The Demiurge and the Three Kinds

So, on their account, these three kinds of existence had now come into being: one out of the passion, which was matter; a second out of the turning, which was of soul; and the third, the one she — Achamoth — brought forth herself, which was spiritual. She then set about giving them form. With the spiritual kind she could do nothing, since it was of the same nature as herself. So she turned to the substance of soul, which had come out of her own turning, to give it form and to bring the Savior’s instruction into the light. [a]

They say that out of the substance of soul she first formed the one who is Father and King of everything — both of the things of the same nature as himself, that is, the substances of soul, which they call right-handed, and of the things that sprang from the passion and from matter, which they call left-handed. For they claim that he made everything that came into being after him, secretly driven to it by his mother. This is why they call him Metropator, Apator, Demiurge, and Father: Father of the substances on the right, that is, of the things of soul, and Demiurge of those on the left, the material ones, while he is king of them all. For they say that this Enthymesis, wanting to make everything in honor of the Aeons, made images of them — or rather that the Savior did it through her. And she, in the image of the invisible Father, kept herself hidden from the Demiurge; but he was in the image of the only Son, and the angels and archangels he made were in the image of the rest of the Aeons.

So they claim he was set up as the Father and God of everything outside the Pleroma, the maker of all substances of soul and of matter. He was the one who told apart these two kinds of existence, which until then had been mixed together; he made bodily things out of unbodily ones, shaped the things of heaven and the things of earth, and became the Framer — the Demiurge — of things material and things of soul, of those on the right and those on the left, of the light and the heavy, of those that rise and those that sink. He also made seven heavens, above which, they say, he himself, the Demiurge, exists. That is why they call him Hebdomad and call his mother Achamoth Ogdoad, keeping the number of the first-born and primary Ogdoad of the Pleroma. They say further that these seven heavens can think, and speak of them as angels, while they call the Demiurge himself an angel who bears a likeness to God. In the same vein they declare that Paradise, which sits above the third heaven, is a fourth angel with power of its own, from whom Adam picked up certain qualities while he talked with him.

They go on to say that the Demiurge supposed he was making all these things by himself, when in fact he made them along with the productive power of Achamoth. He formed the heavens without knowing what the heavens are; he shaped man without knowing man; he brought the earth to light without any acquaintance with the earth. In the same way, they declare, he did not know the forms of anything he made, and did not even know that his own mother existed, but supposed that he himself was everything. They claim his mother put this idea into his mind, because she wanted to bring him forth with a character like that: the head and source of his own being, and the absolute ruler over every kind of work that would afterward be attempted. This mother they also call Ogdoad, Sophia, Earth, Jerusalem, Holy Spirit, and — using a masculine word — Lord. Her dwelling place is a middle one: above the Demiurge, but below the Pleroma and outside it, right up to the end.

Since they make all material substance come out of three passions — fear, grief, and bewilderment — the account they give runs like this. Substances of soul came from fear and from the turning; the Demiurge himself they trace to the turning, while all the other substances of soul they trace to fear: the souls of creatures without reason, of wild beasts, and of human beings. And for this reason he, the Demiurge, was incapable of recognizing anything spiritual, and supposed that he alone was God, announcing through the prophets: “I am God, and there is no other besides me.”

They teach further that the spirits of wickedness came from grief. That is the source of the devil — whom they also call Cosmocrator, the ruler of the world — and of the demons and the angels and every wicked spiritual being there is. They make the Demiurge the son of that mother of theirs, Achamoth, and Cosmocrator the creature of the Demiurge. Cosmocrator knows what is above him, because he is a spirit of wickedness; the Demiurge does not, because he is merely of soul. Their mother lives in the place above the heavens, that is, in the middle dwelling; the Demiurge in the heavenly place, that is, in the Hebdomad; and Cosmocrator here in our world. As we said earlier, the bodily elements of the world sprang from her confusion and bewilderment, as from a lower source: earth arose from her stunned state, water from the shaking of her fear, air from her grief hardening; while fire, which brings death and decay, was there in all of them, just as they teach that ignorance too lay hidden in those three passions.

Having made the world this way, he — the Demiurge — also made the earthy part of man. He did not take him from this dry ground, but from an invisible substance of matter that could be melted and poured; and then afterward, as they define the process, he breathed into him the part that is of soul. It was this part that was made after his image and likeness. The material part was very near to God so far as the image went, but not of the same substance as him; the part of soul matched him in likeness, and so its substance was called the spirit of life, because it arose from a spiritual outflow. After all this, they say, he was wrapped all around in a covering of skin, and by this they mean the outward flesh that feels.

But they also say that the Demiurge himself knew nothing about that offspring of his mother Achamoth — the offspring she brought forth from gazing at the angels who attended the Savior, spiritual like herself. She used his ignorance to plant it in him without his knowing, so that through him it would be poured into the soul that came from himself, and so be carried as in a womb inside this material body; and while it slowly grew stronger, it might in time be fit to receive full reason. So it came about, on their account, that with no knowledge on the Demiurge’s part, the man he had breathed into was at the same moment made a spiritual man, by an unspeakable providence, through the breath he received at the same time from Sophia. Just as the Demiurge did not know his mother, he did not recognize her offspring either. This offspring they also call the Church, a copy of the Church that is above. So this is the kind of man they picture: his soul-substance from the Demiurge, his body from the earth, his fleshly part from matter, and his spiritual man from the mother Achamoth.

Since there are three kinds of substance, then, they declare that everything material — what they also describe as being “on the left hand” — must necessarily perish, since it cannot take in any breath of incorruption. Everything of soul — what they call being “on the right hand” — stands midway between the spiritual and the material, and so, they hold, it passes to whichever side it leans toward. Spiritual substance, they say, was sent out for this purpose: that here, joined with what is of soul, it might take shape, the two being put through the same training together. And this, they declare, is “the salt” and “the light of the world.” For the substance of soul needed training by way of the outward senses; and that, they say, is why the world was made, and why the Savior came to the substance of soul, which had free choice, to secure its salvation. [o]

For they say that he took up the firstfruits of those he was going to save, in this way: from Achamoth what was spiritual, while the Demiurge clothed him with the Christ that was of soul; and by a special arrangement he was given a body that had the nature of soul, put together with unspeakable skill so that it could be seen and touched and could suffer. At the same time they deny that he took anything material into himself, since matter cannot be saved. They also hold that the end of all things will come when everything spiritual has been given form and brought to completion by knowledge — and by this they mean spiritual men, men who have reached the perfect knowledge of God and been initiated into these mysteries by Achamoth. And they present themselves as being those men.

People of soul, in turn, are taught the things of soul: people, that is, who are held up by their works and by a bare faith, without perfect knowledge. That is us, they say, the people of the Church. So they insist that good works are necessary for us, since otherwise it is impossible for us to be saved. But as for themselves, they hold that they will be saved completely and beyond all doubt, not by their conduct, but because they are spiritual by nature. For just as material substance cannot share in salvation — since, as they maintain, it cannot receive it — so, again, spiritual substance, by which they mean themselves, can never come under the power of decay, whatever sort of things they may do. Gold sunk in filth does not lose its beauty on that account, but keeps the qualities that are its own, and the filth has no power to damage the gold; in the same way, they claim, they themselves cannot be harmed in any degree or lose their spiritual substance, whatever material deeds they get mixed up in.

So it also comes about that the “most perfect” among them give themselves without fear to every kind of forbidden act — the very acts about which the Scriptures assure us that “those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” They think nothing, for instance, of eating food that has been sacrificed to idols, imagining that this can make them unclean in no way at all. Then again, at every pagan festival held in honor of the idols these men are the first to gather; and some of them go so far that they will not even keep away from that bloody show, hateful to God and to men alike, in which gladiators fight wild beasts or fight one another one on one. Others hand themselves over to the cravings of the flesh with all the greed they have, insisting that fleshly things are to be given to the flesh and spiritual things are provided for the spirit. Some of them, moreover, make a practice of defiling the women they have taught this teaching to — as has often been admitted by women who were led astray by certain of them and then came back to the church of God, confessing this along with the rest of their errors. Others of them, openly and without a blush, have fallen hard for particular women, drawn them away from their husbands, and made marriages of their own with them. Others again, who at first pretend to live with such women in complete modesty, as with sisters, have been shown up over time for what they are, when the sister was found to be pregnant by her brother.

And while they commit many other abominable and irreverent acts, they run us down — us who guard against sinning even in thought or in word, out of the fear of God — as utterly contemptible and ignorant people, while they hold themselves up high and claim to be the perfect ones, the chosen seed. For they say that we simply receive grace for our use, and that is why it will be taken away from us again; but that they have grace as their own private possession, come down from above by way of a union that cannot be spoken or described — and that on this account more will be given to them. So they hold that in every way it is always necessary for them to practice the mystery of the union. And to talk the thoughtless into believing it, they are in the habit of using these very words:

“Anyone who is in this world and does not love a woman so as to take possession of her does not belong to the truth, and will not reach the truth. But anyone who is of this world and has intercourse with a woman will not reach the truth, because he has acted under the power of craving.”

This is why they tell us — us whom they call people of soul and describe as belonging to the world — that we must practice self-control and good works, so that by this means we may at length reach the middle dwelling; but that for those called “the spiritual and perfect” no such conduct is needed at all. For it is not conduct of any kind that brings a person into the Pleroma, but the seed sent out from there in a weak, unfinished state, and brought to completion here.