Neoplatonism and Gnosticism - Philosophical Relations Between Neoplatonism and Gnosticism

Philosophical Relations Between Neoplatonism and Gnosticism

Gnostics borrow a lot of ideas and terms from Platonism. They exhibit a keen understanding of Greek philosophical terms and the Greek Koine language in general, and use Greek philosophical concepts throughout their text, including such concepts as hypostasis (reality, existence), ousia (essence, substance, being), and demiurge (creator God). Good examples include texts such as the Hypostasis of the Archons (Reality of the Rulers) or Trimorphic Protennoia (The first thought in three forms).

Gnostics structured their world of transcendent being by ontological distinctions whereby the plenitude of the divine world emerges from a sole high deity by emanation, radiation, unfolding and mental self-reflection. Likewise the technique of self-performable contemplative mystical ascent towards and beyond a realm of pure being is rooted in Plato's Symposium, and common in Gnostic thought, was also expressed by Plotinus (see Life of Plotinus). Divine triads, tetrads, and ogdoads in Gnostic thought often are closely related to Neo-Pythagorean Arithmology. The trinity of the "triple-powered one" (with the powers consisting of the modalities of existence, life and mind) in Allogenes mirrors quite closely the Neoplatonic doctrine of the Intellect differentiating itself from the One in three phases called Existence or reality (hypostasis), Life, and Intellect (nous). Both traditions heavily emphasize the role of negative theology or apophasis, and Gnostic emphasis on the ineffability of God often echoes Platonic (and Neoplatonic) formulations of the ineffability of the One or the Good.

There were some important philosophical differences. Gnostics emphasized magic and ritual in a way that would have been disagreeable to the more sober Neoplatonists such as Plotinus and Porphyry, though perhaps not to later Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus. But Plotinus' main objection to the Gnostic teachings he encountered was to their rejection of the goodness of the demiurge and of the material world. He attacked the Gnostics for their vilification of Plato's ontology of the universe as contained in the Timaeus. Plotinus accused Gnosticism of vilifying the demiurge or craftsman that shaped the material world, and so ultimately for perceiving the material world as evil, or as a prison. Plotinus set forth that the demiurge is the nous (as an emanation of the One), which is the ordering principle or mind, also reason. Plotinus was critical of the gnostic derivation of the Demiurge from Wisdom as Sophia, the anthropomorphic personification of wisdom as a feminine spirit deity not unlike the goddess Athena or the Christian Holy Spirit. These objections seem applicable to some of the Nag Hammadi texts, although others such as the Valentinians, or the Tripartite Tractate, appear to insist on the goodness of the world and the Demiurge. (Plotinus indicated that if gnostics really believed this world to be a prison, then they might at any moment free themselves from it by committing suicide.)