"Understanding" has, for the greater part of my life, been more important than anything else. I have sought to understand why everything is the way it is, what underlies it all, why it happens as it does, why there is an "I" I call "myself." "Understanding the mind of God" took priority over "believing in God." This might define me as "gnostic" in terms of worldview, for gnosis (knowledge) has held far more interest to me than faith. This is not to say that I have not sought to be a "man of faith," for I have, but found that I just needed to "know" more than I wanted to "believe." And this "need to know" is addressed in this essay.
I have been studying The Gnostic Religion by Hans Jonas for a while now. It is profoundly interesting to me. There is so much to convey. But at this point I will have to focus on the one point of limit as designated in the title. The writing and thought is very abstruse, abstract, and seemingly paradoxical. It is quite similar to the creation of Parvati by Shiva in Hindu cosmology. I am beginning with "Limit" though it is actually the ending rather than the beginning. I am quoting [and commenting in brackets] from The Crisis in the Pleroma from within the chapter, The Valentinian Speculation, from The Gnostic Religion. It's a bit challenging to "plunge in" to this narrative and hope that anyone might follow it, including myself, but I trust that they may be a few who will and can. I will begin with a bit that might briefly introduce a few terms.
Aeons: "These Aeons, produced to the glory of the Father [First Creator], wished to glorify the Father by their own creations, and produced further emanations. ... The last female Aeon in the chain of emanations is Sophia" (181).
Pleroma: The additional emanations [further Aeons] created by the Aeons "constituted the Fullness (Pleroma) ... 'Pleroma' is the standard term for the fully explicated manifold of divine characteristics ... forming a hierarchy and together constituting the divine realm" (181).
Fore-Father or Abyss: "a perfect Aeon pre-existent... No thing can comprehend him. ... With him was the Ennoia (Thought), also called Grace and Silence. And once this Abyss took thought to project out of himself the beginning of all things, and he sank this project like a seed into the womb of the Silence that was with him, and she conceived and brought forth the Mind (Nous: male), who is like and equal to his begetter and alone comprehends the greatness of the Father. ... Together with him, Truth (Aletheia: female) was produced and this is the first Tetrad: Abyss and Silence, then Mind and Truth"(180).
[Now for "the crisis in the Pleroma"]. "The Only-Begotten Mind alone ... can know the Fore-Father: to all the other Aeons he remains invisible and incomprehensible. ... The Nous wished to communicate the Father's greatness also to the other Aeons, but the Silence restrained him by the will of the Father [my emphasis] ... So the Aeons longed only secretly to behold the begetter of their seed and to search for the root without beginning. 'Indeed the All (the world of Aeons=the Pleroma) was searching for Him from whom it came forth. But the All was inside of Him, that Incomprehensible, Inconceivable One who is superior to all thought' [my emphasis]. (This is the beginning of a crisis in the Pleroma, since its harmony rests on its natural order, and this one the observation of their inherent limits by its members--which members yet, being spiritual subjects, cannot forgo the aspiration to know more than their limits permit [my emphasis] and thus to abolish the distance separating them from the Absolute.) [I can absolutely identify with this need "to know more than their limits permit."] At this point, Sophia, "the last and youngest (and therefore outmost) of the Aeons, ... leapt farthest forward and fell into a passion apart from the embrace of her consort [the Fore-Father/Abyss]. That passions had originated and spread from the vicinity of the Mind and Truth but now infected the Sophia and broke out in her so that she went out of her mind, ... since she had so such community with the Father ... 'Oblivion did not come into existence close to the Father, although it came into existence because of Him.' The passion was a search for the Father, for she strove to comprehend his greatness [my emphasis]. This, however, she failed to achieve, because what she attempted was impossible, and so she found herself in great agony; on account of the depth of the Abyss, into which in her desire she penetrated more and more, she would in the end have been swallowed up by its sweetness and dissolved in the general being, had she not come up against the power that consolidates the All and keeps it off the ineffable Greatness. This power is called Limit (horos): by him she was stopped, consolidated, brought back to herself, and convinced that the Father is incomprehensible" (182).
There is much more to convey, but this piece is sharply pointed. The Valentinian school was a second century form of Christian Gnosticism. This writing posits the idea that humanity lives, moves and has its being within the being of the Fore-Father/First Creator, but believes itself as outside and independent of this Source/Container, which it also sees as external to itself. I share this with the reader because the notion of "limit," much less "limit to understanding," is challenging and perhaps impossible to accept for some of us. I hope to present other little sharp arrows that may also hit their target.
I have been studying The Gnostic Religion by Hans Jonas for a while now. It is profoundly interesting to me. There is so much to convey. But at this point I will have to focus on the one point of limit as designated in the title. The writing and thought is very abstruse, abstract, and seemingly paradoxical. It is quite similar to the creation of Parvati by Shiva in Hindu cosmology. I am beginning with "Limit" though it is actually the ending rather than the beginning. I am quoting [and commenting in brackets] from The Crisis in the Pleroma from within the chapter, The Valentinian Speculation, from The Gnostic Religion. It's a bit challenging to "plunge in" to this narrative and hope that anyone might follow it, including myself, but I trust that they may be a few who will and can. I will begin with a bit that might briefly introduce a few terms.
Aeons: "These Aeons, produced to the glory of the Father [First Creator], wished to glorify the Father by their own creations, and produced further emanations. ... The last female Aeon in the chain of emanations is Sophia" (181).
Pleroma: The additional emanations [further Aeons] created by the Aeons "constituted the Fullness (Pleroma) ... 'Pleroma' is the standard term for the fully explicated manifold of divine characteristics ... forming a hierarchy and together constituting the divine realm" (181).
Fore-Father or Abyss: "a perfect Aeon pre-existent... No thing can comprehend him. ... With him was the Ennoia (Thought), also called Grace and Silence. And once this Abyss took thought to project out of himself the beginning of all things, and he sank this project like a seed into the womb of the Silence that was with him, and she conceived and brought forth the Mind (Nous: male), who is like and equal to his begetter and alone comprehends the greatness of the Father. ... Together with him, Truth (Aletheia: female) was produced and this is the first Tetrad: Abyss and Silence, then Mind and Truth"(180).
[Now for "the crisis in the Pleroma"]. "The Only-Begotten Mind alone ... can know the Fore-Father: to all the other Aeons he remains invisible and incomprehensible. ... The Nous wished to communicate the Father's greatness also to the other Aeons, but the Silence restrained him by the will of the Father [my emphasis] ... So the Aeons longed only secretly to behold the begetter of their seed and to search for the root without beginning. 'Indeed the All (the world of Aeons=the Pleroma) was searching for Him from whom it came forth. But the All was inside of Him, that Incomprehensible, Inconceivable One who is superior to all thought' [my emphasis]. (This is the beginning of a crisis in the Pleroma, since its harmony rests on its natural order, and this one the observation of their inherent limits by its members--which members yet, being spiritual subjects, cannot forgo the aspiration to know more than their limits permit [my emphasis] and thus to abolish the distance separating them from the Absolute.) [I can absolutely identify with this need "to know more than their limits permit."] At this point, Sophia, "the last and youngest (and therefore outmost) of the Aeons, ... leapt farthest forward and fell into a passion apart from the embrace of her consort [the Fore-Father/Abyss]. That passions had originated and spread from the vicinity of the Mind and Truth but now infected the Sophia and broke out in her so that she went out of her mind, ... since she had so such community with the Father ... 'Oblivion did not come into existence close to the Father, although it came into existence because of Him.' The passion was a search for the Father, for she strove to comprehend his greatness [my emphasis]. This, however, she failed to achieve, because what she attempted was impossible, and so she found herself in great agony; on account of the depth of the Abyss, into which in her desire she penetrated more and more, she would in the end have been swallowed up by its sweetness and dissolved in the general being, had she not come up against the power that consolidates the All and keeps it off the ineffable Greatness. This power is called Limit (horos): by him she was stopped, consolidated, brought back to herself, and convinced that the Father is incomprehensible" (182).
There is much more to convey, but this piece is sharply pointed. The Valentinian school was a second century form of Christian Gnosticism. This writing posits the idea that humanity lives, moves and has its being within the being of the Fore-Father/First Creator, but believes itself as outside and independent of this Source/Container, which it also sees as external to itself. I share this with the reader because the notion of "limit," much less "limit to understanding," is challenging and perhaps impossible to accept for some of us. I hope to present other little sharp arrows that may also hit their target.
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