The Gnostic Religion Quotes

“In the Gnostic formula it is understood that, though thrown into temporality, we had an origin in eternity, and so also we have an aim in eternity.”

“Hans and Eleonore Jonas collection, 1916-2016, 1930-1990, Leo Baeck Institute New York”

“This second edition... had been enlarged by two substantial additions: a new chapter... dealing with the great find at Nag Hamadi in Egypt... and... an essay... "Gnosticism, Nihilism, and Existentialism."”

“Here is one simple criterion for what is "Christian" (orthodox) or "gnostic" (heretical): whether the guilt is Adam's or the Archon's, whether human or divine, whether arising in or before creation.”

“In the Mandaean literature, it is a standing phrase: life has been thrown into the world, light into darkness, the soul into the body. ...Ejected into the world, life is a kind of trajectory projecting itself forward into the future.”

“"[T]he speculative principle of Valentinianism...the "pneumatic equation"—namely: that the human-individual event of pneumatic knowledge is the inverse equivalent of the pre-cosmic universal event of divine ignorance...”

“[C]osmos is said to be the "shape" (schema) of "Deficiency"; Deficiency we could equate with the "Oblivion"... Oblivion in turn is there related to "Error" (planē) and its formation (plasma), this in turn to "Anguish" and "Terror," they again to "Ignorance"—and so the whole chain of apparently psychological and human concepts, through which the mysterious tale moves, has almost by accident its cosmic meaning authenticated...”

“To scandalize has always been the pride of rebels, but much of it may satisfy itself in provocativeness of doctrine rather than deeds. Yet we must not underrate the extremes to which revolutionary defiance and the vertigo of freedom could go in the value-vacuum created by the spiritual crisis. The very discovery of a new vista, invalidating all former norms constituted an anarchical condition, and excess in thought and life was the first response to the import and dimensions of that vista.”

“What matters for the progress of the myth is the fact common to all versions that the godhead, to meet the aggressor, had to produce a special "creation" representing his own self... in response to the ensuing fate of this divine hypostasis the further multiplication of divine figures out of the supreme source comes about. This is the general gnostic principle of emanation...”

“In the opening lines the Gospel of Truth is declared to be "a joy for those who have received from the Father of Truth the gift of knowing Him through the power of the Word (Logos) who has come from the Pleroma... and for the redemption of those who were in ignorance of the Father"; the name "gospel" (evangelium) itself is then explained as the "the manifestation of hope" (i.e., of the hoped-for). ...evangelium has here the original and literal meaning of "glad tidings" that hold out hope and give assurance of fulfillment of that hope.”

“The results of... prolonged studies are published in German under the title Gnosis und späntantiker Geist, of which the first volume appeared in 1934, the second—because of the circumstances of the times—only in 1954, and the third and concluding one is still to come. The present volume, while still retaining the point of view of the larger work and restating many of its arguments, is different in scope, in organization, and in literary intention. ...[T]his treatment ...strives to reach the general educated reader as well as the scholar. ...[I]n some respects the present volume goes beyond the earlier presentation: certain texts are more fully interpreted... and it has been possible to include new material of recent discovery. Inevitably... it does duplicate, with some rephrasing, certain parts of the German work.”

“The Hermetic... mythological fantasy: not just a rejection of the physical universe in light of pessimsism, but the idea of an entirely new idea of human freedom, very different from the moral conception of... the Greek philosophers... However profoundly man is determined by nature... there still remains an innermost center which is not of nature's realm and by which he is above all its promptings and necessities. ...It is the first time in history that the radical ontological difference of man and nature has been discovered and the powerfully moving experience of it given expression... This rift between man and nature was never to close again, and protesting his hidden but essential otherness became in many variations an abiding theme in the quest for truth concerning man.”

“[T]he individual correlation of elements with passions varies greatly... from the turning back or supplication resulted the "soul" of the world and of the Demiurge and everything psychical, and from the rest of the passions the material elements: e.g., from the tears the moist substance, from the laughter the luminous, from the grief and shock the more solid elements of the cosmos; or "from shock (terror) and perplexity as the more inarticulate condition, the corporeal elements of the cosmos—namely earth according to the stiffening of terror; then water, according to the movement of fear; air, according to the flight of grief; the fire, however, is inherent in all of them as death and corruption, just as ignorance is hidden in the three passions"...”

“Ptolemy's Letter to Flora... is at pains to make it clear from the outset that the Law of Moses, though certainly not from the perfect Father, is neither from Satan; nor is the world: both are the work of a god of justice. Those who attribute creation to an evil god are as much in error as those who ascribe the Law to the supreme God: the former err because they do not know the god of justice, the latter, because they do not know the Father of All. ...The "God" who ordained this Law, being neither the perfect Father nor the devil, can only be the Demiurge, the maker of the universe... holding a median rank between them and therefore called the "middle principle."”

“The ancient sources are elusive passages in esoteric books the ordinary student never encounters, and secondary treatments are fragmentary and recondite. Professor Jonas’s synoptic book, well organized and beautifully written, is therefore a pioneer effort, unrivaled and indispensable. It is at once a work of original scholarship by an acknowledged authority in its field, and so lucid in its presentation that the enormous learning which it exploits is never obtrusive. It is a feat of imaginative scholarship to combine scattered and tangled threads into a unified texture with patterns clearly revealed in their dark side and in their light, and it is no less a feat to clarify the strange patterns by relating them to more familiar ones.”

“Hans Jonas's particular articulation of the two pronged model of "gnostic" ethics has probably been the single most influential factor in its modern popularization. But although Jonas felt that the libertinistic "alternative" actually represented the most undiluted and consistent expression of the gnostic "metaphysical revolt," he viewed it as a form of protest so radical that it could not be sustained indefinitely. Thus Jonas conceded that rather early on the libertine option was eclipsed by the ascetic option. Jonas's analysis was developed at a time when he did not have the benefit of full access to the Nag Hammadi library. Yet it is not clear that... would have in itself have altered Jonas's assessment. For no matter how much silence there is about "libertinism" from surviving sources, there remains the testimony given by the heresiologists.”

“Out of the mist of the beginning of our era there looms a pageant of mythical figures whose vast, superhuman contours might people the walls and ceiling of another Sistene Chapel. ...The tale has found no Michelangelo to retell it, no Dante and no Milton. The sterner discipline of biblical creed weathered the storm of those days, and both the Old and New Testament were left to inform the mind and imagination of Western man. Those teachings which, in the feverish hour of transition, challenged, tempted, [and] tried to twist the new faith are forgotten, their written record buried in the tomes of their refuters or in the sands of ancient lands. Our art and literature and much else would be different, had the gnostic message prevailed. ...[W]ithout its voice, its insights, and even its errors, the evidence of humanity is incomplete. ...Its glow throws light upon the beginnings of Christianity, the birth pangs of our world; and the heirs of a decision made long ago will better understand their heritage by knowing what once competed with it for the soul of man.”

“The ontological relation of Sophia and Demiurge is best expressed in the statement "the Sophia is called 'pneuma,' the Demiurge, 'soul' "... For the rest, we meet in the Demiurge of the Valentinians... traits of the world-god... his ignorance first... which in the first place relates to things above him. These, including his mother, remain entirely unknown to him; but also considering his own fashioning beneath himself he "is unthinking and foolish, and knows not what he does and effects"... which permits his mother to slip her own designs into what he believes he does on his own. On his ignorance then is based the second major trait which he shares with the general gnostic conception of the Demiurge: the conceit and presumption in which he believes himself to be alone and declares himself to be the unique and highest God.”

“The purity of their substance, the perfection of their circular motion, the unimpededness with which in thus moving they follow their own law, the incorruptibility of their being and the immutability of their courses—all these attributes make them in the sense of Greek philosophy "divine"... eminence of being. Among these constancy of being and immortality of life are paramount. Divine, therefore, are the stars, primarily not by their action but by the rank which they occupy in the hierarchy of things according to their immanent properties. And these are just the properties of order, eternity, and harmony which constitute the "cosmos" character of the All in general: this they represent most purely and completely. ...Beyond this ideal significance, their perfection is also the real guarantee of the duration of the whole, i.e., of the eternity of cosmic movement and life. Thus they are the most powerful assurance which the Greek affirmation of the world had been able to conceive.”

“Gnosticism gave a new turn by conceiving the planetary constituents of the soul as corruptions of its original nature contracted in its descent through the cosmic spheres. The Christian Arnobius reports this as a Hermetic teaching. ...A very close parallel (in the inverse direction) to the Poimandres account of the soul's ascent. ...[W]hat attaches itself to the soul on its downward journey has the character of substantial though immaterial entities... frequently described as "envelopes" or "garments." Accordingly the resultant terrestrial "soul" is comparable to an onion... on the model of the cosmos... in inverse order: what is outermost there is innermost here, and after the process is completed with incarnation, what is innermost in the spherical scheme of the cosmos, the earth, is as body the outer garment of man. That this body is a fatality to the soul had long ago been preached by the Orphics, whose teaching were revived in the era of Gnosticism. But now the psychical envelopments too are considered impairments and fetters of the transmundane spirit.”