Demiurge
Demiurge (from the Greek δημιουργός dēmiourgós, Latinized demiurgus, meaning "artisan" or "craftsman") is a term for a creator deity or divine artisan responsible for the creation of the physical universe.
The word was first introduced in this sense by Plato in his Timaeus, 41a (ca. 360 B.C.E.). It subsequently appears in a number of different religious and philosophical systems of Late Antiquity, most notably in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. Three separate meanings of the term may be distinguished.
- For Plato, the Demiurge is a benevolent creator of the laws, heaven, or the world.
- Plotinus identified the Demiurge as nous (divine reason), the first emanation of "the One" (see monad). Neoplatonists personified the Demiurge as Zeus.
- In Gnosticism, the material universe is seen as evil, and the Demiurge is the evil creator of the physical world.
Alternative Gnostic names for the Demiurge include Yaldabaoth, Yao or Iao, Ialdabaoth and several other variants. The Gnostics often identified the Demiurge with the Hebrew God Yahweh (see the Sethians and Ophites). In Mandaeanism the Demiurge is known as Ptahil
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Plato's character Timaeus refers to the Demiurge frequently in the Socratic dialogue which bears his name, written around 360 B.C.E. Timaeus refers to the demiurge as the entity who “fashioned and shaped” the material world. He describes this being as unreservedly benevolent and hence desirous of a world as good as possible. The world remains allegedly imperfect, however, because the Demiurge had to work with pre-existing chaotic matter.
Plato's Demiurge is seen as a fleshing out of Hesiod's cosmology in the work Theogeny in the context of the dialectical discourse between Timaeus and the other guests at the gathering in Plato's dialog.
Timaeus suggests that since nothing "becomes or changes" without a cause, there must be a cause of the universe itself. Timaeus thus refers to the Demiurge as the father of the universe. Moreover, since the universe is fair, the Demiurge must have used the eternal and perfect world of "forms" or ideals as a template. He then set about creating the world, which formerly only existed in a state of disorder. Timaeus states that it is "blasphemy to state that the universe was not created in the image of perfection or heaven."
For Neoplatonist writers like Plotinus, the Demiurge was not the originator of the universe, but a second creator or cause (see Dyad). The first and highest God is the One, the source, or the Monad. The Monad emanated the Nous, divine mind or reason, which Plotinus referred to figuratively as the Demiurge. In this he claimed to reveal Plato's true meaning, a doctrine he learned from Platonist tradition but did not appear outside the academy or in Plato's texts.
As Nous, the Demiurge is part of the three ordering principles:
- arche - the source of all things,
- logos - the underlying order that is hidden beneath appearances
- harmonia - numerical ratios in mathematics.
In relation to the gods of mythology the Demiurge is identified as Zeus within Plotinus' works.
Gnosticism
Like Plato, Gnosticism also presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable God and the demiurgic “creator” of the material world. However, in contrast to Plato, several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme Being. His act of creation either occurs in unconscious imitation of the divine model, and thus is fundamentally flawed, or else is formed with the malevolent intention of entrapping aspects of the divine in materiality. In such systems, the Demiurge acts as a solution to the problem of evil.
In the Apocryphon of John circa 200 C.E., the Demiurge has the name “Yaltabaoth,” and proclaims himself as God:
- “Now the archon (ruler) who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas ('fool'), and the third is Samael. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, ‘I am God and there is no other God beside me,’ for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come.”[1]
Yaldabaoth
“Yaldabaoth” may literally mean “Child, come here." The Hebrew word for “young girl” is yalda, and the word for “come” is bo. Thus, most probably “yaldabaoth” is a declension of “young girl” and “come,” together meaning “young girl, come hither.”
Gnostic myth recounts that Sophia (Greek, literally meaning “wisdom”), the Demiurge’s mother and a partial aspect of the divine Pleroma or “Fullness,” desired to create something apart from the divine totality. However, she did this without divine assent. In this abortive act of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being ashamed of her deed, she wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother, nor anyone else. Being ignorant of the superior levels of reality that were his birth-place.and thus concluded that only he himself existed.
The Gnostic myths describing these events are full of intricate nuances and variations portraying the declination of aspects of the divine into human form. This process occurs through the agency of the Demiurge who, having stolen a portion of power from his mother, sets about a work of creation in unconscious imitation of the superior realm. Thus Sophia’s power becomes enclosed within the material forms of humanity, themselves entrapped within the material universe. The goal of Gnostic movements was typically the awakening of this divine spark of wisdom, enabling the enlightened soul to return to the superior, non-material realities which were its primal source. (See Sethian Gnosticism.)
Under the name of Nebro, Yaldabaoth is called an angel in the apocryphal Gospel of Judas. He is first mentioned as one of the 12 angels to come “into being [to] rule over chaos and the [underworld].” He comes from heaven, his “face flashed with fire and whose appearance was defiled with blood.” Nebro’s name means rebel. He creates six angels in addition to the angel Saklas to be his assistants. These six in turn create another 12 angels “with each one receiving a portion in the heavens.”
Samael
“Samael” literally means “Blind God” or “God of the Blind” in Aramaic (Syriac sæmʕa-ʔel). This being is considered not only blind, or ignorant, of its own origins, but is also apparently intentionally evil. The name Samael is also found in Judaica as the Angel of Death and also in Christian demonology. This leads to a further comparison with Satan.
Yahweh
Some Gnostic or semi-Gnostic philosophers (notably Marcion of Sinope and the Sethians) identified the Demiurge with Yahweh, the wrathful God of the Old Testament, in opposition and contrast to the benevolent God of the New Testament.
Satan is called "the god of this world" at (2 Cor. 4:4), and John states that "the whole world lies in the grip of the Wicked One." (1 John 5:19) For some, Satan is thus Father of the "original lie," as the creator of the physical world as we know it.
This distinguishes the God of the Old Testament from the God of the New; the God of the New possessing a single purpose unblemished by the uncertainty that duality implies. Meanwhile, the New Testament concepts such as the spiritual as good and the body as evil reflected a clear duality as expressed within the Sethian and other Gnostic traditions .
Neoplatonic Criticism
- See also: Plotinus and Neoplatonism and Gnosticism
Gnosticism's conception of the Demiurge was criticised by the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus. Plotinus is noted as the founder of Neoplatonism, a movement noted as being orthodox (Neo)Platonism. His criticism is contained in the ninth tractate of the second of the Enneads. Therein, Plotinus criticizes his opponents for their appropriation of ideas from Plato:
- From Plato come their punishments, their rivers of the underworld and the changing from body to body; as for the plurality they assert in the Intellectual Realm—the Authentic Existent, the Intellectual-Principle, the Second Creator and the Soul—all this is taken over from the Timaeus. (Ennead 2.9.vi; emphasis added from A. H. Armstrong's introduction to Ennead 2.9)
Of note here is the remark concerning the second Creator and Soul. Plotinus criticizes his opponents for “all the novelties through which they seek to establish a philosophy of their own” which, he declares, “have been picked up outside of the truth”; they attempt to conceal rather than admit their indebtedness to ancient philosophy, which they have corrupted by their extraneous and misguided embellishments. Thus their understanding of the Demiurge is similarly flawed in comparison to Plato’s original intentions. Where as Plato's demiurge is good wishing good on his creation, gnosticism contends that the demiurge is not only the originator of evil but is evil as well. Hence the title of Plotinus' refutation "Enneads" The Second Ennead, Ninth Tractate - Against Those That Affirm the Creator of the Kosmos and the Kosmos Itself to be Evil: [Generally Quoted as "Against the Gnostics"]. Plotinus marks his arguments also with the disconnect or great barrier that is created between the nous or mind's noumenon (see Heraclitus) and the material world (phenomenon) by believing the material world is evil. This symptom of alienation or somnolence was also later expressed by Eric Voegelin in his critique of Gnosticism.[2]
The majority view tends to understand Plotinus’ opponents as being a Gnostic sect—certainly, (specifically Sethian) several such groups were present in Alexandria and elsewhere about the Mediterranean during Plotinus’ lifetime, and several of his criticisms bear specific similarity to Gnostic doctrine (Plotinus pointing to the gnostic doctrine of Sophia and her emission of the Demiurge is most notable amongst these similarities). The Body and the cosmos as a prison or evil. Scholars of note who have held this view include A.H. Armstrong, who published a highly influential translation of the Enneads in 1966, through the Harvard University Press. As well as modern scholar John D Turner and scholar John M. Dillon.
However, other scholars such as Christos Evangeliou have contended that Plotinus’ opponents might be better described as simply “Christian Gnostics,” for the reason that several of Plotinus’ criticisms are as applicable to orthodox Christian doctrine as they are to Gnosticism. Also, considering the evidence from the time, Evangeliou felt the definition of the term “Gnostics” was unclear. Thus, though the former understanding certainly enjoys the greatest popularity, the identification of Plotinus’ opponents as Gnostic is not without some contention. Currently in the case of Christos Evangeliou it is yet to be seen if he still holds this view. One since Plotinus' teacher and founder of Neoplatonism Ammonius Saccas was a noted Christian and Plotinus never mentions Christianity in any of his works where as Plotinus' pupil Porphyry names Christians by name in Porphyrys' Against the Christians. Also later A. H. Armstrong identified the “Gnostics” that Plotinus was attacking as Jewish and Pagan in his introduction to the tract in his translation of the Enneads. Armstrong eluding to Gnosticism being a sort of Hellenic philosophy heresy of sorts, who later engaged Christianity and Neoplatonism. Armstrong did this by using Michelle Puerch’s study of the Sethian library found at Nag Hammadi as the basis that all Gnostic groups shared a “common” core or library of text from which they drew common or core beliefs. These core beliefs are defined in works like the Apocalypse of Adam.
John D. Turner professor of religious studies at University of Nebraska and famed translator and editor of the Nag Hammadi library stated that the text Plotinus and his students read was Sethian gnosticism which predates Christianity. It appears that Plotinus attempted to clarify how the philosophers of the academy had not arrived at the same erroneous conclusions (such as Dystheism or misotheism for the creator God as an answer to the problem of evil) as the targets of his criticism.
Christian heresies
Cerinthus
According to the heresy of Cerinthus (who shows Ebionite influence), the ancient Hebrew term Elohim, the “uni-plural name,” often used for God throughout Genesis 1, can be interpreted as indicating that a hierarchy of ancient spirits (“angels or gods”) were co-creators with a Supreme Being, and were partially responsible for creation within the context of a “master plan” exemplified theologically by the Greek word Logos. Psalm 82.1 describes a plurality of gods (ʔelōhim), which an older version in the Septuagint calls the “assembly of the gods”; however, it does not indicate that these gods were co-actors in creation. (Unless one translates Genesis 1:1 literally as “in the beginning the gods [elohim] created the heaven and the earth.”) Also according to this theory, an abstract similarity can be found between the Logos (as applied to Jesus in the Gospel according to St John) and Plato’s Demiurge. However, in John 1:1, which reads: “in the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God and the Word was God,” the Logos is clearly one single being, not an assembly or group. Further, typical Christian theology identifies Jesus as the second person in the holy and undivided Trinity, thus rejecting the notion that the world was created by an ignorant or even malevolent demiurge (“uni-plural” or not) in co-action with a separate, higher and unknowable god.
CE
The Gnostics, however, were not satisfied merely to emphasize the distinction between the Supreme God, or God the Father, and the Demiurge, but in many of their systems they conceived the relation of the Demiurge to the Supreme God as one of actual antagonism, and the Demiurge became the personification of the power of evil, the Satan of Gnosticism, with whom the faithful had to wage war to the end that they might be pleasing to the Good God. The Gnostic Demiurge then assumes a surprising likeness to Ahriman, the evil counter-creator of Ormuzd in Mazdean philosophy. The character of the Gnostic Demiurge became still more complicated when in some systems he was identified with Jehovah, the God of the Jews or of the Old Testament, and was brought in opposition to Christ of the New Testament, the Only-Begotten Son of the Supreme and Good God. The purpose of Christ's coming as Saviour and Redeemer was to rescue us from the power of the Demiurge, the lord of the world of this darkness, and bring us to the light of the Good God, His Father in heaven. The last development in the character of the Demiurge was due to Jehovah being primarily considered as he who gave the Law on Sinai, and hence as the originator of all restraint on the human will. As the Demiurge was essentially evil, all his work was such; in consequence all law was intrinsically evil and the duty of the children of the Good God was to transgress this law and to trample upon its precepts. This led to the wildest orgies of Antinomian Gnosticism.
According to Valentinus the Demiurge was the offspring of a union of Achamoth (he káta sophía or lower wisdom) with matter. And as Achamoth herself was only the daughter of Sophía the last of the thirty Æons, the Demiurge was distant by many emanations from the Propatôr, or Supreme God. The Demiurge in creating this world out of Chaos was unconsciously influenced for good by Jesus Soter; and the universe, to the surprise even of its Maker, became almost perfect. The Demiurge regretted even its slight imperfection, and as he thought himself the Supreme God, he attempted to remedy this by sending a Messias. To this Messias, however, was actually united Jesus the Saviour, Who redeemed men. These are either hulikoí, or pneumatikoí. The first, or carnal men, will return to the grossness of matter and finally be consumed by fire; the second, or psychic men, together with the Demiurge as their master, will enter a middle state, neither heaven (pleroma) nor hell (hyle); the purely spiritual men will be completely freed from the influence of the Demiurge and together with the Saviour and Achamoth, his spouse, will enter the pleroma divested of body (húle) and soul (psuché). In this most common form of Gnosticism the Demiurge had an inferior though not intrinsically evil function in the universe as the head of the psychic world. According to Marcion, the Demiurge was to be sharply distinguished from the Good God; the former was díkaios, severely just, the latter agathós, or loving-kind; the former was the God of the Jews, the latter the true God of the Christians. Christ, though in reality the Son of the Good God, pretended to be the Messias of the Demiurge, the better to spread the truth concerning His heavenly Father. The true believer in Christ entered into God's kingdom, the unbeliever remained forever the slave of the Demiurge. To this form of Gnosticism, the Demiurge has assumed already a more evil aspect. According to the Naassenes the God of the Jews is not merely díkaios, but he is the great tyrant Jaldabaoth, or Son of Chaos. He is Demiurge and maker of man, but as a ray of light from above enters the body of man and gives him a soul; Jaldabaoth is filled with envy; he tries to limit man's knowledge by forbidding him the fruit of knowledge in paradise. The Demiurge, fearing lest Jesus, whom he had intended as his Messias, should spread the knowledge of the Supreme God, had him crucified by the Jews. At the consummation of all things all light will return to the pleroma; but Jaldabaoth, the Demiurge, with the material world, will be cast into the lower depths. Some of the Ophites or Naassenes venerated all persons reprobated in the Old Testament, such as Cain, or the people of Sodom, as valiant resisters of the Demiurge. In these weird systems the idea of the world-maker was degraded to the uttermost. Amongst the Gnostics, however, who as a rule set some difference between the Demiurge and the Supreme God, there was one exception; for according to the Ebionites, whose opinions have come down to us in the Pseudo-Clementine literature, there is no difference between the Highest God and the Demiurge. They are identical, and the God Who made heaven and earth is worthy of the adoration of men. On the other hand the Gnostic system is tainted with pantheism, and its Demiurge is not a creator but only a world-builder.
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- ↑ The Nag Hammadi Library (see Nag Hammadi)
- ↑ Voegelin used Nous or Demiurge to mean intellect that is a divinely creative substance. It is a point of contact between the human and the divine. Eric Voegelin The Restoration of Order by Micheal P. Federici pg 227
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