Understanding Gnostic Philosophy: Aeons and Emanationism vs. Creation Ex Nihilo
On a whim, I recently did a deep dive into some gnostic philosophy, or gnosticism. Even though I have taught philosophy for many years, I have only ever had the most basic understanding of gnostic philosophy because of its neoplatonism and because of my familiarity with it as heretical according to the evangelical Christian tradition in which I was raised—but now reject.
At its most basic level, gnosticism involves the platonic view that the immaterial realm is prior to the physical realm, that the immaterial realm of knowledge (gnosis) is pure and good while the material realm is somehow bad or corrupt. It is worth noting, from the very beginning, that this is a part of what made gnosticism heretical according to porto-orthodox Christian Church fathers—because, according to the orthodox view, God the Father created the physical world and called it good, not bad or corrupt.
One of the key differences between orthodox Christian cosmology and gnostic cosmology is the difference between the gnostic view of emanationism and the orthodox Christian view of creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing). I just admit to some difficulty in understanding gnostic emanationism because of my conditioned intuitive understanding of creation ex nihilo from my mainstream Christian roots, proof of how difficult it can be to free yourself from the underlying assumptions that are core to one’s past or present worldview! Nonetheless I will try to give a summary of gnostic emanationism that captures its essential differences from creation ex nihilo.
The orthodox Christian view of creatio ex nihilo—creation from nothing—is generally harmonious with the opening lines of the book of Genesis, that God spoke the physical world into existence over a period of six days and called it good at every turn. Forgive me for the long biblical quote, but I want to drive the point home about this important difference between orthodox Christianity and gnostic Christianity, namely orthodox Christianity considers all of physical creation to be fundamentally good, which gnosticism rejects:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.
And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens.” So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
(Genesis, Chapter 1, Revised Standard Version)
Most people who have even a passing familiarity with orthodox Christian cosmology should intuitively understand the concept of creatio ex nihilo, even those philosophers who reject Christian cosmology but may understand it intuitively because of its philosophical connections to Aristotle’s, and subsequently Thomas Aquinas’s, concept of a prime mover, the cause of all movement and all contingent beings in the universe, a necessarily existing being that itself wasn’t caused or created but which created and set in motion everything else in existence.
Gnostic cosmology is rather different, as it involves what is now known as emanationism instead of creation from nothing. Although there are many conflicting gnostic cosmological systems, these various gnostic cosmologies all seem to involve some form of emanation instead of creation from nothing. According to these gnostic cosmologies the physical/material world, along with various religious persons or beings, such as Christ and the Holy Spirit, are all emanations from a single primal being, or sometimes a pair of beings in some gnostic systems. These beings are not separately existing beings that were created from nothing according to the word of God as orthodox Christianity holds; instead these other beings are known as aeons and were generated as flowing out of these primal sources in a sequence of emanations, each of which results in a new emanation that is somehow less pure and more corrupted than its original source in the primal being. Matter and the physical world, then, instead of being good, are thus impure deviations from the fullness and pureness of the first reality and primal source, which is fundamentally immaterial in nature. The reasons for calling gnosticism a form of neoplatonism are thus clear, given Plato’s own emphasis on the perfection of the immaterial realm as the source of the less-perfect material realm.
Where gnostic cosmology gets strange, as considered from the perspective of someone familiar with the orthodox Christian view of creation from nothing, is the gnostic sequence of the generation or emanation of these various aeons, the sequence of emanations that result in the generation of the material world and of various beings that are familiar to Christian theology in general—Christ, the Holy Spirit, and so on. Orthodox Christian cosmology is fairly clean, even given its metaphysical bloat in committing to the existence of God the creator, Heaven and Earth and Hell, angels and demons and Satan, and so on. Moreover orthodox Christian cosmology involves a clear distinction between God the Father as creator of all and the rest of creation, material or immaterial, all of which was good when it was spoken into existence by the word of God.
Gnostic cosmology, in contrast, involves a different kind of metaphysical bloat—a bloat in the cycles of emanations of these aeons, with the physical realm being so late in coming, so late in the cycle of emanations, that the material realm is no longer seen by gnostics as fundamentally good but something to be transcended in a return to the primal source only in which gnosis, or knowledge, can be found. Although there are multiple conflicting gnostic systems, all of which are largely unfamiliar to me, the gnostic system of Valentinianism provides an excellent look into the metaphysical bloat of gnosticism and its heavy reliance on emenationism to explain the generation of the physical world, humans, divine beings like Christ and the Holy Spirit, and so on, from the one primal source, which the Valentinians called a “Pleroma” or “fullness.”
According to the Valentinians, each subsequent emanation flows from the primal Father, Bythos, in a series of syzygies, or sexually complimentary pairs, including Sophia (wisdom) whose curiosity and passion resulted in her falling away from the Pleroma and to the subsequent emanation of man and the physical world, both of which are flawed deviations away from the goodness and purity of the Pleroma itself.
The following graphic provides one interpretation of the structure of Valentinian aeonology, the structure of the series of emanations that together comprise this particular system of gnostic cosmology:
(Source: Mead, G.R.S., Pistis Sophia, Lucifer: A Theosophical Magazine, Volume 6 (33): 230–239.)
While I don’t pretend to understand the nuances of gnostic cosmology in general, and of the Valentinian system of cosmology above in particular, many aspects of it striking me as completely arbitrary and ungrounded, some general observations can be made. Anthropos (man) is several cycles away from the primary source. And if each emanation involves a degree of impurity, then it’s easy to see why gnostics rejected the orthodox notion that man as a creation is fundamentally good, even given the orthodox view of the fall of man as recounted in the book of Genesis.
A further point of contention between gnostic Christians and orthodox Christians was the role of God the Father in creation. According to orthodox Christianity, God the Father is directly responsible for the creation for the material world, again as recounted in Genesis chapter 1 above. In contrast, however, gnostic Christians generally held that the existence of the physical/material world, and of man, is due not to the primal Father but to a subsequent emanation in the form of a demiurge, a deviation away from the goodness of the primal Father that should never have come to be. The Valentinians identified this demiurge with the God of the Old Testament but did not identity the God of the Old Testament with the primal Father himself, an obvious point of heresy from the perspective of orthodox Christianity.
What would be so appealing about identifying the God of the Old Testament as a demiurge instead of as the primal Father himself? Unquestionably the God of the Old Testament acts in what are ostensibly unjust, even malicious ways. Claiming that the God of the Old Testament is not actually the primal Father but merely an imperfect demiurge that itself is a deviation away from the goodness and fullness of the primal Father and the Pleroma is one way of avoiding the Problem of Evil that has so plagued orthodox Christian theology, the problem of how a God that is omnibenevolent (willing all goodness) could create a world containing evil, or at least allow it to continue. If the material world was not proximally created by the primal Father but by an imperfect and flawed demiurge instead, than this would seem to get the primal Father off the hook for the evil in the world resulting from the emanations that deviated away from the divine purity in the form of an inherently flawed physical world and humans who are not good in themselves but are also inherently flawed, humans whose purpose is thus to return to oneness with the Pleroma by obtaining gnosis and by a return of all things to what they were before the flawed emanations resulting in the physical world and man in the first place.
The overall gnostic system is complex and involves additional features such as Christ and the Holy Spirit being interested as additional aeons or emanations to aid flawed humans in achieving gnosis—knowledge—in the form of contemplation of these heavenly aeons or emanations, to better comprehend and obtain oneness with the goodness and purity of the true primal Father, understanding the union of Christ and Sophia in some heavenly marriage that has the qualities orthodox Christians normally associate with the church being the bride of Christ, with an important difference being that gnostic soteriology, the gnostic notion of salvation, appears to involve a kind of restoration to primal goodness that overcomes the inherent flaws in the physical world, in man, and in the demiurge responsible for the creation of a flawed physical reality in the first place.
Although I can’t claim to have a much deeper understanding of gnosticism that what I’ve sketched out here at this point, gnosticism being quite the intellectual rabbit hole if one chooses to pursue it in depth, I can now claim to have a slightly better understanding of some of the nuances of gnosticism and gnostic cosmology beyond its mere neoplatonism, and a better understanding of why gnostic Christianity was seen as so heretic to proto-orthodox Church fathers and fro the perspective of orthodox Christianity in general.
I should note that the attempt to get God the Father off the hook for the evil in the world, what is known as “theodicy,” or the reconciliation with the goodness of God with the existence of evil in the world is an important aspect of orthodox Christian theology as well, discussed at length by Christian theologians and philosophers such as Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, both of which seem to rely on the view that man is not omnibenevolent or omniscient to account for the existence of evil in the world, thus putting the eistence of evil on man’s own shoulders instead of God’s shoulders, resulting from man’s own free will as recounted in the story of the fall of man in Genesis. It strikes me that this line of reasoning is not so wildly different from the gnostic line of reasoning after all, except that the gnostics seem to have introduced the demiurge as creator of the physical universe in order to avoid having to say that the primal Father in all his goodness is directly responsible for any flawed creation, the physical world included.
This does, however, just seem to push the problem back, as the problem of why the emanations occur in the first place, including the emanations that resulted in the existence of the demiurge and hence of the physical universe and of man, still seems to be unexplained, making this cosmology as much an article of faith for the gnostics as creation ex nihilo is to orthodox/mainsteam Christians today. And just as appealing to human free will to explain the existence of evil doesn’t itself explain why God as a perfect being would choose to create beings with free will with even the potential for evil, assuming evil is fundamentally incompatible with God’s inherent goodness, the existence of emanations and aeons for gnostic Christians wouldn’t really explain why those emanations occurred in the first place.
Where I see harmony between gnosticism and orthodox Christian theology, though, is in the notion that the emanations are fundamentally flawed. Christian theodicy has often appealed to the imperfections of man as a created being, as opposed to God himself as the only perfect being by definition, to explain the imperfection of man, the existence of evil, and the many many poor choices humans make in the course of a human lifetime—i.e., the need for salvation in the first place. The gnostic line of reasoning is not so different, insofar as emanations flowing from the Pleroma and the primal Father must be flawed and imperfect by definition, because only the Pleroma and the primal Father can be good and pure in themselves. The point of harmony between Christian theodicy and gnostic cosmology is, I think, under-appreciated and something I am only now realizing after this investigation into the inner workings of various gnostic systems like Valentinianism, itself just one of many competing gnostic systems in early Christianity and neoplatonism.
I must confess to still having some trouble understanding what exactly emanations and aeons in gnostic philosophy and theology actually are, except to picture them metaphorically as concentric ripples dissipating and decreasing in amplitude the father away they are from the source. Just as each ripple has a lesser magnitude than the one that came before it, each subsequent emanation shares in the fullness of the Pleroma and the primal Father to a lesser degree, ultimately resulting in a physical world and in human beings that are not good as in orthodox Christianity and as recounted in Genesis chapter 1 above, but fundamentally flawed, an erroneous deviation away from the fullness to be returned to in achieving a state of gnosis and in a restoration of the fullness of the primary Father and Pleroma before the flawed emanation of the demiurge and the aeons it’s responsible for. What a mouthful the philosophy of gnosticism can be!—but perhaps no more a mouthful than the theology of orthodox Christianity, with its own metaphysical bloat and arbitrariness, is to nonbelievers as well.
