from us, at least not by His Will. Since it is our wills

603
Chapter 19 ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

—in consort with the ego—to banish God from the kingdom of our
minds, it is also our changed wills that welcome Him back in.
In many passages, therefore, the workbook, as well as the text,
places this decision before us, emphasizing that the ego system can be
changed in a single instant (since there is no time, but only the illusion
of time that our guilt demands is required before our sin can be re-
deemed, there is in reality only the one instant). However, such teach-
ings can be very much misunderstood when removed from the context
of the overriding message of the Course, which is to help us under-
stand the enormity of the ego thought system in terms of its investment
in proving the Holy Spirit wrong. For example, the manual discusses
the apparent hopelessness of escaping the ego’s battlefield of murder:
There is a way in which escape is possible. It can be learned and
taught, but it requires patience and abundant willingness (M-17.
8:3-4).
It is interesting to note the Course’s departure here from its usual use
of the adjective “little” to modify “willingness.” “Abundant” empha-
sizes to the reader the full extent of the ego thought system, and our
need to exercise vigilance against our investment in it. Of the six
stages in the development of trust, moreover, which are discussed in
the opening pages of the manual, we find that four of them contain el-
ements of discomfort. These are described with words such as “pain-
ful,” “difficult,” “It takes great learning,” “enormous conflict,” and
“anticipated grief.” In the fifth stage, the “period of unsettling,” we are
told that we must “attain a state [the anticipated sixth stage, “a period
of achievement”] that may remain impossible to reach for a long, long
time” (M-4.I-A.3:2; 4:2,5; 5:2,8; 7:1,7; 8:1).
It is clear, if only from these brief excerpts, that the curriculum of
A Course in Miracles is a lifelong one, helping its students to embark
upon a journey that requires great diligence and consistent application.
We are told by Jesus early in the text that we “are much too tolerant of
mind wandering, and are passively condoning … [our] mind’s miscre-
ations” (T-2.VI.4:6). One of the important messages to be learned from
the text is the respect we should accord our ego thought system, not be-
cause it is true, but because we believe in it. Thus we can also state that
the process of learning the Course involves growing in the discern-
ment of knowing to which voice we are listening. It is to help facilitate
this discernment of the ego’s voice, obviously based upon recognizing

604
Minimizing the Ego

it, that the text describes in graphic and sometimes painful detail, in
passage after passage, the intricacies of the insane thought system we
have elevated to the throne of reason and truth. The central teaching of
A Course in Miracles, therefore, is not the love and unity that is our
reality in Heaven, but rather the identifying and undoing of the guilt
and fear—“protected” by our special relationships—that we believe to
be our reality on earth:
Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for free-
dom lies in looking at it. … In looking at the special relationship, it
is necessary first to realize that it involves a great amount of pain.
Anxiety, despair, guilt and attack all enter into it, broken into by
periods in which they seem to be gone. All these must be under-
stood for what they are. Whatever form they take, they are always
an attack on the self to make the other guilty (T-16.IV.1:1;
T-16.V.1:1-4).
And so
The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is
beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the
blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural
inheritance (T-in.1:6-7; italics omitted).
And later, again in the context of the special relationship, the Course
reiterates:
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all
of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is
not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for
what is false (T-16.IV.6:1-2).
Thus, we may fail to recognize that the central teaching of A Course
in Miracles is helping us to remember that the one problem of the world
is guilt, as expressed through the special relationship, and that its undo-
ing comes through forgiveness. This is very clearly and succinctly
stated, using slightly different terms, in two successive Lessons, par-
tially cited above: “Let me recognize the problem so it can be solved,”
and “Let me recognize my problems have been solved”:
The problem of separation, which is really the only problem, has
already been solved [through the Holy Spirit]. … Your one central
problem has been answered, and you have no other. … Salvation
thus depends on recognizing this one problem, and understanding

605
Chapter 19 ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

that it has been solved. One problem, one solution (W-pI.79.1:4;

W-pI.80.1:2,4-5).
Yet this problem cannot be easily recognized, let alone understood, be-
cause our whole existence in this physical world is predicated on not
recognizing it.
Another unfortunate result of this process of denial is the confusion
regarding the role of the Holy Spirit in our Atonement path. Coincident
with the magical idea that all one need do to be free of the ego is have
the wish that this be so (without dealing with the underlying attraction
to its thought system), is the equally magical idea of the Holy Spirit as
the Great Provider. We have already discussed this in some detail
above, and so only briefly mention it here. Displacing our one need of
undoing our belief in scarcity onto material lack, we also displace the
solution for such lack onto the Holy Spirit. Rather than looking to His
love as the means for undoing our faulty belief system, He now be-
comes the one to solve magically our pseudo-problems by providing
rent money, parking spaces, good health, world peace, etc., etc., etc.
The profound and truly healing message of A Course in Miracles thus
becomes relegated to the trivial and superficial, much as the ancient
spiritual wisdom of the I Ching has become reduced, in the hands of
some, to a mere fortune-telling device.
Further, many followers of the Course identify the Holy Spirit with
the ego self. Thus, we subtly replicate the original error of displacing
God with our own self, and so exclude the Holy Spirit’s presence from
our awareness. Asking the Holy Spirit for solutions to our external
concerns usurps His role, for such requests presuppose our under-
standing what our needs are, without first consulting Heaven’s wisdom.
Again, we have taken His place by presuming to know by ourselves
our problems and their solutions. As the Course emphasizes:
There is another advantage,—and a very important one,—in re-
ferring decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency. … To
follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance is to let yourself be absolved of
guilt. It is the essence of the Atonement. It is the core of the curricu-
lum. The imagined usurping of functions not your own is the basis
of fear. The whole world you see reflects the illusion that you have
done so, making fear inevitable. To return the function to the One to
Whom it belongs is thus the escape from fear. And it is this that lets
the memory of love return to you (M-29.3:1,3-9).

606
Minimizing the Ego

Thus, again, by believing—on our own—that we have real problems

external to our minds that require solutions—that we determine—we
fall into the trap of making the error real.
Finally, we may note that the errors we have been discussing inevi-
tably lead to the previously mentioned lack of discernment between the
voice of the ego and the Voice for God; for example, anything I hear is
the Holy Spirit, because my intention is holy. Moreover, even if we do
“hear” right—namely our guidance is not coming from the voice of
guilt—the Holy Spirit’s message is often meant for us personally, fil-
tered through our own need system. The message itself need not neces-
sarily apply to the whole world, let alone to certain individuals we may
choose to single out as beneficiaries of our revelation. Thus we are re-
minded by the Course to “Trust not your good intentions. They are not
enough. But trust implicitly your willingness … ” (T-18.IV.2:1-3). This
willingness reflects our truly turning over to the Holy Spirit our invest-
ment to be holy, good, or helpful.
And so the overriding purpose of A Course in Miracles is not only
to teach us that our true Identity is Christ and not the ego, but to help
us understand the massive defensive structure we have built to defend
against this truth. The Course thus provides us with the means of
changing our mind and choosing again. Overly emphasizing the lovely
truth about ourselves short circuits the process of undoing by placing
our sleeping guilt under the heavy blanket of denial, where it then can
never be brought to the healing truth of forgiveness. To assert that the
central teaching of A Course in Miracles is love and oneness is not
only to fly in the face of the Course’s own words, but also to deny our-
selves access to the healing opportunity it offers us.
In this regard, students of A Course in Miracles fall into the same
category of “blissninnyhood” into which many well-intentioned con-
temporary spiritual seekers have unfortunately fallen. These otherwise
sincere seekers end up hiding the pain of their own experience within
a blissful cloud of denial, to no one’s benefit, least of all their own.
This cloud of denial then often leads a person to profess love and unity
while really denying the unconscious guilt and projecting it onto
others, never truly recognizing what is being done. Thus in recent
years we have observed the lack of peace and concord in individuals
professing this same peace and concord. Activists of any kind, be they
for racial integration, world peace or inner peace, or anti-abortionists

607
Chapter 19 ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

claiming to be pro-life, all end up witnessing to the underlying ego

thought system of separation, victimized attack, and death, which their
conscious protestations appear to be against. Indeed, “the lady doth
protest too much.”
A word should be mentioned here, recalled from this book’s Preface
and Chapter 16, about the Course’s use of language. At times A Course
in Miracles speaks metaphorically, as when it speaks of God’s lone-
liness, weeping, or state of incompletion:
God is lonely without His Sons, and they are lonely without
Him. … God Himself is lonely when His Sons do not know Him
(T-2.III.5:11; T-7.VII.10:7).
God weeps at the “sacrifice” of His children who believe they are
lost to Him (T-5.VII.4:5).
God Himself is incomplete without me. … For by it [sin] God
Himself is changed, and rendered incomplete (T-9.VII.8:2; T-19.
II.2:7; italics omitted).
Clearly, since God is abstract and does not have a body, He does not
get lonely, nor weep; as He is the All, He cannot be incomplete. Fur-
ther, the very idea that He could be any of those things clearly implies
that the separation of His Son from Himself has actually happened,
and this of course is directly antithetical to the Course’s teachings. The
point that is being made, therefore, has to be understood on the level
of the content of God’s love for His children (itself of course an anthro-
pocentric metaphor), expressed through the form of an earthly father’s
love for his child. Since we are still very much children in the spiritual
life—“You are very new in the ways of salvation” (T-17.V.9:1),
A Course in Miracles tells us—the Course’s use of language at this
level is more than appropriate.
Many times A Course in Miracles will say something meaningful
within a particular context, and yet when removed from that context
the words appear inconsistent or even contradictory to its larger teach-
ings. A good example involves the Course’s teachings on time, which
emphasize its non-linear as well as illusory nature. However, in many
passages time is talked of as if it were real, paralleling our personal ex-
perience of time’s reality. We have already discussed this particular
teaching in Chapter 17.
Another example comes in the section “The Incorruptible Body,”
where some students wrench the title from its context of the body’s

608
Minimizing the Ego

inherent illusoriness—“The body no more dies than it can feel. It does

nothing. Of itself it is neither corruptible nor incorruptible. It is nothing.
It is the result of a tiny, mad idea of corruption that can be corrected”
(T-19.IV-C.5:2-6)—to justify the teaching of other spiritual systems
that the body can indeed become immortal, a teaching totally anti-
thetical to the principles of A Course in Miracles.
We may cite one final example. In Chapter 2 we are told that “To
speak of ‘a miracle of healing’ is to combine two orders of reality in-
appropriately. Healing is not a miracle” (T-2.IV.1:3-4). And yet
Chapter 27 speaks of “a miracle of healing” (T-27.II.5:2). The appar-
ent inconsistency is resolved by recognizing that in the first reference
Jesus is emphasizing that the miracle is a means, while healing is the
result. This teaching purpose was not present later in the text, and so
the more poetic expression, “a miracle of healing,” could be used.
Thus, if a person’s ego wishes to invalidate the authority of A Course
in Miracles, it can easily find “cause” by pointing to these seeming in-
congruities. Similarly, people seeking to change the Course’s teachings
to suit their own needs can also find innumerable passages to “support”
their position. As a safeguard against making these mistakes, a student
should always evaluate any particular statement in the Course in the
light of its overall teaching.
To summarize, the errors that students of A Course in Miracles fall
into are very similar in form to the errors to which the Gnostics fell
prey. But despite the similarity in form, which is specifically relevant
to this book, there is a similarity in content that underlies all spiritual
errors: the ego’s fear of our recognizing the insanity of its position, and
accepting, finally, the sanity of the Holy Spirit’s. With the fear of
God’s wrath finally examined and smiled at, the need for the defense
against it disappears as well. And so the world will disappear, back
into the nothingness from which it came.
Thus it is precisely this ego fear of what A Course in Miracles
teaches that causes its students very often to attempt to change what it
says. As Franz Liszt wrote in an 1870 letter28 regarding Wagner’s
beautiful though lengthy music-drama, Die Walküre:

28. The letter was to Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, quoted in The Life of
Richard Wagner by Carl Friedrich Glasenapp and William Ashton Ellis (London:
K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & co., ltd., 1908).

609
Chapter 19 ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

Great works should be embraced entire, body and soul, form and
thought, spirit and life. One ought not to carp at Wagner for his
lengths—it is better to expand one’s scale to his (my italics).
The ego’s fearful message thus gets through to us, who still prefer the
ego’s story over the Holy Spirit’s, and our statement to ourselves, “I do
not want to see what this is saying,” becomes: “The Course is not saying
this.” And so the message is given to our brains to change A Course in
Miracles to mean something other than what it is truly saying.
Thus, instead of bringing our illusions to the Course’s truth, we end
up dragging down the Course’s truth to conform to our illusions. Para-
phrasing Liszt, instead of expanding our scale to the Course, we scale
the Course down to ourselves, finding all manner of justifications for
doing so. These include attempts to change the masculine terminology
on the grounds the Course is unfair to women, or to remove the offen-
sive Christian language on the grounds that the Course is unfair to
Jews, or even to de-emphasize the religious language in general on the
grounds that the Course excludes Buddhists and other practitioners of
non-Western spiritualities. Channeled writings have already appeared
—some of which purport to be from Jesus—stating not only that their
source is the author of A Course in Miracles, but also claiming to im-
prove on the original by correcting, elucidating, simplifying, or even
transcending the Course. All of these, not surprisingly, de-emphasize,
distort, or simply ignore the Course’s non-dualistic metaphysics as
being irrelevant at best, or non-existent at worst.
This de-emphasis on the metaphysics of A Course in Miracles has
given rise to a strong anti-intellectual movement regarding the Course,
not too dissimilar from a more general movement that can be noted in
our society today. This movement has also been associated with the
overemphasis on experience and feelings that has overrun psychology,
a movement whose contemporary roots date back to the post-World
War II period. Students of A Course in Miracles may therefore argue
that understanding its theory is irrelevant, and that study of the text is
a waste of time, clearly ignoring this warning at the end of the first
chapter:
This is a course in mind training. All learning involves attention
and study at some level. Some of the later parts of the course rest
too heavily on these earlier sections not to require their careful
study. You will also need them for preparation. Without this, you

610
Minimizing the Ego

may become much too fearful of what is to come to make con-

structive use of it. However, as you study these earlier sections,
you will begin to see some of the implications that will be ampli-
fied later on (T-1.VII.4).
One then sees many students emphasizing the workbook at the ex-
pense of the text, rather than viewing each book as a companion to the
other. The error here is similar to what we have already discussed. It
reflects the same unconscious Gnostic error of believing that our ego
identification is weak and can be easily discarded, leaving our minds
open to receive—instantaneously and joyously—the Word of God.
This anti-intellectual stance is thus in many cases the expression of a
fear of looking at the ego thought system in all its ugliness. As we have
commented before, no one really wants to deal with the horrifying sin
and guilt our egos have convinced us is our reality.
Thus, rather than carefully reading the text—which lays out the
brutal nature of the ego thought system, necessitating our dealing with it
—a student may dismiss such discussions of the ego as not being im-
portant. Again, this misses the whole point of the Course’s efficacy as
a spiritual teaching, and discounts the inherent unity of its curriculum,
which does depend on understanding and recognizing our investment
in perpetuating the ego’s thought system, precisely by not looking at it.
As we have already discussed, it is in not looking at the ego that it is
allowed to survive as a thought system in our minds. To be sure,
A Course in Miracles is not always easy to understand, let alone prac-
tice. Yet the ultimate difficulty does not really lie on a conceptual or in-
tellectual level, but rather is found within the teaching itself. This
teaching, as we have discussed throughout this book, strikes terror in
minds which still identify with the ego self. And it is this very ego self
that is so threatened by what the Course presents to us.
Finally, we should underscore that the attempt to dismiss the
Course’s teachings also reflects a denial of what A Course in Miracles
is. It is an intellectual system, at least in form. In fact, the scribe Helen
Schucman had exclaimed to Jesus at the close of the dictation: “Thank
God there is at last something [on the spiritual life] for the intellec-
tual.” There already exist many fine spiritual systems—ancient and
contemporary—that are non-intellectual. All these are as valid as the
Course in their potential to lead their serious students to God. To deny
the Course its particular uniqueness is to diminish its contribution,

611
Chapter 19 ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS

just as forcing a non-intellectual approach into a Procrustean bed of

the intellect would wreak equal havoc on that system. Moreover, it is
important to realize that working through the Course’s intellectual
presentation leads one to an experience of peace, and that experience,
not a mere intellectual understanding, is the goal of the Course.
Therefore, students should pay careful attention to the Course’s
teachings on the ego, and should resist the temptation to change the
form to suit their personal requirements. Above all, one should have
humility as one stands before it. The Course urges us to “be humble
before Him, and yet great in Him” (T-15.IV.3:1), meaning that we are
great because of our Identity as God’s Son, and yet we are humble be-
cause He is our Creator and Source, and we need His help (through the
Holy Spirit) to awaken to our reality as His Son. Likewise, we should
feel the humility of recognizing the learning we need accomplish be-
fore we can remember our Identity as Christ. Trying to change, distort,
or scale A Course in Miracles down to our size is an expression of the
ego’s arrogance. One would do well to remember a statement made by
Bruno Walter, perhaps the greatest Mozart conductor of this century.
It needs some maturity to understand the depth of emotion which
speaks in Mozart’s seeming tranquillity and measure. … I was …
fifty when for the first time I was audacious enough to perform the
G Minor [Symphony]. I … had such a feeling of responsibility and
of the difficulty to perform it. … And I wondered at all the young
conductors who, without any qualms, just went ahead and con-
ducted all these works which asked for such depth of feeling and
such maturity of technique. (From an unpublished interview.)
Clearly, people do not have to be fifty before they can feel they have
understood A Course in Miracles, or are prepared to teach it. However,
we should be able to accept with humility the need to learn from this
wonderful gift from Heaven, rather than to allow the ego’s arrogance
to tell us that, since the love of God is all that we now experience, we
have already learned everything the Course can teach. True humility,
in the spirit of Dr. Walter’s attitude towards Mozart, would have us
welcome gladly the truth that in this world we have much to learn, and
so we gratefully accept the spiritual tool and inner Guide that would
teach us how to remove “the blocks to the awareness of love’s pres-
ence” (T-in.1:7; italics omitted), and return home to that Love.

612
Minimizing the Ego

613
 EPILOGUE

Helmut Koester has commented on the newly discovered Nag

Hammadi texts (“new texts”):
Now we must rewrite Christian theology to reflect a more radical
newness. … Our old schemes of categorization, developed by the last
century of scholarship, are not adequate for the new texts. We must
not simply fit the new evidence into the old schemes but rather de-
velop new schemes, to be discarded in their turn (in Layton, p. 351).
A Course in Miracles is such a rewrite of Christian theology, in the
context of the Neoplatonic and Gnostic traditions, cleansed and ex-
panded by the insights of twentieth-century psychology. Thus the old
wine of traditional Christianity has been reconstituted in new wine-
skins, its “old schemes” looked at freshly, and presented anew to eyes
and ears receptive to the form of its message. Indeed, the Course can
be thought of as the zenith of Western philosophical and religious
thought, reconciling the paradox that has virtually imprisoned us in
thought systems that reflected our conflicted experience in a world
from which we could not truly escape. Holding the key that unlocks
this prison door, the Course heals these conflicts of the past, freeing us
to build upon its foundation a new beginning, turning the corner on a
journey that will carry us ever closer to our God.
At the end of the third edition of The Gnostic Religion, Jonas posed
a challenge to philosophy regarding “a third road” that bridges the gap
between our dualistic experience in the world and the truth of our tran-
scendent reality:
The disruption between man and total reality is at the bottom of
nihilism. The illogicality of the rupture, that is, of a dualism with-
out metaphysics, makes its fact no less real, nor its seeming alter-
native any more acceptable: the stare at isolated selfhood, to
which it condemns man, may wish to exchange itself for a monis-
tic naturalism which, along with the rupture, would abolish also
the idea of man as man. Between that Scylla and this her twin
Charybdis, the modern mind hovers. Whether a third road is open
to it—one by which the dualistic rift can be avoided and yet
enough of the dualistic insight saved to uphold the humanity of
man—philosophy must find out (Jonas, p. 340).

613
EPILOGUE

It has been one of the prime motivations of this book to set forth the
integration of these two roads—a non-dualistic metaphysics alongside
our dualistic experience here—and illustrate how A Course in Miracles
provides that middle ground of which Jonas speaks: a philosophical
teaching that does full justice both to our experience within the phys-
ical world, and our awareness of the reality that is totally transcendent
to our experience here. In this regard, then, the reader has been urged
not to change the Course, but, seeking to grow into its vision, to accept
it on its terms in order to understand the gift it is offering. Thus, in the
context of students working with the Course, we may repeat here the
words of Krishnamurti in continually reminding his audiences of the
importance of truly listening to his teaching message: Pay attention.
Recognizing the philosophical and theological soil from which
A Course in Miracles derives the context for its ultimately trans-
contextual message can be a helpful tool in one’s study and practice of
its teachings. Thus, this book has also addressed those who would find
explication of such a context advantageous to their study. The in-depth
look at the Course’s resolution of the God-world paradox highlights
the uniqueness of A Course in Miracles as a contemporary spiritual
tool. However, whether or not individuals decide it is their particular
spiritual path, it is hoped at least that such decision is an informed one,
rather than one made—for or against—on the basis of misunderstand-
ing and fear.
Thus we can, finally, speak of the Course as being the great middle
path—Jonas’ “third road”—that steers clear of the twin dangers of ir-
relevant and impractical metaphysics on the one hand, and superficial
and groundless practical application on the other. By blending together
both roads, A Course in Miracles forges a spirituality for our day that
meets us in our ego’s depths, at the same time lifting us to the gate of
Heaven. We recall this previously quoted passage from the workbook:
Our Love awaits us as we go to Him, and walks beside us show-
ing us the way. He fails in nothing. He the End we seek, and He the
Means by which we go to Him (W-pII.302.2).
Joined once again with the love of Heaven, we are free to walk
through this world of seeming imprisonment and pain, with God’s
gentle presence of truth flowing unhindered through us. Our eyes
have opened to reality; and despite our apparent presence within the
illusory world, our minds have remembered their Source, and rest

614
Epilogue

peacefully within His love. The nightmare has ended, replaced by

happy dreams of forgiveness whose message of hope and freedom has
been finally received. Our grateful hearts open to God’s Call, and our
arms extend in fond embrace to all living things. Jesus’ name sings
through our lips, softly touching all the world whose ears have
yearned for sounds they thought were forever lost. Now does the song
of Heaven’s love reverberate through every mind, and our journey
speeds mightily along as we rejoin our loved ones, reunited in Christ,
for Christ, as Christ. One Son again, we are safely home and can rest
at last.

615
APPENDIX
 “THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH”

This tractate is reprinted here from THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY, first edi-
tion, translation by George W. MacRae. Textual signs have been retained
except for line dividers and numbers. Square brackets [ ] indicate a lacuna
in the manuscript; when the text could not be reconstructed, three dots were
placed within the brackets, regardless of the size of the lacuna. Pointed
brackets < > indicate a correction of a scribal omission or error. Braces {}
indicate superfluous letters or words added by the scribe. Parentheses ( ) in-
dicate material supplied by the editor or translator.
The gospel of truth is a joy for those who have received from the
Father of truth the gift of knowing him, through the power of the
Word that came forth from the pleroma—the one who is in the
thought and the mind of the Father, that is, the one who is addressed
as the Savior, (that) being the name of the work he is to perform for
the redemption of those who were ignorant of the Father, while the
name [of] the gospel is the proclamation of hope, being discovery for
those who search for him.
Indeed the all went about searching for the one from whom it (pl.)
had come forth, and the all was inside of him, the incomprehensible,
inconceivable one who is superior to every thought. Ignorance of the
Father brought about anguish and terror. And the anguish grew solid
like a fog so that no one was able to see. For this reason error became
powerful; it fashioned its own matter foolishly, not having known the
truth. It set about making a creature, with (all its) might preparing, in
beauty, the substitute for the truth.
This was not, then, a humiliation for him, the incomprehensible, in-
conceivable one, for they were nothing—the anguish and the oblivion
and the creature of lying—while the established truth is immutable,
imperturbable, perfect in beauty. For this reason, despise error.
Being thus without any root, it fell into a fog regarding the Father,
while it was involved in preparing works and oblivions and terrors in
order that by means of these it might entice those of the middle and
capture them. The oblivion of error was not revealed. It is not a [ … ]
under the Father. Oblivion did not come into existence under the
Father, although it did indeed come into existence because of him. But
what comes into existence in him is knowledge, which appeared in
order that oblivion might vanish and the Father might be known. Since

619
“THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH”

oblivion came into existence because the Father was not known, then
if the Father comes to be known, oblivion will not exist from that
moment on.
This <is > the gospel of the one who is searched for, which < was >
revealed to those who are perfect through the mercies of the Father—
the hidden mystery, Jesus, the Christ. Through it he enlightened those
who were in darkness. Out of oblivion he enlightened them, he showed
(them) a way. And the way is the truth which he taught them.
For this reason error grew angry at him, persecuted him, was dis-
tressed at him, (and) was brought to naught. He was nailed to a tree; he
became a fruit of the knowledge of the Father, which did not, however,
become destructive because it < was > eaten, but to those who ate it it
gave (cause) to become glad in the discovery. For he discovered them
in himself, and they discovered him in themselves, the incomprehen-
sible, inconceivable one, the Father, the perfect one, the one who made
the all, while the all is within him and the all has need of him, since he
retained its (pl.) perfection within himself which he did not give to the
all. The Father was not jealous. What jealousy indeed (could there be)
between himself and his members? For if the aeon had thus [received]
their [perfection], they could not have come [ … ] the Father, since he
retained their perfection within himself, granting it to them as a return
to him and a knowledge unique in perfection. It is he who fashioned
the all, and the all is within him and the all had need of him.
As in the case of one of whom some are ignorant, who wishes to
have them know him and love him, so—for what did the all have need
of if not knowledge regarding the Father?—he became a guide, restful
and leisurely. He went into the midst of the schools (and) he spoke the
word as a teacher. There came the wise men—in their own estimation
—putting him to the test. But he confounded them because they were
foolish. They hated him because they were not really wise.
After all these, there came the little children also, those to whom
the knowledge of the Father belongs. Having been strengthened, they
learned about the impressions of the Father. They knew, they were
known; they were glorified, they glorified. There was revealed in their
heart the living book of the living—the one written in the thought and
the mind [of the] Father, and which from before the foundation of the
all was within the incomprehensible (parts) of him—that (book)
which no one was able to take since it is reserved for the one who will
take it and will be slain. No one could have appeared among those

620
“The Gospel of Truth”

who believed in salvation unless that book had intervened. For this
reason the merciful one, the faithful one, Jesus, was patient in accept-
ing sufferings until he took that book, since he knows that his death is
life for many.
Just as there lies hidden in a will, before it < is > opened, the fortune
of the deceased master of the house, so (it is) with the all, which lay
hidden while the Father of the all was invisible, the one who is from
himself, from whom all spaces come forth. For this reason Jesus ap-
peared; he put on that book; he was nailed to a tree; he published the
edict of the Father on the cross. O such great teaching! He draws him-
self down to death though life eternal clothes him. Having stripped
himself of the perishable rags, he put on imperishability, which no one
can possibly take away from him. Having entered the empty spaces of
terrors, he passed through those who were stripped naked by oblivion,
being knowledge and perfection, proclaiming the things that are in the
heart of the [Father] in order to [ … ] teach those who will receive
teaching.
But those who are to receive teaching [are] the living who are in-
scribed in the book of the living. They receive teaching about them-
selves. They receive it (pl.) from the Father, turning again to him.
Since the perfection of the all is in the Father, it is necessary for the all
to ascend to him. Then, if one has knowledge, he receives what are his
own and draws them to himself. For he who is ignorant is in need, and
what he lacks is great since he lacks that which will make him perfect.
Since the perfection of the all is in the Father and it is necessary for the
all to ascend to him and for each one to receive what are his own, he
enrolled them in advance, having prepared them to give to those who
came forth from him.
Those whose name he knew in advance were called at the end, so
that one who has knowledge is the one whose name the Father has ut-
tered. For he whose name has not been spoken is ignorant. Indeed, how
is one to hear if his name has not been called? For he who is ignorant
until the end is a creature of oblivion, and he will vanish along with it.
If not, how is it that these miserable ones have no name, (how is it that)
they do not have the call? Therefore if one has knowledge, he is from
above. If he is called, he hears, he answers, and he turns to him who is
calling him, and ascends to him. And he knows in what manner he is
called. Having knowledge, he does the will of the one who called him,
he wishes to be pleasing to him, he receives rest.

621
“THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH”

Each one’s name comes to him. He who is to have knowledge in

this manner knows where he comes from and where he is going. He
knows as one who having become drunk has turned away from his
drunkenness, (and) having returned to himself, has set right what are
his own. He has brought many back from error. He has gone before
them to their places, from which they had moved away when they re-
ceived error, on account of the depth of the one who encircles all
spaces while there is none that encircles him. It was a great wonder that
they were in the Father, not knowing him, and (that) they were able to
come forth by themselves, since they were unable to comprehend or to
know the one in whom they were. If his will had not thus emerged
from him—for he revealed it in view of a knowledge in which all its
emanations concur.
This is the knowledge of the living book which he revealed to the
aeons to the last of its [letters], revealing how they are not vowels nor
are they consonants, so that one might read them and think of some-
thing foolish, but they are letters of the truth which they alone speak
who know them. Each letter is a complete <thought> like a complete
book, since they are letters written by the Unity, the Father having
written them for the aeons in order that by means of his letters they
should know the Father. His wisdom contemplates the Word, his teach-
ing utters it, his knowledge has revealed < it>. His forbearance is a
crown upon it, his gladness is in harmony with it, his glory has exalted
it, his image has revealed it, his repose has received it into itself, his
love has made a body over it, his fidelity has embraced it. In this way
the Word of the Father goes forth in the all, as the fruit [of ] his heart
and an impression of his will. But it supports the all; it chooses it (pl.)
and also receives the impression of the all, purifying it (pl.), bringing
it (pl.) back into the Father, into the Mother, Jesus of the infiniteness
of gentleness.
The Father reveals his bosom—now his bosom is the Holy Spirit.
He reveals what is hidden of him—what is hidden of him is his Son—
so that through the mercies of the Father the aeons may know him and
cease laboring in search of the Father, resting there in him, knowing
that this is rest. Having filled the deficiency, he abolished the form—
the form of it is the world, that in which he served. For the place where
there is envy and strife is a deficiency, but the place where (there is)
Unity is a perfection. Since the deficiency came into being because the
Father was not known, therefore when the Father is known, from that

622
“The Gospel of Truth”

moment on the deficiency will no longer exist. As with the ignorance

of a person, when he comes to have knowledge his ignorance vanishes
of itself, as the darkness vanishes when light appears, so also the defi-
ciency vanishes in the perfection. So from that moment on the form is
not apparent, but it will vanish in the fusion of Unity, for now their
works lie scattered. In time Unity will perfect the spaces. It is within
Unity that each one will attain himself; within knowledge he will
purify himself from multiplicity into Unity, consuming matter within
himself like fire, and darkness by light, death by life.
If indeed these things have happened to each one of us, then we
must see to it above all that the house will be holy and silent for the
Unity. (It is) as in the case of some people who moved out of dwellings
where there were jars that in spots were not good. They would break
them, and the master of the house does not suffer loss. Rather <he > is
glad because in place of the bad jars there are full ones which are made
perfect. For such is the judgment which has come from above. It has
passed judgment on everyone; it is a drawn sword, with two edges, cut-
ting on either side. When the Word came into the midst, the one that is
within the heart of those who utter it—it is not a sound alone but it be-
came a body—a great disturbance took place among the jars because
some had been emptied, others filled; that is, some had been supplied,
others poured out, some had been purified, still others broken up. All
the spaces were shaken and disturbed because they had no order nor
stability. Error was upset, not knowing what to do; it was grieved, in
mourning, afflicting itself because it knew nothing. When knowledge
drew near it—this is the downfall of (error) and all its emanations—
error is empty, having nothing inside.
Truth came into the midst; all its emanations knew it. They greeted
the Father in truth with a perfect power that joins them with the Father.
For everyone loves the truth because the truth is the mouth of the
Father; his tongue is the Holy Spirit. He who is joined to the truth is
joined to the Father’s mouth by his tongue, whenever he is to receive
the Holy Spirit. This is the manifestation of the Father and his revela-
tion to his aeons: he manifested what was hidden of him; he explained
it. For who contains if not the Father alone? All the spaces are his em-
anations. They have known that they came forth from him like chil-
dren who are from a grown man. They knew that they had not yet
received form nor yet received a name, each one of which the Father
begets. Then when they receive form by his knowledge, though truly

623
“THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH”

within him, they do not know him. But the Father is perfect, knowing
every space within him. If he wishes, he manifests whomever he
wishes by giving him form and giving him a name, and he gives a
name to him and brings it about that those come into existence who be-
fore they come into existence are ignorant of him who fashioned them.
I do not say, then, that they are nothing (at all) who have not yet
come into existence, but they are in him who will wish that they come
into existence when he wishes, like the time that is to come. Before all
things appear, he knows what he will produce. But the fruit which is
not yet manifest knows nothing, nor does it do anything. Thus also
every space which is itself in the Father is from the one who exists,
who established it from what does not exist. For he who has no root
has no fruit either, but though he thinks to himself, “I have come into
being,” yet he will perish by himself. For this reason, he who did not
exist at all will never come into existence. What, then, did he wish him
to think of himself ? This: “I have come into being like the shadows
and phantoms of the night.” When the light shines on the terror which
that person had experienced, he knows that it is nothing.
Thus they were ignorant of the Father, he being the one whom they
did not see. Since it was terror and disturbance and instability and
doubt and division, there were many illusions at work by means of
these, and (there were) empty fictions, as if they were sunk in sleep and
found themselves in disturbing dreams. Either (there is) a place to
which they are fleeing, or without strength they come (from) having
chased after others, or they are involved in striking blows, or they are
receiving blows themselves, or they have fallen from high places, or
they take off into the air though they do not even have wings. Again,
sometimes (it is as) if people were murdering them, though there is no
one even pursuing them, or they themselves are killing their neighbors,
for they have been stained with their blood. When those who are going
through all these things wake up, they see nothing, they who were in
the midst of all these disturbances, for they are nothing. Such is the
way of those who have cast ignorance aside from them like sleep, not
esteeming it as anything, nor do they esteem its works as solid things
either, but they leave them behind like a dream in the night. The
knowledge of the Father they value as the dawn. This is the way each
one has acted, as though asleep at the time when he was ignorant. And
this is the way he has come to knowledge, as if he had awakened.
{And} Good for the man who will come to and awaken. And blessed

624
“The Gospel of Truth”

is he who has opened the eyes of the blind. And the Spirit ran after him,
hastening from waking him up. Having extended his hand to him who
lay upon the ground, he set him up on his feet, for he had not yet risen.
He gave them the means of knowing the knowledge of the Father and
the revelation of his Son.
For when they had seen him and had heard him, he granted them to
taste him and to smell him and to touch the beloved Son. When he had
appeared instructing them about the Father, the incomprehensible one,
when he had breathed into them what is in the mind, doing his will,
when many had received the light, they turned to him. For the material
ones were strangers and did not see his likeness and had not known
him. For he came by means of fleshly appearance while nothing
blocked his course because it was incorruptibility (and) irresistibility.
Again, speaking new things, still speaking about what is in the heart of
the Father, he brought forth the flawless word. Light spoke through his
mouth, and his voice gave birth to life. He gave them thought and
understanding and mercy and salvation and the powerful spirit from the
infiniteness and the gentleness of the Father. He made punishments and
tortures cease, for it was they which were leading astray from his face
some who were in need of mercy, in error and in bonds; and with power
he destroyed them and confounded them with knowledge. He became
a way for those who were lost and knowledge for those who were ig-
norant, a discovery for those who were searching, and a support for
those who were wavering, immaculateness for those who were defiled.
He is the shepherd who left behind the ninety-nine sheep which
were not lost. He went searching for the one which was lost. He re-
joiced when he found it, for 99 is a number that is in the left hand
which holds it. But when the one is found, the entire number passes to
the right (hand). Thus (it is with) him who lacks the one; that is, the
entire right which draws what was deficient and takes it from the left-
hand side and brings (it) to the right, and thus the number becomes
100. It is the sign of the one who is in their sound; it is the Father. Even
on the Sabbath, he labored for the sheep which he found fallen into the
pit. He gave life to the sheep, having brought it up from the pit in order
that you might know interiorly—you, the sons of interior knowledge
—what is the Sabbath, on which it is not fitting for salvation to be idle,
in order that you may speak from the day from above, which has no
night, and from the light which does not sink because it is perfect. Say,

625
“THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH”

then, from the heart that you are the perfect day and in you dwells the
light that does not fail.
Speak of the truth with those who search for it, and (of) knowledge
to those who have committed sin in their error. Make firm the foot of
those who have stumbled and stretch out your hands to those who are
ill. Feed those who are hungry and give repose to those who are weary,
and raise up those who wish to rise, and awaken those who sleep. For
you are the understanding that is drawn forth. If strength acts thus, it
becomes even stronger. Be concerned with yourselves; do not be con-
cerned with other things which you have rejected from yourselves. Do
not return to what you have vomited to eat it. Do not be moths, do not
be worms, for you have already cast it off. Do not become a (dwelling)
place for the devil, for you have already destroyed him. Do not
strengthen (those who are) obstacles to you who are collapsing, as
though (you were) a support (for them). For the unjust one is someone
to treat ill rather than the just one. For the former does his works as an
unjust person; the latter as a righteous person does his works among
others. So you, do the will of the Father, for you are from him.
For the Father is gentle and in his will there are good things. He
took cognizance of the things that are yours that you might find rest in
them. For by the fruits does one take cognizance of the things that are
yours because the children of the Father are his fragrance, for they are
from the grace of his countenance. For this reason the Father loves his
fragrance and manifests it in every place, and if it mixes with matter
he gives his fragrance to the light and in his repose he causes it to sur-
pass every form (and) every sound. For it is not the ears that smell the
fragrance, but (it is) the breath that has the sense of smell and attracts
the fragrance to itself and is submerged in the fragrance of the Father.
It shelters it, then, takes it to the place where it came from, the first fra-
grance which is grown cold. It is something in a psychic form, being
like cold water which has [ … ], which is on earth that is not solid, of
which those who see it think it is earth; afterwards it dissolves again.
If a breath draws it, it gets hot. The fragrances therefore that are cold
are from the division. For this reason [faith] came; it did away with the
division, and it brought the warm pleroma of love in order that the cold
should not come again but there should be the unity of perfect thought.
This <is > the word of the gospel of the discovery of the pleroma,
for those who await the salvation which is coming from on high. While
their hope which they are waiting for is waiting—they whose image is

626
“The Gospel of Truth”

light with no shadow in it—then at that time the pleroma is about to

come. The deficiency of matter has not arisen through the limitlessness
of the Father, who is about to bring the time of the deficiency, although
no one could say that the incorruptible one will come in this way. But
the depth of the Father was multiplied and the thought of error did not
exist with him. It is a thing that falls, it is a thing that easily stands up-
right (again) in the discovery of him who has come to him whom he
shall bring back. For the bringing back is called repentance.
For this reason incorruptibility breathed forth; it pursued the one
who had sinned in order that he might rest. For forgiveness is what re-
mains for the light in the deficiency, the word of the pleroma. For the
physician runs to the place where a sickness is because that is his will
that is in him. He who has a deficiency, then, does not hide it, because
one has what the other lacks. So with the pleroma, which has no defi-
ciency; it fills up his deficiency—(it is) that which he provided for fill-
ing up what he lacks, in order that therefore he might receive the grace.
When he was deficient he did not have the grace. That is why there was
diminution existing in the place where there is no grace. When that
which was diminished was received, he revealed what he lacked, as a
pleroma; that is the discovery of the light of truth which rose upon him
because it is immutable.
That is why Christ was spoken of in their midst, so that those who
were disturbed might receive a bringing back, and he might anoint
them with the ointment. The ointment is the mercy of the Father who
will have mercy on them. But those whom he has anointed are the ones
who have become perfect. For full jars are the ones that are usually
anointed. But when the anointing of one (jar) is dissolved, it is emp-
tied, and the reason for there being a deficiency is the thing through
which its ointment goes. For at that time a breath draws it, one by the
power of the one with it. But from him who has no deficiency no seal
is removed, nor is anything emptied. But what he lacks the perfect
Father fills again. He is good. He knows his plantings because it is he
who planted them in his paradise. Now his paradise is his place of rest.
This is the perfection in the thought of the Father, and these are the
words of his meditation. Each one of his words is the work of his one
will in the revelation of his Word. While they were still in the depth of
his thought, the Word which was first to come forth revealed them
along with a mind that speaks the one Word in silent grace. It (masc.)
was called thought since they were in it (fem.) before being revealed.

627
“THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH”

It came about, then, that it was first to come forth at the time that was
pleasing to the will of him who willed. And the will is what the Father
rests in and is pleased with. Nothing happens without him, nor does
anything happen without the will of the Father, but his will is incom-
prehensible. His trace is the will, and no one will know it, nor is it pos-
sible for one to scrutinize it in order to grasp it. But when he wills,
what he wills is this—even if the sight does not please them in any
way—before God (it is) the will, the Father. For he knows the begin-
ning of all of them and their end. For at their end he will question them
directly (?). Now the end is receiving knowledge about the one who is
hidden, and this is the Father, from whom the beginning came forth, to
whom all will return who have come forth from him. And they have
appeared for the glory and the joy of his name.
Now the name of the Father is the Son. It is he who first gave a
name to the one who came forth from him, who was himself, and he
begot him as a son. He gave him his name which belonged to him; he
is the one to whom belongs all that exists around him, the Father. His
is the name; his is the Son. It is possible for him to be seen. But the
name is invisible because it alone is the mystery of the invisible which
comes to ears that are completely filled with it. For indeed the Father’s
name is not spoken, but it is apparent through a Son.
In this way, then, the name is a great thing. Who therefore will be
able to utter a name for him, the great name, except him alone to whom
the name belongs and the sons of the name in whom rested the name
of the Father, (who) in turn themselves rested in his name? Since the
Father is unengendered, he alone is the one who begot a name for him-
self before he brought forth the aeons in order that the name of the
Father should be over their head as lord, that is, the name in truth,
which is firm in his command through perfect power. For the name is
not from (mere) words, nor does his name consist of appellations, but
it is invisible. He gave a name to himself since he sees himself, he
alone having the power to give himself a name. For he who does not
exist has no name. For what name is given to him who does not exist?
But the one who exists exists also with his name, and he knows him-
self. And to give himself a name is (the prerogative of) the Father. The
Son is his name. He did not therefore hide it in the work, but the Son
existed; he alone was given the name. The name therefore is that of the
Father, as the name of the Father is the Son. Where indeed would
mercy find a name except with the Father?

628
“The Gospel of Truth”

But no doubt one will say to his neighbor, “Who is it who will give
a name to him who existed before himself, as if offspring did not re-
ceive a name from those who begot them?” First, then, it is fitting for
us to reflect on this matter: what is the name? It is the name in truth; it
is not therefore the name from the father, for it is the one which is the
proper name. Therefore he did not receive the name on loan as (do)
others, according to the form in which each one is to be produced. But
this is the proper name. There is no one else who gave it to him. But
he is unnameable, indescribable, until the time when he who is perfect
spoke of himself. And it is he who has the power to speak his name and
to see it.
When therefore it pleased him that his name which is uttered should
be his Son, and he gave the name to him, that is, him who came forth
from the depth, he spoke about his secret things, knowing that the
Father is a being without evil. For that very reason he brought him
forth in order to speak about the place and his resting-place from
which he had come forth, and to glorify the pleroma, the greatness of
his name and the gentleness of the Father. About the place each one
came from he will speak, and to the region where he received his es-
sential being he will hasten to return again, and to be taken from that
place—the place where he stood—receiving a taste from that place
and receiving nourishment, receiving growth. And his own resting-
place in his pleroma.
Therefore all the emanations of the Father are pleromas, and the
root of all his emanations is in the one who made them all grown up in
himself. He assigned them their destinies. Each one then is apparent in
order that through their own thought [...]. For the place to which they
send their thought, that place (is) their root, which takes them up in all
the heights to the Father. They possess his head which is rest for them
and they hold on close to him, as though to say that they have partici-
pated in his face by means of kisses. But they do not appear in this way,
for they did not surpass themselves nor lack the glory of the Father nor
think of him as small nor that he is harsh nor that he is wrathful, but a
being without evil, imperturbable, gentle, knowing all spaces before
they have come into existence, and having no need to be instructed.
This is the manner of those who possess (something) from above of
the immeasurable greatness, as they stretch out after the one alone and
the perfect one, the one who is there for them. And they do not go
down to Hades nor have they envy nor groaning nor death within them,

629
“THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH”

but they rest in him who is at rest, not striving nor being involved in
the search for truth. But they themselves are the truth; and the Father
is within them and they are in the Father, being perfect, being un-
divided in the truly good one, being in no way deficient in anything,
but they are set at rest, refreshed in the Spirit. And they will heed their
root. They will be concerned with those (things) in which he will find
his root and not suffer loss to his soul. This is the place of the blessed;
this is their place.
For the rest, then, may they know, in their places, that it is not fitting
for me, having come to be in the resting-place, to speak of anything
else. But it is in it that I shall come to be, to be concerned at all times
with the Father of the all and the true brothers, those upon whom the
love of the Father is poured out and in whose midst there is no lack of
him. They are the ones who appear in truth since they exist in true and
eternal life and speak of the light which is perfect and filled with the
seed of the Father, and which is in his heart and in the pleroma, while
his Spirit rejoices in it and glorifies the one in whom it existed because
he is good. And his children are perfect and worthy of his name, for he
is the Father: it is children of this kind that he loves.

630
 TABLE OF DATES

B.C.

Pythagoras, ca. 571-497 Plato, 427-348

Heraclitus, ca. 540-480 Aristotle, 384-322
Parmenides, fl. 501-492 Speusippus, d. 339
Socrates, 469-399

A.D.

St. Paul, ca. 10-67 Tertullian, ca. 160-222

Simon Magus, ca. 50 in Samaria Ammonius Saccas, 175-242
Menander, ca. 80 in Antioch Origen, 185-254
Nicholas of Antioch, 1st cent. Plotinus, 205-270
Philo of Alexandria, Mani, 216-276
ca. 20 B.C.-A.D. 50 Porphyry, 232-304
Clement, Bishop of Rome, fl. 95 Hippolytus, d. ca. 235
Ignatius of Antioch, d. 111 Eusebius of Caesarea,
Carpocrates, ca. 120/130 ca. 264-339
in Alexandria Iamblichus, 270- 330
Saturninus, ca. 120/130 in Syria Athanasius, 298-373
Epiphanes, 2d cent. Epiphanius of Salamis,
Basilides, 2d cent. ca. 315-403
Albinus, 2d cent. Pachomius, 320 founded 
Marcus Aurelius, 121-180 Coptic monasticism
Irenaeus of Lyons, ca. 130-200 Gregory of Nyssa, ca. 335-395
Marcion, d. ca. 160 St. Jerome, 340-420
Justin Martyr, d. 165 St. Augustine, 354-430
Valentinus, d. ca. 160 Pelagius, ca. 360-420
Heracleon, ca. 150-200 Proclus, 410-485
Marcus, ca. 150-200 Justinian, 483-565
Ptolemaeus, ca. 150-200 Pseudo-Dionysius, ca. 500
Theodotus, ca. 150-200 Theodore bar Konai, 8th cent.
Clement of Alexandria, 150-211 Photius, 820-891

631
 GLOSSARY

PLATONISM

anamnesis – the process whereby the imprisoned soul, through reason and ed-
ucation, remembers its true home in the intelligible world.
cosmos – the entire physical universe created by the Demiurge (Plato), Divine
Mind (Philo), or Soul (Plotinus); seen as a “living god.” See also under
Gnosticism, and “world” under A COURSE IN MIRACLES.
Craftsman – See: Demiurge
Demiurge – the fashioner or Craftsman of the material world; a positive figure
in Plato. See also under GNOSTICISM.
evil – inherent in matter; what is not spiritual or good.
Good – Plato’s God, the Source of the Ideas.
hyle – “matter”; a given in Platonic thought; uncreated, the lowest in the chain
of being; unformed and irrational until shaped by the Demiurge (Mind,
Soul).
hypostasis – in Plotinus, one of three Divine Beings: One, Mind, Soul.
Ideas (Forms) – the perfect, immutable, and ideal models, of which every-
thing found in the material world is but an imperfect copy; part of reality.
Intelligible – Platonic word for spiritual, as in the intelligible (non-material)
world.
Logos – Philo’s term, roughly equivalent to Plato’s Ideas, through which God
creates the world.
matter – See: hyle.
Middle Platonism – the revival of Platonism in the second century B.C. through
the first century A.D.
mimesis – imitation; the activity wherein the soul imitates the purity of the
Ideas and attains virtue.
Mind – Middle Platonic term, roughly equivalent to Plato’s Good; in Plotinus,
the middle part of the Triad and the home of the Divine Ideas, giving rise
to the Soul.
Monism – philosophical doctrine of one original principle of being; non-
dualism.
Neoplatonism – the extension of Platonism beginning in the third century A.D.;
Plotinus was its foremost representative.
nous – “mind”; seen as divine and thus roughly equivalent to the spirit.
nurse – in Plato, the receptacle for matter, later to be fashioned into the world
by the Demiurge.
One – in Plotinus, the first part of the Triad and thus equivalent to God; totally
unified and undifferentiated.

633
GLOSSARY

PLATONISM (CONTINUED)

ontology – study of being; usually referring to ultimate origins, as in the on-

tological instant of separation.
reason – Plato’s “salvation” principle, the means whereby the soul remem-
bers its reality.
soul – in Plato, consists of reason, emotion, and the appetites; is immortal and
yet is trapped in the world of shadows and must be freed to return to the
world of light; also spoken of as the mediator between these two worlds;
in Plotinus,the third part of the Triad and creator of the world, and also the
mediator between the Ideas and the world; when spelled in lower case, re-
fers to the split off part of the Soul that became trapped in matter and needs
to return to its Self. See also under GNOSTICISM.

ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY

Apocrypha (New Testament) – the Christian writings that remained outside of

the Church canon (non-canonical), some of which nonetheless remained
unofficially sanctioned by the Church.
apophaticism – the theological teaching that God is totally beyond our under-
standing and knowledge.
canon – “rule”; the set of writings, established by the orthodox Church, that
came to be exclusively identified as the New Testament.
Christ – Second Person of the Trinity, exclusively identified with Jesus,
God’s only Son. See also under A COURSE IN MIRACLES.
Christology – the theology of Christ (Jesus); “low” Christology refers to the
Synoptic Jesus who is born to the Virgin Mary; “high” Christology refers
to the Johannine Jesus who coexists with God from the beginning—the
cosmic Christ—and through whom the world is created.
deutero-Paul – “second Paul”; the unknown author of New Testament letters
attributed to Paul, but written after his death.
docetism – Gnostic heresy; see under GNOSTICISM.
eschatology – theology of the “End Times”; almost always concerned with
the Last Judgment.
Fathers of the Church – the theologians of the early Christian centuries,
whose writings shaped Church theology.
God – See: Trinity; more popularly thought of as the First Person of the
Trinity; Creator of both Heaven and the material universe; Father of Jesus
Christ, His only Son. See also under A COURSE IN MIRACLES.
heresiologists – the Church Fathers who devoted themselves to defending the
Church against those deemed as heretics.

634
 Glossary

ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY (CONTINUED)

Holy Spirit – Third Person of the Trinity, coexistent with the Father and the
Son. See also under A COURSE IN MIRACLES.
Jesus – See: Christ. See also under A COURSE IN MIRACLES.
Johannine – denoting the gospel and three epistles of John.
Logos – in John’s gospel the creative principle of God, equated solely with
Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity.
Pelagianism – a Christian heresy that held that God is not necessary for sal-
vation; opposed by St. Augustine’s doctrine of grace.
rational beings – Origen’s term for God’s original creation, the spiritual Self,
that “falls,” after which the rational being is referred to as the soul.
regula fidei – rule of “faith”; the divinely inspired norm for the “true” inter-
pretation of the gospel.
soteriology – the doctrine of salvation.
synoptic gospels – gospels written with the “same eye”— Matthew, Mark,
Luke—which share many similarities with each other, and all different
from the gospel of John.
Subordinationism – a Christian heresy, expressed by Origen, that described
the downward procession of the Trinity, wherein the Second and Third
Persons are inferior to the First.
Trinity – the Three Persons of the Godhead, consisting of God the Father, God
the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

GNOSTICISM

aeons – “worlds”; divine beings or emanations of God; part of the Pleroma.

archons – the evil rulers of the world who seek to imprison the Gnostics.
Christ – one of the original aeons, very close to the Creator; manifested in this
world as Jesus. See also under CHRISTIANITY and A COURSE IN MIRACLES.
cosmos – the entire physical universe; seen by the Gnostics as negative; the
product of the false god and ruled by evil archons seeking to imprison hu-
manity. See also under PLATONISM.
cosmogony – study of the origin of the world.
cosmology – study of the nature of the world.
Cross – See: Limit
Demiurge – taken from Plato, offspring of Sophia and fashioner of the world;
almost always portrayed in negative terms, at best as neutral. See also
under PLATONISM.

635
GLOSSARY

GNOSTICISM (CONTINUED)

deficiency – the Valentinian term for the state of lack that followed Sophia’s
folly; remedied only by knowledge (gnosis); comparable to the scarcity
principle of A COURSE IN MIRACLES.
Docetism – from the Greek dokein, meaning “to appear”; a branch of Gnosti-
cism, teaching that Jesus merely appeared to inhabit a body.
dualism – the principle of coexisting precosmic states of light and darkness,
good and evil, that establishes evil as real.
epiphenomenon – what is secondary to, or derived from, something else; e.g.,
the world is the epiphenomenon of Sophia’s folly.
First Father – term for God, the Creator; sometimes denotes the Demiurge or
Ialdabaoth.
Gnosis, Gnosticism – “Knowledge.”
God – the true Creator and source of life; in most Gnostic systems He is un-
knowable and ineffable; also known as Fore-Father. See also under CHRIS-
TIANITY and A COURSE IN MIRACLES.
hylic – part of the threefold division of humanity, corresponding to the body;
the hylics represented those who were already damned and lost.
Ialdabaoth – the equivalent to the Demiurge, also known by other names and
spellings; Sophia’s offspring, mockingly depicted as the Old Testament
creator God.
Jesus Splendor – in Manicheism, a mythological figure of light and redemp-
tion; also known as the Luminous Jesus. Limit (Cross) - in Valentinian
Gnosis, created after Sophia’s fall to separate out the lower from the
higher Sophia, casting the lower out of the Pleroma, thus protecting the
other aeons.
Luminous Jesus – See: Jesus Splendor
mana – in Mandeanism, the divinity in humanity.
Manda – in Mandeanism, “Knowledge”; the equivalent of “Gnosticism.”
Manda dHaiye – in Mandeanism, “Knowledge of Life”; the savior of the
Mandeans, sent to the world by the Great Life.
non-dualism – the principle that in the beginning there existed only light or
good, with darkness or evil coming later; in its pure form the non-dualistic
position holds that only light is real, with darkness being illusory; other
non-dualisms make the light primary, yet evil real nonetheless.
Ogdoad – the first two tetrads, comprising the first eight aeons.
Ormuzd – in Manicheism, Primal Man trapped in the world and requiring
salvation.
Pleroma – “Fullness”; the Gnostic Heaven, home of God and the aeons.

636
 Glossary

GNOSTICISM (CONTINUED)

pneuma – part of the threefold division of humanity, corresponding to the

spiritual self, unaffected by the body; the pneumatics represented the
Gnostics, already saved.
psychic – part of the threefold division of humanity, corresponding to the
mind; the psychics represented the orthodox church, who had to choose
between heaven and the world.
Ptahil – in Mandeanism, the Uthra who made the material world; etymolog-
ically derived from the Egyptian artisan-god Ptah and the Hebrew “el,”
meaning God.
Ruha – in Mandeanism, “Spirit”; the evil mother of the seven planets.
Self – the divinity in humanity; not part of the physical world. See also under
A COURSE IN MIRACLES.
Sh’Kina – in Mandeanism, “Habitation”; connoting the glorious light sur-
rounding the Uthras like a dwelling.
soul – what has been split off from the Self and therefore in need of redemp-
tion. See also under PLATONISM.
Sophia – “wisdom”; in Valentinian Gnosis the last aeon to be created; tries to
create like her Father, and her failure ultimately leads to the making of the
world.
Tibil – in Mandeanism, “Earth.”
uthra – in Mandeanism, “Wealth”; divine beings who emanate from the Great
Mana or Life.

A COURSE IN MIRACLES

Atonement – the Holy Spirit’s plan of correction to undo the ego’s belief in
separation; it came into being with the Holy Spirit after the dream of sep-
aration began.
body – the embodiment of the ego’s thought of separation, giving seeming
witness to the reality of the separation; to the ego it is a symbol of guilt
and attack; to the Holy Spirit it is the instrument or classroom of salvation,
through which we learn forgiveness.
Christ – Second Person of the Trinity; the one Son of God that God created
as Himself: spirit; our true Self; not to be exclusively identified with Jesus.
See also under CHRISTIANITY.
creation – the extension of God’s being: Christ.
creations – the extension of Christ’s being; as extensions of Christ, the cre-
ations are part of the Second Person of the Trinity, and have no connection
to, or expression in the material world.

637
GLOSSARY

A COURSE IN MIRACLES (CONTINUED)

dream – the post-separation state in which the sleeping Son of God dreams a
world of sin, guilt, and fear.
ego – the belief in the reality of the separated self, made as substitute for the
Self which God created; a thought system based on sin, guilt, fear, and at-
tack as “protection” against the Voice of the Holy Spirit.
face of Christ – symbol of forgiveness; the face of innocence seen in another
when we are free from our projections of guilt; not to be confused with the
face of Jesus.
fear – the emotion originating in the expected punishment from God for our
sins, which our guilt demands.
forgiveness – our special function that shifts perception of others as enemies
to friends, removing all projections of guilt from them and therefore from
ourselves.
God – First Person of the Trinity; the Creator and Source of all being and life;
is not the creator of the material universe. See also under CHRISTIANITY.
guilt – the feeling experienced in relation to sin; includes all the negative feel-
ings and beliefs we have about ourselves; gives rise to fear, and will al-
ways be projected onto others in the form of attack, or onto our bodies in
the form of sickness.
happy dream – the Holy Spirit’s correction for the ego’s dream of pain; the
dream of forgiveness in which the real world is ultimately perceived and
salvation attained.
holy relationship – the Holy Spirit’s means to undo the goal of the special re-
lationship by shifting the goal to forgiveness; occurs within the mind,
though in the context of a relationship in which two people perceived as
separate now join together.
Holy Spirit – Third Person of the Trinity; God’s Answer to the separation and
the communication link between God and His separated Son; the abstract
memory of God’s love that is present in the Son’s split mind. See also
under CHRISTIANITY.
illusion – the belief that the separation from God is real, upon which rest all
the manifestations of the physical world, all equally unreal.
Jesus – the first person or “I” of A Course in Miracles; the one who first com-
pleted his part of the Atonement; though different from us in time, he is
the same as we in eternity; not to be exclusively identified with Christ. See
also under CHRISTIANITY.
knowledge – synonym for Heaven, or the pre-separation world of God.
magic – the attempt to solve a problem where it is not; the ego’s strategy to
keep the real problem of the mind—the belief in separation—from the
Holy Spirit by projecting its guilt onto the world.

638
 Glossary

A COURSE IN MIRACLES (CONTINUED)

Mind – the aspect of God through which His spirit creates. See also under
PLATONISM.
mind – the agent of choice between the ego and the Holy Spirit, roughly
equivalent to the Neoplatonic soul; not to be confused with the brain,
which simply carries out the wishes of the mind.
miracle – the change of mind that shifts our perception from the ego’s attack
to the Holy Spirit’s forgiveness; not to be confused with the traditional un-
derstanding of changes in external phenomena.
projection – the fundamental law of mind; what we see inwardly determines
what we see outside of ourselves; reinforces guilt by placing it onto some-
one else, attacking it there and denying its presence in our own mind.
real world – the state of mind in which, through forgiveness, the world is re-
leased from the projections of guilt we had placed upon it; thus, it is the
mind that has changed, not the world; the happy dream that is the end of
the Atonement.
scarcity principle – an aspect of guilt; the belief that we lack what we need,
leading us to seek special relationships to fill the scarcity we experience
within ourselves; comparable to the Valentinian concept of deficiency.
Self – See: Christ. See also under GNOSTICISM.
separation – the belief in sin that affirms an identity separate from our Cre-
ator; real in time, though unknown in eternity, it is projected out and gives
rise to a world of separation.
sin – the belief in the reality of our separation from God, which is seen by the
ego as an attack on God who can never forgive us; gives rise to guilt which
in turn demands our punishment.
Son of God – in Heaven, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Christ who is
our true Self; in the world, our identity as separated Sons, or the Son of
God as an ego.
special relationship – relationships onto which we project our guilt, substitut-
ing them for the love of God; special hate justifies the projection of guilt
by attack; special love conceals the attack within the illusion of love,
where we believe our needs are met by special people; as these relation-
ships retain guilt, they reinforce belief in the scarcity principle, which is
their source.
spirit – the nature of our true reality which, being of God, is changeless and
eternal; its energy is activated by the Mind, to which it is roughly
equivalent.

639
GLOSSARY

A COURSE IN MIRACLES (CONTINUED)

teacher of God – at the instant we decide to join with another, we become

teachers of God; teaching forgiveness we learn it for ourselves, recogniz-
ing the Holy Spirit as our true Teacher.
world – the thought of separation projected out and given form; being the ex-
pression of the belief in time and space, it was not created by the eternal
and formless God; to the ego it serves to reinforce belief in itself; to the
Holy Spirit it becomes a classroom in which forgiveness teaches us ulti-
mately that there is no world. See also “cosmos” under PLATONISM and
GNOSTICISM.

640
 WORKS CITED

Allberry, C. R. C., ed. See: A Manichaean Psalm-Book.

Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Edited by Richard McKeon. New York:
Random House, 1941.
____. Problems I. Trans. by W. S. Hett. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Loeb Clas-
sical Library, 1961.
Armstrong, A. H. An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy. Third Edition.
Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1981. First published in 1947 by
Methuen & Co. Ltd., London.
Augustine, St. The Confessions of St. Augustine. Translation with Introduc-
tion and Notes by John K. Ryan. New York: Doubleday Image Books,
1960.
Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations. To Himself. In Essential Works of Stoicism.
Edited with Introduction by Moses Hadas. New York: Bantam Books,
1961.
Bréhier, Emile. The Philosophy of Plotinus. Trans. by Joseph Thomas.
Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1958.
Baer, Richard A., Jr. Philo’s Use of the Categories Male and Female. Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1970.
Bourke, Vernon, ed. The Essential Augustine. New York: New American
Library, 1964.
Brown, Raymond. The Birth of the Messiah. New York: Doubleday, 1977.
____. The Community of the Beloved Disciple. New York: Paulist Press,
1979.
Bultmann, Rudolf. Primitive Christianity In Its Contemporary Setting. Trans.
by Reginald H. Fuller. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980.
Callahan, John F. Four Views of Time in Ancient Philosophy. Revised Edition.
Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1968.
Course in Miracles, A. Tiburon, CA: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1975.
Dillon, John. “The Descent of the Soul in Middle Platonic and Gnostic Theory.”
In The Rediscovery of Gnosticism. Proceedings of the International Confer-
ence on Gnosticism at Yale, 1978. Vol. One: The School of Valentinus. Ed-
ited by Bentley Layton. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980.
Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. James Hastings, ed. Twelve Vols. &
Index Vol. Compiled 1908-1926. Edinburgh. New York: Scribners.
Foerster, Werner, ed. Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts. Vol. I: Patristic
Evidence. Vol. II: Coptic and Mandean Sources. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1972, 1974.
Forgotten Books of Eden, The. Rutherford H. Platt, Jr., ed. New York: Bell,
1980.

641
WORKS CITED

Graham, Dom Aelred. The End of Religion. New York: Harcourt Brace and
Jovanovich, 1971.
Grant, Robert M. Gnosticism and Early Christianity. New York: Columbia
Univ. Press, 1966.
____, ed. Gnosticism: A Source Book of Heretical Writings from the Early
Christian Period. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961.
Griffiths, Bede, O.S.B., Cam. “The Emerging Universal Consciousness and
the Mystical Traditions of Asia.” Cistercian Studies, XXII (1987:1), 76-87.
Guitton, Jean. Great Heresies and Church Councils. New York: Harper &
Row, 1965.
Haardt, Robert. Gnosis: Character and Testimony. Trans. by J. F. Hendry.
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971.
Hanratty, Gerald. “The Early Gnostics.” “The Early Gnostics II.” Irish Theo-
logical Quarterly. Vol. 51, 3 (1985), 209-224, Vol. 51, 4 (1985), 289-299.
Jerusalem Bible, The. New York: Doubleday, 1966.
Joachim of Fiore. The Article of Belief. In Apocalyptic Spirituality. Bernard
McGinn, ed. New York: Paulist Press, 1979.
John of the Cross, St. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross. Trans. by
Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D., and Otilio Rodgriguez, O.C.D. Washington:
Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1964.
Jonas, Hans. The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Be-
ginnings of Christianity. Second edition, revised. Boston: Beacon Press,
1963.
Krishnamurti, J. The Awakening of Intelligence. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1987.
Layton, Bentley, ed. The Rediscovery of Gnosticism. Proceedings of the In-
ternational Conference on Gnosticism at Yale, New Haven, Conn., March
28-31, 1978. Vol. One: The School of Valentinus. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980.
Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. New York:
St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976.
Lost Books of the Bible, The. New York: Bell Publishing Co., 1979. Reprint
of the 1926 ed. published by World Pub. Co., Cleveland. Trans. by Jones,
Wake, 1820.
MacKenna, Stephen. Introduction to Plotinus: The Enneads. Second Edition
revised by B. S. Page. New York: Pantheon Books, 1956.
Manichaean Psalm-Book, A. Part II. Manichaean Manuscripts in the Chester
Beatty Collection II. Edited by C. R. C. Allberry. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer,
1938.
Mansel, Henry Longueville. The Gnostic Heresies of the First and Second
Centuries. London: John Murray, 1875.
McGinn, Bernard. See Joachim of Fiore.

642
 Works Cited

Merton, Thomas. Cables to the Ace or Familiar Liturgies of Misunderstand-

ing. New York: New Directions, 1967.
Nag Hammadi Library in English, The. Edited by James Robinson. San Fran-
cisco: Harper & Row, 1977.
New Testament Apocrypha. Edited by Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm
Schneemelcher. English translation edited by R. McL. Wilson. Vol. One:
Gospels and Related Writings. Vol. Two: Writings Relating to the Apostles;
Apocalypses and Related Subjects. Index to Volumes One and Two.
Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963, 1965.
Nigg, Walter. The Heretics. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1962.
Origen: An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, First Principles: Book IV,
Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs, Homily XXVII on
Numbers. Trans. and Introduction by Rowan A. Greer. New York: Paulist
Press, 1979.
Origen. On First Principles. Trans., Introduction, Notes by G. W. Butterworth.
Introduction to Torchbook edition by Henri DeLubac. New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1966.
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. 3rd Edition. New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1979.
Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage Books, Random
House, 1979.
Perkins, Pheme. The Gnostic Dialogue: The Early Church and the Crisis of
Gnosticism. New York: Paulist Press, 1980.
Philo. Ten Volumes and Two Supplementary Volumes. Trans. by F. H. Colson,
Rev. G. H. Whitaker, Ralph Marcus. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Loeb Clas-
sical Library, 1929-1953.
Philo of Alexandria: The Contemplative Life, The Giants, And Selections.
Translation and Introduction by David Winston. New York: Paulist Press,
1981.
Plato. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters. Edited by
Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. New York: Bollingen Foundation,
1961.
____. The Republic. Translation and Introduction by Desmond Lee. New York:
Penguin Books, 1955.
____. Timaeus and Critias. Trans. with Introduction, Appendix by Desmond
Lee. New York: Penguin Books, 1971.
Plotinus: The Enneads. Seven Volumes. Trans. by A. H. Armstrong. Cam-
bridge: Harvard Univ. Loeb Classical Library, 1966-1988.
“Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice.” Tiburon, CA: Foundation
for Inner Peace, 1976.

643
WORKS CITED

Puech, Henri-Charles. “Gnosis and Time.” In Man and Time. Vol. 3 Eranos
Yearbooks. Edited by Joseph Campbell. New York: Pantheon Books,
1957.
Rudolph, Kurt. Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism. Translation
edited by Robert McLochlan Wilson. San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1983.
Sahakian, William and Mabel. Plato. Boston: Twayne, 1977.
Schucman, Helen. The Gifts of God. Tiburon, CA: Foundation for Inner
Peace, 1982.
“Song of Prayer, The.” Tiburon, CA: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1978.
Tresmontant, Claude. The Origins of Christian Philosophy. New York: Haw-
thorn Books, 1963.
Verbeke, Gerard and D. Verhelst, eds. Aquinas and Problems of His Time.
Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 1976.
Wapnick, Gloria and Kenneth. Awaken from the Dream. Temecula, CA:
Foundation for A COURSE IN MIRACLES, 1987.
Wapnick, Kenneth. Absence from Felicity: The Story of Helen Schucman, and
Her Scribing of A COURSE IN MIRACLES. Temecula, CA: Foundation for
A COURSE IN MIRACLES, 1991.
____.Christian Psychology in A COURSE IN MIRACLES. Temecula, CA: Founda-
tion for A COURSE IN MIRACLES, 1978.
____. Forgiveness and Jesus: The Meeting Place of A COURSE IN MIRACLES and
Christianity. Temecula, CA: Foundation for A COURSE IN MIRACLES, 1983.
____.Glossary-Index for A COURSE IN MIRACLES. Fifth edition, enlarged.
Temecula, CA: Foundation for A COURSE IN MIRACLES, 1982.
____.Vast Illusion, A: Time According to A COURSE IN MIRACLES. Temecula, CA:
Foundation for A COURSE IN MIRACLES, 1990.
Weisheipl, James A., O.P. Friar Thomas D’Aquino. His Life, Thought, and
Works. Washington: The Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1983.
Wilson, R. McL. Gnosis and the New Testament. Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1968.
Yamauchi, Edwin M. Pre-Christian Gnosticism. A Survey of the Proposed
Evidences. Second Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983.

644
 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

GNOSTICISM

Foerster, Werner, ed. Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts. Vol. I: Patristic

Evidence. Vol. II: Coptic and Mandean Sources. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1972, 1974.
Haardt, Robert. Gnosis: Character and Testimony. Trans. by J. F. Hendry.
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971.
Jonas, Hans. The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the
Beginnings of Christianity. Second edition, revised. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1963.
Layton, Bentley, ed. The Rediscovery of Gnosticism. Proceedings of the In-
ternational Conference on Gnosticism at Yale, New Haven, Conn., March
28-31, 1978. Vol. One: The School of Valentinus. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980.
Manichaean Psalm-Book, A. Part II. Manichaean Manuscripts in the Chester
Beatty Collection II. Edited by C. R. C. Allberry. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer,
1938.
Nag Hammadi Library in English, The. Edited by James Robinson. San Fran-
cisco: Harper & Row, 1977.
Rudolph, Kurt. Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism. Translation
edited by Robert McLochlan Wilson. San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1983.

CHRISTIANITY

Augustine, St. The Confessions of St. Augustine. Translation with Introduc-

tion and Notes by John K. Ryan. New York: Doubleday, 1960.
Bourke, Vernon, ed. The Essential Augustine. New York: New American
Library, 1964.
Forgotten Books of Eden, The. Rutherford H. Platt, Jr., ed. New York: Bell,
1980.
Jerusalem Bible, The. New York: Doubleday, 1966.
Lost Books of the Bible, The. New York: Bell Publishing Co., 1979. Reprint
of the 1926 ed. published by World Pub. Co., Cleveland. Trans. by Jones,
Wake, 1820.
New Testament Apocrypha. Edited by Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm
Schneemelcher. English translation edited by R. McL. Wilson. Vol. One:
Gospels and Related Writings. Vol. Two: Writings Relating to the Apostles;

645
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Apocalypses and Related Subjects. Index to Volumes One and Two. Phila-
delphia: Westminster Press, 1963, 1965.
Origen. An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, First Principles: Book IV,
Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs, Homily XXVII on
Numbers. Translation and Introduction by Rowan A. Greer. NY: Paulist
Press, 1979.

PHILOSOPHERS

Armstrong, A. H. An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy. Third Edition.

Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1981. First published in 1947 by
Methuen & Co. Ltd., London.
Bréhier, Emile. The Philosophy of Plotinus. Trans. by Joseph Thomas.
Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1958.
Philo. Ten Volumes and Two Supplementary Volumes. Trans. by F. H. Colson,
Rev. G. H. Whitaker, Ralph Marcus. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Loeb
Classical Library, 1929-1953.
Plato. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters. Edited by
Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. New York: Bollingen Foundation,
1961.
Plotinus: The Enneads. Seven Volumes. Trans. by A. H. Armstrong.
Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Loeb Classical Library, 1966-1988.

A COURSE IN MIRACLES

A Course in Miracles. Mill Valley, CA: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1975,
1992.
Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice. Mill Valley, CA: Foundation
for Inner Peace, 1976.
Song of Prayer, The. Mill Valley, CA: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1978.
Wapnick, Kenneth and Gloria. Awaken From the Dream. Temecula, CA:
Foundation for A COURSE IN MIRACLES, 1987.
Wapnick, Kenneth. Forgiveness and Jesus: The Meeting Place of A COURSE IN
MIRACLES and Christianity. Temecula, CA: Foundation for A COURSE IN MIR-
ACLES, 1983.
____. Glossary-Index for A COURSE IN MIRACLES. Temecula, CA: Foundation
for A COURSE IN MIRACLES, 1982.

646
 INDICES

WRITINGS OF CHURCH FATHERS

Irenaeus
Adversus haereses
Pref............................................ 103 I.24.2 ................................. 366, 406
I.1.3 ........................................... 136 I.24.3 ......................................... 164
I.1.6.2 ................................... 323-24 I.24.5-6........................................ 30
I.1.13.6 ...................................... 324 I.24.4 ....................................366-67
I.2.1 ........................................... 166 I.25.1 ......................................... 366
I.2.2 ........................................... 167 I.25.1-2...................................... 323
I.2.2,4 ................................... 167-68 I.25.3-5...................................... 397
I.2.3 ........................................... 217 I.25.5 ........................................... 97
I.4.1 ........................................... 216 I.25.6 ....................................375-76
I.4.1-2........................................ 216 I.26.1 ....................................365-66
I.4.5–5.1 ............................... 220-21 I.26.3 ........................................... 79
I.5.2 ...................................... 221-22 I.27 .............................................. 33
I.5.3 ........................................... 224 I.27.2 ........................................... 32
I.5.4 ........................................... 218 I.27.3 ................................... 34, 288
I.5.5-6................................... 248-49 I.27.4 ........................................... 97
I.6.2,3 ................................... 398-99 I.29.1 ......................................... 165
I.10.1,2 ...................................... 101 I.30.9 ......................................... 266
I.11.1 ......................................... 135 I.30.12-13.................................. 368
I.13.1-2................................. 384-85 I.30.13 ....................................... 108
I.13.3 ......................................... 387 I.30.14 ......................................... 97
I.13.6 ................................... 97, 108 I.31.2 ......................................... 397
I.17.2 ......................................... 227 II.1.1.......................................... 209
I.21.2 ......................................... 377 II.19.8........................................ 103
I.21.3 ......................................... 387 III.3 ............................................. 33
I.21.4 ............................ 289-90, 380 III.18.5 ...................................... 113
I.21.5 ......................................... 381 IV.26.2 ...................................... 101
I.23.2 ............................ 163, 163-64
Proof of the
I.23.3,4 ................................. 396-97
Apostolic Preaching.................. 199
I.23.5 ......................................... 357

647
INDICES

Epiphanius
Panarion
XXV.2.1.................................... 401 XXVI.11.1-9 ............................. 404
XXV.3.2.................................... 401 XXVI.13.2-3 ............................. 345
XXVI.4.2 .................................. 376 XXVI.13.4-5 ......................403-404
XXVI.4.5-8 ............................... 401 XXXIII.3.4,7-8 ......................... 225
XXVI.5.2-6 ............................... 402 XXXIII.5.8-14 .......................... 423
XXVI.5.7-8 ............................... 402 XXXIII.7.1-7 .......................225-26
XXVI.6.1-3 ............................... 403 XXXIII.7.8................................ 226
XXVI.8.1-3 ............................... 402 XL.2.4 ....................................... 405
XXVI.8.3-7 ............................... 403 XL.2.7-8.................................... 298
XXVI.9.4-5 ............................... 400 XLV.1.3 .................................... 406
XXVI.9.6-7 ............................... 404 XLV.1.7-8 ................................. 406
XXVI.9.9 .................................. 404 XLV.2.1-3 ................................. 406
XXVI.10.4-5 ............................. 370
Haereses
XXVI.10.6-7 ............................. 298
30.13,7-8 ................................... 370
XXVI.10.9 ................................ 346

Clement of Alexandria
Stromata Excerpta ex Theodoto
I.xiii.57........................................ 91 1.41.2 ........................................ 324
II.20.4-6 .................................... 266 22.7 ........................................... 348
III.1.1 ........................................ 407 45.1-2 ........................................ 219
III.1.2 ........................................ 407 46.1-2 ........................................ 219
III.1.3 ........................................ 398 47.1 ........................................... 222
III.2.6.1,3-4 ............................... 408 47.2 ........................................... 222
III.4 ........................................... 398 47.3–48.3 .............................222-23
III.4.25 ...................................... 416 59.2-4 .......................................... 369
III.7 ........................................... 370 61.1,6-8 ..................................... 369
III.7.2-3 ..................................... 408 63.2 ........................................... 387
III.8.1-2 .............................. 408-409 64.1 ........................................... 387
III.9.3 ................................. 408-409 65.1-2 ........................................ 387
IV.? ...................................... 179-80
Protrepticus
IV.9 ........................................... 112
4.6.3 .......................................... 199
IV.13.6 ...................................... 228

648
 Writings of Church Fathers

Hippolytus
Refutatio omnium haeresium
V.7.19 ....................................... 378 VI.29.6-8 ................................... 166
V.8.32 ....................................... 407 VI.30.3 ...................................... 137
V.9.10-11 .................................. 407 VI.31.2 ...................................... 167
V.10.1 .................................. 351-52 VI.33.1 ...................................... 223
V.19.1-2 .................................... 126 VI.34.8 ...................................... 223
V.19.3-4 ............................... 126-27 VI.35.1-2 ................................... 224
V.19.5-7 .................................... 145 VI.42.2 ...................................... 155
V.19.22 ..................................... 378 VII.20.3 ..................................... 130
VI.12.4 ...................................... 306 VII.21.1 ..................................... 130
VI.14.4 ...................................... 306 VII.27.8-10,12........................... 367
VI.14.6 ...................................... 307 VIII.10.3,5-7 ........................352-53
VI.16.5 ...................................... 307 VIII.10.9,11............................... 323
VI.17.1 ...................................... 163
De resurrectione
VI.19.5 ...................................... 397
fr. I .......................................356-57
VI.29.5-6................................... 137

Tertullian
Adversus Marcionem De Anima
I.13 .............................................. 33 50.2 ........................................... 357
I.14 ............................................ 287 55 .............................................. 113
I.17 .............................................. 34
Scorpiace
Adversus Valentinianos 1 ................................................ 113
1 ................................................ 394
4 ................................................ 215

649
 PLOTINUS
Enneads
I.6.5 ........................................... 347 III.3.4,7 ..................................... 162
I.8.3 ........................................... 161 III.3.7 ...................................187-88
I.8.7,8 ........................................ 162 III.7.11 ...................................... 198
I.8.14 .................................... 191-92 III.8.10-11 ................................. 187
I.8.15 .................................... 162-63 III.8.11 ...................................... 133
II.3.17........................................ 191 IV.4.16 ...................................... 233
II.4.5..................................... 190-91 IV.4.30 ...................................... 435
II.5.5.......................................... 191 IV.4.31,32 ............................435-36
II.9.1.................................. 133, 139 IV.8.1 ........................................ 190
II.9.1,2....................................... 139 IV.8.3,4 ..................................... 260
II.9.2............................. 161, 162-63 IV.8.6 ...................................187-88
II.9.3............................................ 60 V.1.1.......................................... 163
II.9.4.......................................... 198 V.1.2.......................................... 188
II.9.6,8.................................. 195-96 V.1.10................................ 336, 438
II.9.9.......................................... 326 V.5.6.......................................... 133
II.9.10................................ 194, 195 V.5.5,12..................................... 138
II.9.12........................................ 173 V.8.11........................................ 335
II.9.14................................ 194, 435 V.9.3.......................................... 191
II.9.15................................ 390, 437 VI.3.8 ........................................ 191
II.9.16................................... 196-97 VI.5.1 ...................................335-36
II.9.17,18................................... 197 VI.5.7 ...........................260-61, 577
II.9.18................................... 437-38 VI.7.33 .........................260-61, 577
III.2.2 ........................................ 577 VI.7.34 ...................................... 439
III.2.2,4,5 .................................. 260 VI.8.6 ........................................ 436
III.2.3 ........................................ 189 VI.9.6 ........................................ 133
III.2.4 ........................................ 161 VI.9.7 ...................................434-35
III.2.9 .......................................... 65 VI.9.10,11 ............................439-40
III.2.11 ...................................... 193

650
 THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY

“The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles” ........................................... 413

“Allogenes”..............................................................................130-31, 392-93
“The Apocalypse of Adam”.....................................................321-22, 339-41
“The Apocalypse of Paul” ............................................................106, 298-99
“The Apocalypse of Peter” ...................................................109, 322, 364-65
“The Apocryphon of James” ...................................263-64, 274, 318-19, 351
“The Apocryphon of John”......128, 129, 164-65, 212, 245, 246-48, 308, 393
“Asclepius” ...................................................................176, 246, 310-11, 424
“Authoritative Teaching”.........................................................268-69, 274-75
“The Book of Thomas the Contender” .................................268, 320-21, 412
“The Concept of Our Great Power”................................................... 275, 305
“The Dialogue of the Savior” ...............................................................412-13
“The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth” ...............................391-92, 393-94
“The Exegesis of the Soul”...................................................................267-68
“The First Apocalypse of James” .........................................214, 363-64, 415
“The Gospel of Mary” ..................................................................295-96, 358
“The Gospel of Philip” ..................136, 214-15, 246, 265, 308-309, 347, 349
359, 377, 380, 383-84, 386, 388-89
“The Gospel of the Egyptians” .....................................................341-42, 378
“The Gospel of Thomas” ................................................... 214, 265, 353, 413
“The Gospel of Truth” .......37, 135, 227, 276, 280-81, 289, 291, 292-93, 319
354-55, 361, 443, 454, 573, 577, 580, 619-30
“The Hypostasis of the Archons” ....................170, 209-10, 244, 274, 319-20
“The Interpretation of Knowledge” ......................................................360-61
“The Letter of Peter to Philip”........................................... 171, 353, 360, 416
“Melchizedek” ........................................................................................... 354
“On the Origin of the World” ...............170-71, 210-12, 243-45, 309-10, 320
“The Paraphrase of Shem”................. 126, 144-45, 207, 269-70, 322-23, 342
“The Prayer of Thanksgiving”................................................................... 383
“The Second Apocalypse of James”.......................................................... 415
“The Second Treatise of the Great Seth”......................111, 213, 349, 363-64
“The Sophia of Jesus Christ”............................................................. 321, 353
“The Teaching of Silvanus”..................................................................275-76
“The Testimony of Truth” ...............109, 111, 152, 359-60, 396, 413-14, 488
“The Three Steles of Seth” ........................................................................ 294
“The Treatise on Resurrection” ............................................214, 355, 357-58
“Trimorphic Protennoia” ..............................................................138, 342-43
“The Tripartite Tractate” ........... 130, 171-72, 264, 307, 347-48, 355-56, 360
“A Valentinian Exposition”............................................................... 137, 171
“Zostrianos”..................................................................................137-38, 455

651
 MANDEAN SOURCES

Books are cited in roman, individual sections and/or paragraphs in arabic

numerals, with references to translations used in Foerster, Vol. II.

GR I.4-37 (selections)............... 124 GR V.I....................................... 302

GR I.40 ..................................... 125 GR XII.6 ..............................125-26
GR I.41 ................................ 124-25 GR XV.2 ..............................338-39
GR I.92 ..................................... 426 GR XV.3 ..............................312-13
GR I.95-96 ................................ 425 GR XV.13 ................................. 208
GR I.103-105 ............................ 425 GR XVI.2.................................. 426
GR I.110-16 .............................. 425 GR XVI.2,5............................... 426
GR I.123-24 ......................... 376-77 GR XVI.8.................................. 273
GR I.128 ................................... 426 GL sect. 1 .................................. 272
GR I.138 ................................... 425 GL I.2................................ 267, 312
GR I.146 ................................... 426 GL I.4........................................ 296
GR II.1 ...................................... 382 GL I.12...................................... 312
GR III.9..................................... 266 GL II.5 ...................................... 297
GR III.p.73................................ 456 GL II.7 ...................................... 272
GR III.pp.81-82 ........................ 223 GL III.1 ..................................... 272
GR III.p.93................................ 208 GL III.5,6 ...........................302-303
GR III.p.94................................ 208 GL III.25 ................................... 297
GR III.96................................... 266 GL III.51 ................................... 296
GR III.p.101.............................. 251 GL III.57 ................................... 312
GR III.p.102.............................. 252 Jb.11; 36-37; 57-59 ..............338-39
GR III.p.104-105 ...................... 252 ML Oxf. I.14 ............................. 338
GR III.p.107.............................. 252 ML Oxf.I.56 .............................. 273
GR III.p.188.............................. 251 ML Qol. 73 ..........................382-83

652
 INDEX OF REFERENCES TO A COURSE IN MIRACLES

text
T-in.1:1-2 .................................... 12 T-4.II.1:1 ................................... 456
T-in.1:6-7 .................................. 605 T-4.II.1:3 ................................... 456
T-in.1:7 ..................................... 612 T-4.II.8:6-7................................ 459
T-in.1:8 ..................................... 457 T-4.III.3:4,6............................... 130
T-in.2:2-4 .................................. 525 T-4.III.7:7.................................. 561
T-1.I.1:1 .................................... 562 T-4.III.8:2.................................. 588
T-1.I.15:2-4............................... 576 T-4.V.4:9-11 ............................. 572
T-1.II.3:7-12; 4:5 ................. 517-18 T-4.V.6:2-3 ............................... 599
T-1.II.4:1................................... 449 T-4.VI.1:3-4,6 ........................... 465
T-1.III.1:1; 4:1 .......................... 515 T-4.VII.4:1-4,6-8; 5:1,7 ............ 494
T-1.V.3:6........................... 590, 593 T-4.VII.4:2-4............................. 130
T-1.VI.1:3-8; 2:2....................... 488 T-4.VII.6:1-3............................. 540
T-1.VI.4:1 ................................. 576 T-5.II.1:5; 10:4-7 ...................... 484
T-1.VII.4 .............................. 610-11 T-5.II.2:2,5; 3:1-2 ..................... 458
T-2.I.1:7 .................................... 448 T-5.II.7:1-7................................ 513
T-2.I.1:9–2:1 ............................. 461 T-5.II.8:6-9................................ 533
T-2.II.4:2-5 ............................... 514 T-5.VII.4:5 ................................ 608
T-2.III.1:5-10; 2:1..................... 532 T-6.in.1:2-3 ............................... 487
T-2.III.5:11 ............................... 608 T-6.I.2:1; 3:4-5; 4:6; 5:1-3,5;
T-2.IV.1:3-4.............................. 609 9:1-2; 11:5-6; 13.................. 520
T-2.IV.3:12 ............................... 563 T-6.I.7:1-4 ................................. 522
T-2.IV.3:8-13............................ 561 T-6.I.8:2-6 ............................533-34
T-2.IV.5:4-6.............................. 512 T-6.I.14; 16:2 .......................588-89
T-2.V.5:1................................... 514 T-6.I.15 ..................................... 582
T-2.VI.1:4-5; 4:1-5 ................... 507 T-6.I.16:3 .................................. 530
T-2.VI.4:6 ................................. 604 T-6.I.19:1 .................................. 457
T-2.VII.5:14.............................. 583 T-6.II.8:1-2................................ 450
T-2.VII.6:1-3........................ 448-49 T-6.II.9:1-2................................ 465
T-3.I.4:2 .................................... 549 T-6.IV.6:3-4; ............................. 484
T-3.I.8:3 .................................... 528 T-6.IV.7:4 ................................. 494
T-3.III.6:3; 7:7 .......................... 481 T-6.V.1:7-8 ............................... 484
T-3.IV.7:12 ............................... 592 T-6.V.1:8................................... 457
T-3.V.6:1-5 ............................... 547 T-6.V-B.1:5,7-9 ...................520-21
T-3.V.7:7-8 ............................... 499 T-6.V-C.7:2............................... 533
T-3.VI.10:2 ............................... 470 T-7.I.1:4-8 ............................451-52
T-3.VII.5:1................................ 500 T-7.I.2:1-2,4-5........................... 452
T-4.I.9:1-3................................. 454 T-7.I.2:3,6; 3:1-2....................... 450

653
INDICES

text (continued)
T-7.V.10:7-9 ............................. 527 T-16.III.8-9 ............................... 304
T-7.VII.6:4................................ 510 T-16.IV.1:1 ............................... 605
T-7.VII.10:7.............................. 608 T-16.IV.6:1-2 ............................ 605
T-7.IX.2:6,8-10; 3:1-3 .............. 448 T-16.V.1:1-4 ............................. 605
T-7.XI.3:1-8.............................. 471 T-16.V.3:6................................. 575
T-8.VI.2:1-3.............................. 473 T-16.V.4:1-2 ............................. 486
T-8.VII.7 ................................... 517 T-16.V.6:5................................. 485
T-8.IX.8:1 ................................. 542 T-16.V.7:1-3,5-7; 10:6.............. 490
T-9.I.5:1; 8:3-4.......................... 530 T-16.V.8:1-2 ............................. 489
T-9.II.1:1-2 ............................... 548 T-16.V.8:3................................. 489
T-9.II.3:1-3 ............................... 548 T-16.V.10:4-6; 11:3-8;
T-9.II.4:1-6; 5:8-11; 7:5-8; 8:7 . 549 12:2-4 .............................528-29
T-9.IV.4:7 ............................ 571-72 T-16.V.12:1-2 ........................... 592
T-9.VII.4:5,7............................. 588 T-17.I.1:1-5,7 ............................ 509
T-9.VII.8:2................................ 608 T-17.IV ..................................... 490
T-9.VIII.2:8-10; 3:4; 4:2,5........ 588 T-17.V.9:1................................. 608
T-10.I.2:1; 3:2........................... 484 T-18.I.3:2-6 ............................... 578
T-11.in.3:1 ................................ 466 T-18.I.4:1-3 ............................... 468
T-11.III.2:1-3 ............................ 482 T-18.I.6:1-2 ............................... 466
T-11.VI.4:1-2,6-9...................... 581 T-18.I.6:2-9 ............................... 473
T-11.VI.7:3-4............................ 522 T-18.I.8:3 .................................. 500
T-11.VIII.5:3............................. 542 T-18.III.1:1-4 ............................ 484
T-11.VIII.5:5-6 ......................... 539 T-18.III.6:1-2; 7:1; 8:7.............. 584
T-12.I ........................................ 540 T-18.IV.2:1-3 ............................ 607
T-12.IV.5:1 ............................... 482 T-18.VI.1:6 ............................... 451
T-12.V.6:4................................. 595 T-18.VI.4:7-8 ................ 7, 496, 583
T-12.VI.3:1-4............................ 575 T-18.VI.13:1-2; 14:6................. 492
T-13.in.2:2–3:1 ......................... 470 T-18.VII.4:7-11......................... 563
T-13.II.4:2-3; 6:2 ...................... 521 T-18.VII.5:7 .............................. 513
T-13.III.3:4–4:1 ........................ 461 T-18.VII.6:3-5............................. 11
T-13.IV.7:3-4............................ 576 T-18.VIII.1:7............................. 459
T-13.VIII.2:1-3,5 ...................... 451 T-18.VIII.2:5-6 ......................... 492
T-14.VI.1:1-3............................ 454 T-18.IX.4 .............................472-73
T-14.VI.3:1-5............................ 454 T-18.IX.11:1-2,4-7.................... 509
T-14.VII.1:1-2,6; 3:5-8 ............. 454 T-19.II.1:4-5.............................. 537
T-14.X.7:1................................. 540 T-19.II.2:2-6; 5:1-4 ..............535-36
T-15.I.6:1-6............................... 476 T-19.II.2:7 ................................. 608
T-15.IV.3:1 ............................... 612 T-19.II.3:6 ................................. 559
T-15.VII.9:1-2...................... 528-29 T-19.II.7:1 ................................. 534
T-15.XI.7:2,5 ............................ 521 T-19.III.11:3-5 .......................... 510

654
 Index of References to A COURSE IN MIRACLES

text (continued)
T-19.IV-A.16; 17:5-7,15........... 529 T-26.VII.17:1 ............................ 556
T-19.IV-A.17:10-11.................. 564 T-26.VIII.1:3............................. 230
T-19.IV-A.17:5-7...................... 527 T-27.I ........................................ 530
T-19.IV-B.4:8 ........................... 491 T-27.I.2:2,6; 3:1-2; 4:3-4 .......... 530
T-19.IV-B.12:1-4,7................... 564 T-27.II.2 .................................... 536
T-19.IV-C.5:2-6........................ 609 T-27.II.5:2 ................................. 609
T-19.IV-D.21:4-5...................... 548 T-27.6:2..................................... 525
T-20.II.8:1-2,5,8 ................ 509-510 T-27.VI.3:1-4 ............................ 469
T-20.III.7:5-10 .......................... 469 T-27.VII.12:1-2......................... 577
T-20.III.9:1-2 ............................ 327 T-27.VII.13:4-5......................... 544
T-20.IV.7:3-5............................ 510 T-27.VIII.1-2 ............................ 492
T-20.IV.8:4-12.......................... 539 T-27.VIII.6:2..................... 453, 561
T-20.VI.4:1; 5:1-2,5-7; 6:1-7.... 533 T-27.VIII.6:3............................. 473
T-21.in.1:7 ........................ 559, 596 T-27.VIII.8:1-2 ......................... 503
T-21.I.6:1–7:2 ........................... 458 T-27.VIII.8:4–9:8.................561-62
T-21.VII.2:8; 3:3....................... 578 T-27.VIII.10:1–11:2; 11:5-6 ..... 504
T-22.II.7:4-5 ............................. 589 T-28.II.4:1 ................................. 482
T-22.II.7:4-8 ............................. 471 T-28.II.9 .............................504-505
T-22.III.4:5-7 ............................ 534 T-28.II.12 ...........................503-504
T-23.II....................................... 554 T-28.III.1:2................................ 476
T-23.II.2:1................................... 47 T-28.III.1:6-8 ............................ 506
T-23.II.5:1-5,7 ..................... 462-63 T-28.III.5:2-4 ............................ 459
T-23.II.6:6–7:3; 7:5–8:5 ........... 501 T-28.V.7:1-5 ............................. 327
T-23.II.16:1-3,5 ........................ 592 T-28.VI.1:1–2:5; 2:7 ................. 493
T-23.II.16:5............................... 554 T-29.I.1:1 .................................. 525
T-23.II.18:8–19:4...................... 493 T-29.V.1:2-5 ............................. 452
T-24.in.2:1-2 ..................... 559, 589 T-29.VI.2:7-10 .......................... 466
T-25.I.7:4-5............................... 542 T-29.VII.1:1,3,7 ........................ 578
T-25.II.8:1-2,4 .......................... 511 T-29.VII.2 ................................. 489
T-25.VI.1:1-2,4-5,8................... 556 T-29.VIII.6:2............................. 463
T-25.VI.2:1-4............................ 327 T-30.I.16:2-4 ......................500-501
T-25.VI.4:1-2; 5:1-4; T-30.VI.1:6-7; 2:3-5; 3:5–4:1 ... 536
6:6-8; 7:5-10................... 557-58 T-31.I.1:1-4 ............................... 562
T-25.IX.7:1-4............................ 591 T-31.I.4:5 .................................. 469
T-26.I.8:3 .................................. 491 T-31.V....................................... 530
T-26.V.3............................... 477-78 T-31.V.3:1; 4:1 ......................... 531
T-26.V.4:1................................. 476 T-31.V.3:2-4 ............................. 503
T-26.V.5:1-2 ............................. 460 T-31.V.5:1-3; 15:8,10 ............... 531
T-26.V.5:5-6; 13 ....................... 477 T-31.V.17:8-9 ........................... 572
T-26.VII.4:7.............................. 450 T-31.VI.1:1-2,7-8...................... 578

655
INDICES

text (continued)
T-31.VIII.3:2............................. 505 T-31.VIII.12:8........................... 569
T-31.VIII.7:1............................. 216

workbook for students

W-pI.in.1:1................................ 603 W-pI.158.4:5 ............................. 475
W-pI.in.1:2-3 ............................ 603 W-pI.160.1:1-4; 2:1-2; 4:1-2;
W-pI.in.1:3-4 ............................ 550 5:2-4; 6:1-3.......................... 482
W-pI.in.1:4................................ 603 W-pI.161.7:1-3.......................... 491
W-pI.in.4:1-2; 5:1-2.................. 595 W-pI.161.12:4-6........................ 499
W-pI.1.3:5................................. 550 W-pI.166.4; 5:4–6:2.............482-83
W-pI.23.2:1,3-4; 3:2-4.............. 470 W-pI.166.10:5 ........................... 459
W-pI.23.5:1-4 ........................... 506 W-pI.167.3:7-11........................ 450
W-pI.49.1:1............................... 602 W-pI.167.6:1-3,7; 9:1 ............... 484
W-pI.64.1:2–2:4................... 547-48 W-pI.167.9:2-4.......................... 476
W-pI.67..................................... 486 W-pI.169.5:4 ............................. 447
W-pI.71.2............................. 486-87 W-pI.169. 10:1,3-4.................... 448
W-pI.71.9:1-6 ........................... 602 W-pI.rV.in.9:2-3 ....................... 496
W-pI.72.6:8; 7:1-4 .................... 565 W-pI.182 ................................... 483
W-pI.79..................................... 605 W-pI.182.1:1-5; 2:1; 3 .............. 483
W-pI.79.1:4........................ 605-606 W-pI.183. 1:1-2,5; 5:1 .........135-36
W-pI.80..................................... 605 W-pI.183.7:3-5; 8:3-4; 10:1-3 .. 540
W-pI.80.1:2,4-5 ................. 605-606 W-pI.184.1 ................................ 590
W-pI.80.1:5-6; 5:6 .................... 563 W-pI.184.9-11......................555-56
W-pI.93.1:1–2:1........................ 496 W-pI.184.9:1-3,5......................... 15
W-pI.95.4:2-5; 5:2; 6 ........... 550-51 W-pI.184.9:2-5.......................... 591
W-pI.95.7:3–8:2........................ 551 W-pI.184.13:3–14:1.............590-91
W-pI.95.8:3-5 ...................... 551-52 W-pI.184.15:1-3,8-9 ................. 591
W-pI.95.9:1–10:3...................... 552 W-pI.187.6 ................................ 562
W-pI.106.1; 2:1; 4:2-3; 5:1; 8:1 602 W-pI.187.6:4 ............................. 596
W-pI.109................................... 510 W-pI.188 ................................... 483
W-pI.109.2:1-2,4; 4:1-3,5; W-pI.188.1:5-8.......................... 483
5:2; 8:1; 9:3,5-6................... 510 W-pI.190.3 ................................ 471
W-pI.rIII.in.2:2-4 ...................... 550 W-pI.194.4 ................................ 543
W-pI.128.2:3............................. 576 W-pI.196 ................................... 506
W-pI.132.6:2-3 ......................... 515 W-pI.196.7:1,3; 8:3–9:3;
W-pI.135.18:1-3 ....................... 539 10:1-4; 11:1-4...............506-507
W-pI.155.1:1-4; 5:3 .................. 564 W-pI.198.2:8–3:1; 3:3-7 ........... 544
W-pI.155.4:1–5:2...................... 564 W-pI.200 ................................... 483
W-pI.158.2:8–4:4...................... 475 W-pI.200.4 ................................ 483
W-pI.158.4:1............................. 571 W-pI.204.1:2 ............................. 575

656
 Index of References to A COURSE IN MIRACLES

workbook for students (continued)

W-pII.1.4:1,3 ............................ 508 W-pII.302.2....................... 508, 614
W-pII.2.2................................... 508 W-pII.10.5:1-3 .......................... 505
W-pII.2.3:1-3 ............................ 508 W-pII.12.1:1–2:4 ...................... 463
W-pII.3.1:1-3 ............................ 467 W-pII.12.4................................. 490
W-pII.3.1:3-4 ............................ 506 W-pII.13.1:1-4,6 ....................... 508
W-pII.3.2:1 ................. 11, 470, 597 W-pII.13.5:1.............................. 555
W-pII.3.2:1-4; 3:3..................... 575 W-pII.13.5:3-4 .......................... 555
W-pII.6.1:1,3-5 ......................... 451 W-pII.14.5:5................................ 14
W-pII.294.................................. 576

manual for teachers

M-in.4:4-5................................. 575 M-17.7:1-6 ................................ 480
M-1.4:1-2 .................................... 12 M-17.8:3-4 ................................ 604
M-1.4:2 ..................................... 590 M-21.1:1-4,7-8.......................... 540
M-2.2:6-8 .................................. 474 M-21.1:7,9-10 ........................... 229
M-2.3:1–4:2 .............................. 475 M-21.1:9-10 ................................ 13
M-4.I-A.3:2; 4:2,5; 5:2,8; M-21.2:4-5; 3:1-3,5-7 ............... 541
7:1,7; 8:1 ............................. 604 M-23.3:2-4; 4:1-2,4; 5:1,5;
M-5.III.2:1-2,4,6-10; 3:4 .......... 513 6:8-9; 7:6-8.......................... 518
M-8.5:2-3,5-7............................ 467 M-23.6:1 ................................... 135
M-12.3:3,7 ................................ 603 M-26.2:2 ................................... 543
M-16.2:2-5 ................................ 550 M-26.4:3 ..................................... 15
M-16.4:1 ................................... 542 M-28.1:1-3,10 ........................... 522
M-17.5:3-9; 7:10-13 ................. 462 M-29.2:6 ................................... 603
M-17.6:1-2,5-10........................ 480 M-29.3:1,3-9 ............................. 606
M-17.6:11 ................................. 495 M-29.5:7 ................................... 542

clarification of terms
C-in.2:5 ............................... 11, 553 C-4.6:1-3,7-10; 7:2-4 ................ 557
C-in.4 ........................................ 456 C-4.7:1 ...................................... 451
C-1.3:3 ...................................... 495 C-5.1:6 ...................................... 516
C-1.7:1 ...................................... 495 C-5.2:1-2; 3:1-3; 5:1-2 .............. 517
C-2.1:4-8,10.............................. 455 C-5.2:1-2; 5:1-2 ........................ 449
C-2.2:5–3:1 ............................... 456 C-6.1:1 ...................................... 518
C-3.2:1–3:1 ............................... 544 C-6.1:1,3 ................................... 521
C-3.3:2-5............................. 544, 14 C-6.1:5 ...................................... 458
C-4.1 ......................................... 466 C-6.2:2,4 ................................... 514
C-4.4:5 ...................................... 478 C-6.5:6,8 ................................... 458

657
INDICES

Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice

P-2.II.6:1-4.................................. 13 P-3.II.9:4-6................................ 537
P-2.VII.4:1-2,4.......................... 537

The Song of Prayer

S-1.in.1:2,7................................ 538 S-1.II.4:1 ................................... 547
S-1.in.2:1................................... 539 S-1.II.8:3-5,8........................546-47
S-1.in.2:4................................... 539 S-1.III.1:1-2,4 ........................... 547
S-1.I.1:1 .................................... 539 S-1.III.6 ..................................... 546
S-1.I.1:7 .................................... 547 S-1.V.4:6 ................................... 550
S-1.I.2:1,4-9; 3.......................... 541 S-2.I.1:1-2; 2:1-4....................... 535
S-1.I.4 ....................................... 542 S-2.II.2:1-4................................ 537
S-1.I.5:6 .................................... 545 S-2.II.4:2-5; 5:2......................... 531
S-1.II.1:1–2:3; 3................... 545-46

The Gifts of God

“Dedication for an Altar” (p. 93)............................................................... 534

658
 INDEX OF NAMES

Old and New Testament figures and writers, and figures from Gnostic myths
are listed in the Subject Index. A COURSE IN MIRACLES is abbreviated as ACIM.

Albinus, 160, 182 Cayce, Edgar, 597

Alexander of Lycopolis, 205 Cerdo, 31
Ammonius Saccas, 56 Cerinthus, 104, 365-66
Aphraates, 106 Chadwick, Henry, 401
Aristotle, 51-53, 231, 232-33 Clarke, Norris, S.J., 9
Armstrong, A.H., 45, 46, 49, 52-53, Clement of Alexandria, 32, 55, 91,
58, 60, 139, 192-93 98, 111, 199; see also
Athanasius, Bishop, 24 separate index: Writings of
Augustine, Saint, 5, 6, 39, 41, 56, Church Fathers
62-66, 106, 134, 151, 192, Clement, Bishop of Rome, 100
199-202, 236-37, 261-63, Cleobius, 105
265, 279-80, 285, 325, Cullmann, Oscar, 371
326, 363, 400, 418-19,
420, 421, 433-34, 481, 554 Dante, 106
Aurelius, Marcus, 233-34, 237, 256 Decius, Emperor, 59
Dillon, John, 2, 159, 255
Basil, Saint, 52
Basilides, 26, 28, 29-31, 76, 98, 103, Eckhart, Meister, 60
105, 130, 137, 164, 249, Epiphanes, 407-408
346, 363, 366-67, 398, Epiphanius of Salamis, 25, 29, 56,
405, 494 104; see also separate
Beethoven, 42, 293 index: Writings of Church
Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint, 418 Fathers
Bianchi, Ugo, 156 Eusebius of Caesarea, 56, 102-103
Blake, William 263 Evodius, 311
Boehme, Jacob, 42
Bréhier, Emile, 7, 188, 188-89, 260, Fineman, Joel, 228
334, 479 Foerster, Werner, 24-25, 219, 241
Brown, Raymond, 83, 85-86, 87, 90, Forestell, T., 86
93-94, 95, 154 Freud, Sigmund, 50, 51, 217, 253,
Buddha, 40 538
Bultmann, Rudolph, 26, 67, 67-68,
72, 107, 175, 281-82, 344 Gaffron, H.G., 385
Glaucias, 98
Callahan, John, 237 Goethe, 42
Carpocrates, 323, 366, 375-76, 397, Goldsmith, Joel, 597
407, 408 Graham, Dom Aelred, 114-15

659
INDICES

Grant, R.M., 74-75 286, 287, 287, 288, 290,

Greer, Rowan A., 57 292, 293-94, 295, 304,
Gregorius the Theologian, 131 361, 395, 416, 417, 417,
Gregory of Nyssa, Saint, 52, 56 418, 613, 614
Griffiths, Fr. Bede, 9, 574-75 Jung, Carl, 16, 28, 42, 293, 597
Guitton, Jean, 102, 281 Justin Martyr, 90
Justinian, 56, 314, 373
Haardt, Robert, 24
Hanratty, Gerald, 101-102, 108 Kant, Immanual, 42
Harnack, Adolf von, 34, 107 Käsemann, E., 73
Hegel, G.W.F., 28, 42 Koester, Helmut, 613
Heine, Heinrich, 42 Konai, Theodore bar, 147, 148, 204,
Heracleon, 36, 90, 111-12, 137, 171 204-205, 205, 283
Heraclitus, 46, 236, 470 Krishnamurti, 467, 553, 614
Hippolytus, 25, 29, 30, 103, 126,
126-27, 136-37, 166, 292; Law, Robert, 107
see also separate index: Leinsdorf, Erich, 17
Writings of Church Fathers Leo the Great, Pope, 105
Homer, 188, 230 Liszt, Franz, 609
Hornschuh, Manfred, 92, 98, 99 Lossky, Vladimir, 127-28
Lysons, Patrick, 494
Iamblichus, 160
Ignatius of Antioch, 90, 100, 110, McGinn, Bernard, 8
112-13 MacKenna, Stephen, 161
Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, 25, 29, Mani, 13, 29, 38-41, 106, 121,
30, 31, 32, 34, 96, 114, 122-23, 147, 250-51,
165, 166, 167, 292; see 282-86, 311, 343-44, 347,
also separate index: 400, 406, 417-22; see also
Writings of Church Fathers Subject Index: Manicheism
Isadore, 407 Mansel, Henry Longueville, 103,
103-104, 158-59
al-Jahiz, 421 Marcion, 28, 31-35, 76, 91, 105,
Jerome, Saint, 36, 184, 186, 258, 314 108, 264, 271, 286-88,
Joachim of Fiore, 8 362-63, 405, 416-17
John of the Cross, Saint, 352 Marcus, 108, 226-27, 324, 380,
Jonas, Hans, 6-7, 23, 26, 39, 121, 384-85, 387, 399
124, 128-29, 131, 131, Marshall, I.H., 81
141-42, 146, 147, 155-56, Maurer, Christian, 92
156, 164, 168, 204, 205, Menander, 103, 350, 357
206, 216-17, 218, 221, Merton, Thomas, 128
224, 241, 250, 250, 250, Mozart, 612
251, 263, 270-71, 285,

660
 Index of Names

Nicolas of Antioch, 79; see also and humanity, nature of, 50, 51,
Subject Index: Nicolaitans 53-54, 179, 190,
Nigg, Walter, 32, 153, 154, 264 253-54, 331-32, 460,
Nock, Arthur Darby, 107 577-79
and the Ideas, 47-49, 51, 55, 61,
Origen, 6, 32, 40, 55-59, 62, 85, 63, 132, 157, 181, 186,
159, 183-86, 235, 258-59, 220, 228-30, 581
313-16, 326, 332-34, and matter, 49, 50, 61, 157
371-74, 431-33, 576 and morality, 427-28, 437 (see
Orwell, George, 114 also salvation)
Parmenides, 47
Pachomius, 23, 56 Phaedo, 50, 62, 65, 346
Pagels, Elaine, 23, 112, 351, 356, Phaedrus, 253-54, 258, 578
393-94 Republic, 49, 51, 132, 132, 229,
Parmenides, 46 230, 232, 254, 327-32,
Perkins, Pheme, 96, 115 408, 427
Pétrement, Simone, 68 and salvation, 327-32, 346,
Philo of Alexandria, 6, 54-55, 437, 584
180-82, 229-30, 255-58, and the soul, 48-49, 50, 52, 65,
374, 428-31 177-78, 190, 253-54,
Photius, 105 258, 331, 346, 427
Plato, 2, 4, 6, 10, 45, 47-55, 60, 61, Statesman, 158, 232
373, 408, 434, 434-35, Theaetetus, 157
450, 570 Timaeus, 49, 158, 176-79, 253,
and ACIM, 327 276-77, 331-32
Allegory of the Cave, 49, and time, 178, 231-33, 237, 238
327-30, 520 and the world, 47-48, 49-51, 61,
anamnesis, 49, 66 157-58, 176-80, 227
and the body, 48-49, 50, 158, Plotinus, 6, 10, 48, 56, 57, 59-62,
179, 190, 197, 253-54, 392, 570, 580; see also
267, 346-47, 427 separate index
and the Demiurge (Craftsman), and apophaticism, 60-61, 133
49-51, 57, 158, and asceticism, 51, 59, 61-62,
177-79, 184, 188, 190, 438, 439
224 and the body, 59, 188-97,
259-61, 347, 436-39,
and the dream state, 276-77
577
Epinomis, 178
and dualism, 59-60, 191-92,
and evil, 50, 52, 157, 158, 177,
573, 573-74
427
and emanation, 60, 61, 63,
and the Good, 48, 132, 228-29,
138-40, 160, 186-98,
231, 330, 331, 373, 233, 236, 573
437

661
INDICES

Plotinus (continued) 224-26, 248-49, 369,

and evil, 61, 160-63, 188, 422-23, 585
191-92 Puech, Henri-Charles, 230, 231,
and the fall, 62, 160-63, 172-73, 235, 237, 238, 346
191-92, 198, 334, 574 Pythagoras, 46, 47
and Gnosticism, 193-98, 326,
390, 435-37, 576 Robinson, James, 23
and the Good, 233, 434 (see Rudolph, Kurt, 23, 29, 37, 39, 41,
also One) 42, 45, 73, 77, 104, 206,
and the Ideas, 60, 61, 139, 160, 210, 251, 337, 377, 403,
186-91, 443 418, 424
and matter, 61, 160-63, 186-98,
574 Sankara, 574
and Mind, 57, 60-61, 138-40, Sartre, Jean Paul, 396
160, 186-92, 237, 443 Saturninus, 103, 366, 405-406
and morality, 434-40 Schaferdiek, Knut, 92
and the One, 60-61, 63, 133, Schelling, Friedrich von, 42
138-40, 160-61, Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 42
186-88, 192, 334-36, Schneemelcher, Wilhelm, 92, 95, 97
374, 434, 438-40, 443, Schopenhauer, Arthur, 42
573-74, 581 Schucman, Helen, 2, 12, 515, 527,
and salvation, 65, 139, 293,
534, 611
294, 334-36, 347,
Severus, 406
373-74, 435-40
Shakespeare, 155
and the self, 188-90, 334-36,
Simon Magus, 97, 103, 104, 105,
438-40, 494
and the soul, 60-61, 139, 108, 163-64, 306, 350,
160-63, 186, 188-98, 396-97
233, 237, 259-61, Socrates, 47, 570
334-36, 347, 373-74, Speusippus, 157
437-39, 479 Stead, G.C., 249
and time, 198, 233, 233, 236-37 Syrianus, 139
and the world, 60-62, 63,
186-98, 435-40, 455, Teresa, Mother, 12-13
573-74 Tertullian, 33, 103, 113, 394; see
Polycarp, 90 also separate index:
Pope John XXIII, 526 Writings of the Church
Porphyry, 56, 59, 193-94, 347, 392 Fathers
Proclus, 139 Thackeray, William, 532
Pseudo-Dionysius, 52, 128 Theodotus, 219, 222, 324, 369, 387
Ptolemaeus, 36, 136, 165, 215, Theonas, 106-107

662
 Index of Names

Thetford, William, 2, 12, 527 Awaken from the Dream,

Theudas, 98 (Co-author, Gloria
Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 14, 52, 199, Wapnick), 460n, 519n
578-79 Christian Psychology in A
Tresmontant, Claude, 107 COURSE IN MIRACLES, 15
Forgiveness and Jesus, 5, 7n,
Valentinus, 28, 35-37, 76, 91, 98, 15, 16, 479, 507n,
122, 155-57, 215, 215-16, 519n, 563n
227, 266, 361, 370, 399, Glossary-Index for A COURSE IN
405, 570, 573, 580; see MIRACLES, 7n, 496n
also Subject Index: Vast Illusion, A, 473n
Valentinianism Weil, Simone, 42
Verbeke, Gerard, 578 Weisheipl, James A., 14
Virgil, 42 Wilde, Oscar, 304
Voltaire, 246 Wilson, R. McL., 68-69, 76, 91
Winston, David, 6, 182
Wagner, Richard, 17, 609
Walter, Bruno, 612 Yamauchi, Edwin M., 67, 80-81, 345
Wapnick, Kenneth,
Absence from Felicity, 527n Zoroaster, 40; see also Subject
Index: Zoroastrianism

663
 SUBJECT INDEX

This index is not exhaustive; only the main references for each entry have
been included. Platonism, Christianity, and Gnosticism appear as subentries
under other headings. A COURSE IN MIRACLES (abbreviated as ACIM) appears
as a main heading for a few specific references; all other references are in
subentries.

Abraxas, 30, 164 and the origin of the world,

“Acts of Andrew, The,” 92, 346, 203-206, 211-13, 294
410-11 and time, 237-38, 476
“Acts of the Apostles, The,” Archontics, 405
(non-canonical), 92, Atonement
104-105 in ACIM, 3, 5, 293, 445, 445,
“Acts of John, The,” 105, 169-70, 458, 485, 499-510,
265, 325, 348, 365, 370, 512, 514, 516, 532,
409, 462, 487, 558 563, 579
“Acts of Paul, The,” 36, 105-106 and Jesus, 5, 514-15, 516,
“Acts of Peter, The,” 93, 108, 409 519
“Acts of Thomas, The,” 39, 93, 214, in Christianity, 279-82, 367,
271, 300-305, 346, 359, 499, 526-27, 579
379, 380-81, 382, 384, awakening, 27, 239, 244, 248, 251,
389-90, 411-12 275, 300, 336, 337
Adamites, 403, 600 in ACIM, 3, 457, 476, 484, 505,
aeons, 30, 35, 36, 37, 134-37, 509, 516-17, 522, 523,
164-72, 291, 347, 352, 544
353, 357, 383, 443, 450
“Apocalypse of Paul, The,” 106 Barbelognosis, 138, 164-65,
apophaticism, 54, 60-61, 127-34, 168-69, 215, 346, 393
135-36, 392-95, 447, 572 Basilideans, 398, 404, 406-407; see
Apostles’ Creed, 199 also Index of Names:
archons, 27, 28, 178, 319-20, 323, Basilides
366, 376, 395-97, 402, Bhagavad Gita, 559
404, 414, 454, 468 Bible, The, see New Testament; Old
and the ascent of the soul, Testament
294-95, 297-98, 345, body; see also humanity: creation of
379-81 in ACIM, 180, 444-45, 468-73,
and the creation of humanity, 479-80, 489, 491-97,
242-48 517, 519, 521-22, 532,
and Jesus, 352-53, 361, 363-64, 547-48, 560-61,
368 563-65, 576-79,

664
 Subject Index

597-601 (see also creations of, 134, 304, 443,

mind: relationship 449-52
with body) in Gnosticism, 37, 167, 217,
and Augustine, Saint, 65, 284, 350-56, 360-61,
261-63, 433-34 365-66, 367-70, 377,
and Aurelius, Marcus, 256 386 (see also Jesus)
in Gnosticism, 35, 37, 39, Incarnation of, 517
250-51, 263-77, Second Coming of, 303
312-13, 351, 361-62, Subordinationism, 57-58,
395, 406-14, 416-22, 371-72
426, 576 Christian Science, 597
and Origen, 183-86, 258-59, Church
315-16 and Gnosticism, 76-80, 91-115,
in Orphism, 46 159, 288, 323-24,
and Paul, Saint, 71 396-98, 400, 401, 403,
and Philo, 54, 255-58, 428-31 409
in Platonism, 45 and Jews, 95
and Plotinus, 59, 188-98, Roman Catholic, 526-27,
259-61, 347, 436-39, 532-37
577 Church Fathers, see Index of
in Pythagoreanism, 46, 62 Names; Writings of
Bogomils, 42 Church Fathers
Book of Common Prayer, 1 cosmic piety, 31, 53, 233; see also
Buddhism, 391, 597 world: attitude toward
cosmos, see world
Cainites, 397 Course in Miracles, A
Carpocratians, 375-76, 397; see also levels of discourse in, 8-9,
Index of Names: 542-43, 579, 584, 589
Carpocrates levels of language in, 8-9, 459,
Charismatic Renewal movement, 484, 512, 515, 542,
601 608-609
Christ; see also Jesus: docetism; origin of, 2-3, 515
redeemer Craftsman, see Demiurge
in ACIM, 134, 263, 303, 443, creation, see God: creation
444, 445, 448-52, 485, (extension of)
486, 488, 500, 516-18, Cross (Horos, Limit)
550 (see also Self) in Valentinianism, 167-70, 172,
Christology, 57-58, 72-74, 216, 387
83-90, 183-84, 259,
350-51, 371-73, Darkness, see light and darkness
449-52, 516-17 defenselessness, 147, 495, 521, 522

665
INDICES

deficiency, 37, 167, 171, 210, 260, and Church vs. Gnosticism,
266, 289-93, 310, 580 113-14
Demiurge defenses of, 8-9, 479-80, 493,
in Gnosticism, 27, 37, 49-50, 525-26, 530-32,
206, 207, 211-12, 219, 536-37, 548, 587-89,
220, 221-28, 242-49, 601-612 (see also
310, 340, 341, 361, form ∕content; time: in
362-63, 381, 416-17 ACIM)
and Plato, 49-51, 57, 158, defined, 3, 444, 455-57, 465,
177-79, 184, 188, 190, 494
224 and denial (repression), 480,
Derdekeas, 126, 144-45, 207, 502-503, 511, 525-26,
322-23, 339, 342 530-32, 572, 598, 606
docetism, see Jesus plan of salvation of, 113-14,
dream state, 3, 4, 61, 242-43, 465-78, 486, 490, 500,
274-77, 457, 484, 489, 503, 519, 563
492, 503-504, 504, 505, projection by, 3, 99, 217, 444,
506, 544 447-48, 465-68, 481,
happy dreams of the Holy 486, 486, 502-503,
Spirit, 484, 555, 615 511, 525-26, 530-32,
dualism, 39, 46, 59, 69-71, 81-83, 538, 547
192, 245, 250, 572 and relationships, 485-91, 502,
and the origin of the world, 511, 526-29, 548, 556,
202-208 576, 592, 605
and the pre-separation state, and scarcity principle, 485-86,
121-27, 572 488, 489, 545, 606
and the separation (the fall) and sin-guilt-fear, 444, 463,
from God, 6-7, 26, 476-77, 478, 479-80,
141-54, 573-74 487, 502, 519, 519,
dualism, non- 543
in ACIM, 4, 443, 447, 489, 543, and victimization, 486, 503,
562, 573, 583 505, 519-20, 577
and God, 127-34 emanation, see also aeons; Pleroma
and the origin of the world, in Gnosticism, 29, 30-31,
208-30, 573-74 124-25, 148, 163,
and the separation (the fall) 164-65, 207
from God, 155-73, in Plotinus, 60-61, 64, 138-40,
447, 573-74 186-98, 233
in the Vedanta, 122 Ennoia, 136, 163-64, 166, 213, 339,
348, 349, 364
ego, see also fear; guilt; sin Entychites, 398
Epicureans, 63

666
 Subject Index

“Epistula Apostolorum” 104-105 (see also ego: and

“Epistula Fundamenti,” see sin-guilt-fear)
Manicheism of God (see God)
eschatology Flavia Sophe, 388
in Christianity, 313-16 Forgiveness and Jesus, see Index of
in Gnosticism, 306-313 Names: Wapnick, Kenneth
Essenes, 68, 70 forgiveness, 3, 9, 14, 292, 445,
evil, 40, 45, 45, 61, 62, 64, 184, 186, 499-510, 514, 519, 534-37,
201-202, 204, 207, 237-38, 538, 544, 547-48, 551,
283, 312, 427 552, 553-54, 555, 557-58,
and matter, 50, 124, 157-63, 584
188, 191-92, 271-73 forgiveness-to-destroy, 534-37
(see also body; world) form ∕content, 14, 192, 400, 423,
origin of, 50, 52, 125-26, 445, 526, 526-28, 532-33,
150-52, 158, 177 540, 544, 552-54, 558,
extension, 447-49, 465-66; see also 565, 581, 583, 590,
God: creation (extension 592-94, 600-601, 608
of)
glories, 137-38, 443, 449; see also
fall, the, 2, 26; see also separation aeons
in ACIM, 26, 349, 443, 488, gnosis, 26, 27, 28, 65, 77, 122, 155,
573-76 238, 239, 280, 281, 293,
in Gnosticism, 26, 142, 143, 294, 350, 385, 398, 437,
163-65, 242-53, 379, 510, 585, 601
386, 455-56 God, see also Christ; Holy Spirit;
in Mandeanism, 26, Mind; One
296-97 and Answer to the thought of
in Valentinianism, 36-37, separation, 444,
141, 155-57, 457-63, 465, 472, 474,
518
165-73, 386, 443
creation (extension) of, 134-40,
in the Judaeo-Christian
443, 444, 447-52,
tradition, 150-54
465-66, 484
and Origen, 58, 183, 184, 185, Creator, 55, 63-64, 180-84,
258, 314, 332-34, 372, 199-202, 443-44,
432 447-52, 454, 455, 457,
in Platonism, 62, 159-60, 469, 572 (see also
191-92, 198, 347, 574 Demiurge)
fear in Gnosticism, 29-30, 35,
in ACIM, 454, 454, 457, 462, 69, 152-53,
468, 472, 479-80, 481, 208-15, 224-28,
482, 506-507, 544, 286-88, 340, 395,
548, 575, 578, 606 398, 406, 422

667
INDICES

God (continued) 500, 506, 511, 551-52

fear of, 8, 461-63, 479-80, 480, (see also ego)
495, 501, 502, guiltlessness, 354, 521
506-507, 519, 525,
526, 543 healing
love of, 459, 462, 486, 508, 563 in ACIM, 450, 513, 540, 580,
nature of, 56-58, 63, 127-34, 596
225-28, 236, 395, Heaven, 82, 135, 444, 451-52, 453,
443-44, 447-52, 459, 470, 484, 493; see also
471, 522, 525, 539, Pleroma
540, 553, 572-575, Hermes Trismegistus, 121, 143,
580, 608 (see also 310, 339, 391-92, 424
apophaticism) Hibil, see Mandeanism,
of Old Testament, 31-34, 147, Hinduism, 14, 54, 391, 574, 597
152-54, 164, 211-15, holy instant, 549, 562
224-28, 243, 263, Holy Spirit, 31, 37, 167
286-88, 298, 299, 362, in ACIM, 3, 3-4, 7, 444, 445,
398, 408, 487 474, 512-13, 532-33,
Thoughts of, 53, 443, 450, 539-42, 556-58
450-51 as Answer to (Correction
-world paradox, 1-2, 3-9, 45, for) the
46, 47, 66, 157, separation,
186-98, 279, 453, 457-61, 465, 474,
455-57, 570, 571-76, 477-78, 496, 500,
594, 595 504, 506-509,
Good, see also Ideas: Plato; Mind; 554-56
One: Plotinus as memory of God, 458,
and Plato, 48, 228-29, 231, 330, 472, 508, 519,
331, 373, 437 581
and Plotinus, 233, 434 misconceptions about,
“Gospel of Bartholomew, The,” 98 602-603, 606-607
“Gospel of the Ebionites, The,” 369 Voice of, 458, 512, 512-13,
“Gospel of Eve, The,” 349 521, 543-44, 549
“Gospel of the Hebrews, The” 305 holy structures, 532-34
“Gospel of Peter, The,” 92, 487 Horos, see Cross
“Gospel of Philip, The,” (non-NHL humanity
tractate), 345 creation of, 40, 242-53, 261-62,
grace, 64-65, 66, 279-80, 281, 286 264, 282, 312
guilt nature of, 35, 50, 52, 179-80,
in ACIM, 3, 461, 466, 472-73, 190, 229-30, 253-77,
479-81, 486, 490-91, 286, 420-22, 444-45,

668
 Subject Index

479-97, 576-79 (see Johannine tradition, 72,

also body; dream 83-90, 350
state; mind; soul) John of the Cross, Saint,
hyle, see matter 352
“Hymn of the Pearl, The,” 142, Origen, 57, 371-73
142-43, 271, 299-305, 349, Pauline tradition, 35, 70,
382 72-74, 75-76, 86
Synoptics, 83, 86
Ialdabaoth, 27, 37, 211-14, 226, docetism, 27, 75-76, 83-90, 93,
238, 242-43, 245-48, 310, 112, 323, 352-53,
406, 467 354-55, 360-71,
I Ching, 606 383-84
Ideas, 51, 53, 63, 64, 180-82; see and Gnostic redeemers, 342-44,
also Logos 347, 350-51
and Plato, 47-49, 51, 55, 61, 63, in Gnosticism, 239, 350-71,
132, 180-82, 186, 190, 377, 409, 415, 416,
220, 228-30, 581 449, 522, 530, 581
and Plotinus, 60, 61, 139, 160, Basilides, 30, 31, 363,
186-91, 443 366-67, 582
ideas Manicheism, 40, 283-85,
unity of, with source, 450-51, 343, 347, 363,
466-67, 469, 552, 573 368, 418
ignorance, 37, 122, 156, 165, 218, Marcion, 32, 34, 35,
227, 237, 256, 274-77, 286-88, 362-63
280-81, 289-93, 308-309, Valentinianism, 37, 167,
316, 454-55, 580 219, 220, 221,
359, 361, 369-70,
Jesus, see also Christ; martyrdom; 423
sacraments: Eucharist message of, 4, 6, 9, 10, 354,
in ACIM, 4, 6, 9, 445, 511-23, 518-19, 523
527-29, 554, 561, 570, -patibilis, 283-84, 347, 418
574, 580-82, 593 as redeemer,
as Christ, 449, 516-18 Augustine, Saint, 65, 66
as manifestation of the Christianity, 279
Holy Spirit, 445, Marcion, 286-88
518, 521, 522 redemption of, 347-48
as source of ACIM, 3, 9, Subordinationism, 57-58,
459, 515-16, 574 371-73
world’s reaction to, 354, joining
520-21 in ACIM, 500, 501, 529, 548,
in Christianity, 4, 350, 356, 593-94 (see also
367, 449, 530, 581-82 forgiveness)

669
INDICES

Judaism, 95, 108, 413-14, 487-88 mana, 252, 263, 272, 297, 302-303
Manda dHaiye, see Mandeanism
Kephalaia, see Manicheism Mandeanism, 38, 43, 121; see also
“Kerygmata Petrou,” 153, 169, index of Mandean Sources
324-25, 378-79, 488 and the body, 266, 272-73,
knowledge 312-13, 426
in ACIM, 451, 509-10, 544 and evil, 125-26, 273, 312
in Gnosticism, 451, 509, 580 and the fall, 26, 296-97, 456
(see also gnosis; Hibil, 301-302, 313
salvation: Gnosticism) and humanity, creation of,
251-52
Last Judgment, see New Testament
and light and darkness, 125-26,
“Letter to Flora”, see Valentinianism
207-208, 297, 301
libertinism, see morality
Manda dHaiye, 252, 273, 312,
light and darkness, 70-71, 73, 83,
338-39
126, 144-50, 155, 170-73,
189, 192, 207, 301 and the Messenger, 297-301,
in ACIM, 309, 454, 459, 483, 301-302, 312, 338-39
484, 515, 549, 557, and morality, 424-26
557-58, 581, 584, 588 and the origin of the world,
in Mandeanism, 124-26, 207-208
207-208, 296-97 and the pre-separation state,
in Manicheism, 39-41, 122-27, 124-26, 207
144-50, 192, 202-206, Ptahil, 207-208, 251-52, 313
206-207, 250-51, redeemer in, 296-97, 301-303,
281-86, 301, 311, 345, 312, 338-39, 350 and
347, 417-22, 468 religious practice,
“Living Gospel, The,” see 376-77, 382-83, 424
Manicheism and salvation, 296, 301-303,
Logos, 55, 57, 72, 81, 180, 183-84, 304, 312-13, 382-83,
200, 306, 374; see also 424
Christ: Christology; Ideas and the soul, 272-73, 296-98,
in Gnosticism, 171-72, 206, 301-304, 312-13,
342-43 382-83
love and the world, 207-208
in ACIM, 520, 528, 533, Manicheism, 29, 33, 38-41, 106-107
539-40, 554, 563, 605, and asceticism, 41, 250, 402,
606 417-22
and the body, 39-40, 250-51,
magic 265, 361-62, 416-22
in ACIM, 462, 480, 485, 487, and dualism, 39-40, 122-24,
525, 526, 548 202-208, 250-51, 265

670
 Subject Index

“Epistula Fundamenti,” 122, martyrdom, 59, 110-13, 321, 322,

145-46 414-15, 422, 431, 530-32
and evil, 40, 122, 148-49, 204, matter, 50, 52, 64, 181-82, 185, 210,
282-83, 311 (see also 256
asceticism; light and incorporeal, 220
darkness) in Manicheism, 124, 204-205,
and the fall, 26, 40, 144, 265 311-12
and God, 40, 56, 147 and Plato, 50, 61, 157
and humanity, creation of, 40, and Plotinus, 61, 160-63,
250-51, 265, 282, 419 186-98
and Jesus, 343-44, 347, 362, in Valentinianism, 155-57,
367-68, 418 217-19
Kephalaia, 13, 311, 418, “Megale Apophasis” 306
421-22 Messenger, 297-300, 312; see also
and light and darkness, 39-41, redeemer
122-24, 144-50, Middle Platonism, 29, 50, 53-55,
203-206, 250-51, 60, 70, 92, 160, 183, 306;
282-86, 311-12, 345, see also Index of Names:
347, 416-22, 468 Albinus; Philo
“Living Gospel, The,” 39, Mind, 52, 53-54, 57, 60-61, 63, 65,
285-86 66, 138-39, 160, 163, 184,
and matter, 124, 204, 311-12 186-92, 237, 44; see also
Primal Man (Ormuzd), 40, 148, Christ; God; Ideas
203-205 in ACIM, 53, 444, 450-51,
psalms of, 25, 123, 146, 465-66, 479, 494, 495
147-48, 149, 202-203, mind, 37, 54, 132, 155, 252, 255-59,
203-204, 265, 272, 332
283, 284, 343-44, 419 in ACIM, 457, 460, 501-503
redeemer in, 343-44, 347 defined, 134, 444-45,
and St. Augustine, 62-63, 192, 465-66, 494-95,
420, 421 545
and salvation, 39-40, 282-86, power of choice within,
304, 311-12, 325-26, 460-61, 466-67,
417-22 475-76, 484-85,
and sex, 40, 250, 265, 362, 504-506, 508,
417-19 511-12, 540,
and sin, 265, 419-22 560-62
and the soul, 40, 149-50, and relationship with body,
202-204, 265, 271-72, 468-69, 479, 484,
419 502-504, 521-22,
and the world, 40, 123, 528-29, 559-61,
203-206, 443 563

671
INDICES

miracle Paul, 33-35, 40, 69-78, 96, 110,

in ACIM, 445, 485, 503-506, 185, 314, 325*
508, 512, 538, 546, Peter, 97-98*, 324-25*, 533-34
562, 593-94 Sermon on the Mount, 224-25*,
monism, see dualism, non- 287, 407*, 422-23*,
Montanists, 103, 401 425*
morality, 426-40, 553-65 Simon of Cyrene, 30*
amorality, 445, 553, 558-59, Thomas, 39*
563-65 Writings
asceticism, 41, 46, 52, 56, 59, Ac, 8, 36, 74, 79, 97, 99,
59-60, 62, 72-73, 78, 163, 404*, 521
250, 379, 395, 405-22, 1 Co, 71, 72, 75, 75-76, 76,
428-29, 431, 438-40, 78, 314, 315,
563-65, 598-99 368*, 407*, 532,
libertinism, 76, 78-79, 158-59, 581
395-405, 408-409, 2 Co, 70, 71, 75, 76, 110,
417, 436, 563-64, 298*
599-600 Col, 72-73, 73, 372
moderateness, 422-26, 428-31, Ep, 34, 35, 73-74, 223*,
559-65, 601 300, 357-58*,
404*
Naassenes, 351-52, 377-78, 407 Ga, 35, 70, 286*, 449
Nag Hammadi library, see also Heb, 8
index for The Nag Jn, 5, 58, 81-89, 95, 185,
Hammadi Library 350, 403*, 517,
discovery of, 23-24 583
Narcissus, 188 1 Jn, 83, 88-89, 89-90
negative theology, see apophaticism 2 Jn, 89, 94
Neoplatonism, 4, 10, 11, 56, 56, Jude, 78-79, 99
62-63, 140, 160, 236-37; Lk, 84, 154, 362*
see also Index of Names: Mt, 56, 94, 154, 256, 313,
Origen; Plotinus 315-16, 406*,
New Testament (asterisk indicates 533-34, 591
reference in Gnostic 1 P, 275-76
literature) 2 P, 79-80, 99-100, 109
John, 72, 80-90, 93-95 Ph, 72, 350
John the Baptist, 213*, 338* Rm, 71, 151, 309*, 317,
Last Judgment, the, 39*, 305, 357*
312, 313, 425* (see Rv, 79, 199
also eschatology) 1 Th, 70-71
Mary Magdalene, 295* 2 Th, 275-76
Nicodemus, 82 1 Tm, 76-77, 77-78

672
 Subject Index

2 Tm, 77, 77-78, 86, 356, Seth, 40*, 126*, 213*, 249*,
357 321*, 322-23*,
Tt, 77 339-42*, 349*
Nicene Council, AD 787, 105 Solomon, 213*
Nicolaitans, 79 Suffering Servant, 34, 86
1984, 114 Ten Commandments, 224*,
non-dualism, see dualism, non- 422-23*
nous, see Mind; mind Writings
Dt, 8
“Odes of Solomon, The,” 299, 301, Ex, 152*
302, 348 Gn, 150, 151-52, 180,
Ogdoad, 36, 136, 221-22, 222, 223 222*, 244-45*,
Old Testament (asterisk indicates 248-49*, 256
reference in Gnostic Is, 223*, 372, 539
Literature) 2 K, 256n
Aaron, 325* Lv, 429
Abel, 248*, 249*, 325*, 339* Nu, 152*
Abraham, 339* Pr, 80, 222*
Adam, 65, 213*, 229-30, 234, Ps, 8, 403*
242-48*, 250-53*, Ws, 65-66
257, 262, 266-67*, One, the
274*, 279-80, in Plotinus, 60-61, 63-64, 133,
282-85*, 312*, 321*, 138-40, 160-61,
324-25*, 339*, 182-83, 186-88,
339-41*, 402-403* 192-93, 334-36, 374,
and Eve, 78, 150-53, 266*, 434-35, 439-40, 443,
282-85*, 324*, 581
339-40*, 386*, Ophites, 108, 215, 266, 345-46,
367-68
480-81
Ormuzd, see Manicheism; Primal
Cain, 169*, 214*, 248*, 249*,
Man
325*
Orphism, 46, 51
David, 213*
Elijah, 403-404*
Pelagianism, 64-65, 281, 332, 500
Er, 256-57
Pentecostal movement, 601
Esau, 325*
Isaac, 325* perception
Ishmael, 325* in ACIM, 451, 467, 499, 544,
Jacob, 325* 557
Moses, 213*, 256, 324-25*, Phibionites, 345-46, 404, 404-405
488* physics, 467-68, 468
Noah, 248* “Pistis Sophia,” 273-74, 404-405

673
INDICES

Pleroma, 26, 36-37, 134-37, 156-57, special, 260, 485-91, 502,

165-72, 216, 307, 353, 528-29, 538, 548, 554,
355, 358, 361, 381, 384, 556-57, 576-77,
386, 406, 443, 450 592-93, 605
pneuma, 37, 218, 218, 241, 242, religious practice, 375-95, 434-35,
263, 288, 493; see also 445, 526-53, 582-85; see
also prayer; sacraments
spirit: Gnosticism
rest, 305, 452, 484, 510
pneumatics, 87, 90, 255, 263, 344,
rituals, see religious practice;
366, 387, 396, 420
sacraments
Poimandres, 121, 143-44, 206, 264,
295
sacraments
prayer
annointing, 379-83
in ACIM, 537-50
baptism, 376-79, 386
and Plotinus, 435
bridal chamber, 386-90, 399
Primal Man, 40, 148, 203-205, 252,
Eucharist, 84-85, 383-85,
263, 301, 344
400-401, 526-29, 533
Protennoia, 138, 342; see also index
Gnostic denunciation of, 414
for The Nag Hammadi and Origen, 431
Library: “Trimorphic Penance, 534-37
Protennoia” redemption, 385
“Pseudo-Clementines, The,” 412 in Valentinianism, 289-92
psychic, 37, 221, 222, 241, 249, 263, sacrifice, 4, 486, 518-19, 519-20,
307, 369, 398-99; see also 526-32, 562
mind salvation, see also Atonement; ego:
Ptahil, see Mandeansim plan of salvation of
Pythagoreanism, 46, 51, 60, 131-32 in ACIM, 3, 14, 289-91,
444-45, 485, 499-510,
redeemer, see also Christ; Jesus; 511-13, 515, 536,
salvation 557-58, 562-63,
in ACIM, 511-23, 580-82 579-80
in Gnosticism, 27-28, 61, in Christianity, 28, 234-37,
279-82, 301, 316-18,
152-53, 297, 301-302,
527, 581-82
312, 337-44, 347, 350, Origen, 58-59, 313-16,
581-82 332-34, 431-33
Redeemed Redeemer, 61, St. Augustine, 62-66,
344-49 279-80, 332,
redemption, see redeemer; salvation 433-34
regula fidei, 95-96, 114-15 in Gnosticism, 28, 30, 30-31,
relationships 58, 65, 111, 112, 239,
holy, 386, 490-91, 500, 529, 281-82, 294-95,
532-33, 538, 557, 584 298-301, 306-13,

674
 Subject Index

318-26, 394-95, 406 Steles of Seth”

Mandeanism, 296-97, sex, 48, 71, 76, 480-81
301-304, 312-13, and asceticism, 406-19, 598
382-83, 424 in Gnosticism, 40, 248, 250-51,
Manicheism, 39-41, 264-65, 267-70,
282-86, 304, 361-62, 387-90,
311-12, 325-26, 416-19, 424-26
417-22 and libertinism, 397-405,
Marcion, 34-35, 286-88, 599-600
416-17 Shem, see index for The Nag
Valentinianism, 36-37, Hammadi Library: “The
156, 280-81, 307, Paraphrase of Shem”
319, 323-24 sin, 192-93, 265, 419-22
in Platonism, 65, 281, 293-94, in ACIM, 3, 461, 469-70,
326-36 479-81, 485-86, 519,
Science of Mind, 597 525, 534-37, 551-52
Second Council of Constantinople, (see also ego)
314-15 in the Judaeo-Christian
Second Vatican Council, 526 tradition, 66, 88-90,
Self (spiritual), 2, 3, 5, 57, 218, 241, 122, 151-54, 256, 280,
263, 281, 297, 303-304 286-87, 579
in ACIM, 3, 4, 135-36, 263, original, 58, 65, 150-54,
304, 449-50, 476, 481, 279-80, 287, 481, 519
482, 493, 494, 500, (see also fall, the)
512, 517, 544, 549, sleep, see dream state
552, 579 Son of God
self, see also Index of Names: defined, 4, 448-49, 545
Plotinus and the thought of separation,
in ACIM, 4, 218, 263, 469, 444-45, 453-63,
479-80, 481, 493-94 469-74, 500, 516,
separation, 3, 141-73; see also fall, 525-26, 541
the unity with Father of, 444,
in ACIM, 3, 444, 453-78, 449-52, 471, 475-76,
479-80, 488, 494-95, 538-39, 540, 546, 547,
525-26, 573-76 549
Sethians, 126-27, 321, 338, 339, Sophia, 27, 29-30, 165, 213, 242,
342, 378, 378, 393; see 243, 246, 309-10, 368
also Old Testament: Seth; in Valentinianism, 36-37, 53,
index for The Nag 156, 165-73, 210,
Hammadi Library: “The 212-13, 216-28, 361,
Second Treatise of the 389, 443, 454, 455,
Great Seth,” “The Three 461

675
INDICES

soul, 46, 48-52, 54, 58, 64-66, in ACIM, 230, 449, 457,
159-61, 182-86, 236-37, 461-62, 466, 473-78,
255-62, 279-80, 304, 501, 503, 509-10, 515,
313-16, 331-36, 372-74, 516-17, 542-43, 576,
431-33 582, 583, 608
in ACIM, 303, 304, 444-45 transpersonal psychology, 597
in Gnosticism, 26, 27-28, 30,
34-35, 40, 142, Unity (church), 597
148-50, 218-19, 239, Urantia, 597
248-49, 265-77,
288-90, 293-308, Valentinianism, 8, 26-27, 90, 121;
310-14, 345-47,
see also Index of Names:
351-52, 381-83,
391-92, 416-19 Heracleon; Marcus;
and Plato, 48-49, 50, 52, 65, Ptolemaeus; Theodotus;
177-78, 190-91, Valentinus
253-54, 331-32, 346, and aeons, 36-37, 134-38,
427 165-72, 228, 291,
and Plotinus, 60-62, 65, 383-84
138-39, 182, 186-98, and the body, 37, 219, 265-66
233-34, 236-37, and Christ, 37, 167, 217-18,
259-61, 293, 294, 369-70, 386
334-36, 347, 436-40, and the Cross (Horos, Limit),
479
167-70, 172, 216, 387
World-,
and deficiency, 37, 167, 217,
Plato, 182, 184, 185
290-93, 580
spirit, 58, 258-59
and the Demiurge, 27, 37,
in ACIM, 444, 447, 465, 469,
49-50, 219, 220,
479, 493-95, 497, 522
221-28, 248-49, 381
in Gnosticism, 37, 126-27, 218,
and fall, the, 36-37, 141-42,
242-53, 263-65,
155-57, 165-73, 386,
288-90, 366
443, 447
spiritual specialness, 4, 12, 87,
and forgiveness, 292-93
89-90, 97-109, 316-26,
and God, 221, 224-28, 422
569, 587, 590-94, 597
and ignorance, 37, 122, 156,
stoics, 63; see also Index of Names:
218, 227, 275-76,
Aurelius, Marcus
280-81, 289-93, 309,
454-55, 580
teacher of God, 496-97, 513, 543,
and Jesus, 37, 167, 218-21,
564-65, 580, 584
225-26, 289, 348,
Three Root Principle, 126-27
358-59, 361, 369-70,
time, 178, 180, 198, 200, 231-39,
423
473-74

676
 Subject Index

“Letter to Flora,” 224-26, 209-215, 237-39,

422-23, 585 395, 416-17,
and morality, 398-99, 422-23 443-44, 470, 481,
and the Pleroma, 36-37, 576
134-37, 156, 166-72, and Aurelius, Marcus, 233-34
216, 222, 307, 361, as illusory, 3, 7, 8-9, 445, 453,
384, 386 456-57, 466-67, 482,
and pneuma (spirit), 37, 218, 495, 515, 519
218, 249, 290 in Johannine writings, 81-84
and psychic, 37, 218, 248-49, and Origen, 58, 183-86, 432,
307, 369, 398 576
and religious practice, 379-90, origin of
393-95, 399-400 ACIM, 3, 7, 8-9, 228, 444,
and salvation, 156, 289-93, 465-78, 500-503,
307, 319, 324, 579-80 519, 541, 569,
and Sophia, 36-37, 156, 571, 573-75,
165-72, 215-28, 594-96
309-10, 361, 389, 443, Gnosticism, 27, 29-31, 33,
454, 461 36-37, 40,
and the soul, 26-27, 218-19, 122-24, 143-44,
249, 275-76, 290 155-57, 202-14,
and spiritual specialness, 443
318-20, 323-24 and Philo, 54-55, 180-82
and the world, 27, 36-37, 37, and Plato, 47-48, 49-51, 62,
155-57, 215-30, 422, 158, 176-80, 181,
443, 573 227-28
Vedanta, the, 122 and Plotinus, 59-62, 182,
186-98
Walküre, Die, 17, 609-10 purpose of, 3, 9, 183-86, 466,
Word, see Christ; Logos 471-72, 484, 503,
world, see also God: -world paradox 547-48, 555, 556-57,
and Aristotle, 51-52 575-76, 583
attitude toward (see also “real” in ACIM, 475, 583
cosmic piety) and St. Augustine, 64, 183,
ACIM, 444, 481, 574-76, 200-201
583 and St. Paul, 70-71
Christian, 58, 64, 70,
81-84, 185-86, Yaldabaoth (Yaltabaoth), see
200-202, 574 Ialdabaoth
Gnostic, 27, 33-34, 35,
54-55, 58, 64, 71, Zoroastrianism, 29, 38, 121, 122,
202-208, 147, 148, 304

677
678