Sethian Gnostic Appropriations of Plato

Chapter 15 Sethian Gnostic Appropriations of Plato

John D. Turner

I Introduction

Rather than being intellectually passive and philosophically unsophisticated “proletarian Platonists” who merely appropriated Plato’s philosophy from hear- say or popular digests of his thought by genuine academic Platonists, the Sethian Gnostics, especially the authors of the four “Platonizing” Sethian treatises from Nag Hammadi – Zostrianos, Allogenes, the Three Steles of Seth, and Marsanes – turn out to be rather close readers of Plato’s dialogues relevant to the metaphysics of their often complex and innovative theories of ontology, ontogenesis, and epistemology, such as the Timaeus, Symposium, Parmenides, Sophist, Phaedo, and Phaedrus. This essay illustrates this thesis by examining these Sethian Pla- tonizing doctrines of transcendental ontology and ontogenesis, contemplative ascent into union with the supreme principle, intelligible reality, the modes of being and non-being, dialectic, the ascent and descent of the soul, and demiurgy. Of the eleven Sethian Gnostic treatises contained in the thirteen Coptic co- dices discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945, there are four – Zostrianos, Allogenes, Marsanes, and the Three Steles of Seth – that form a distinctive group that can be called “the Platonizing Sethian treatises.” The first three of these texts commemorate the ecstatic ascent of a single exceptional individual such as Zostrianos (the alleged uncle or grandfather of Zoroaster), Allogenes (per- haps a cognomen of Seth “one of another kind, race,” a play on sperma heter- on of Gen 4:25), and Marsanes (who may have been a contemporary Sethian prophet).1 The various stages of these ascents are articulated according to ever-ascending levels of transcendent being whose ontology is typical of contemporary Middle Platonic metaphysical treatises, blended with certain fea- tures from the metaphysics of Stoicism, Neopythagoreanism, the Old Academy and Plato himself. But what is unique to these Platonizing treatises is their por- trayal of the unfolding of the world of true being and intellect from its source in a transcendent, only negatively-conceivable ultimate unitary principle which is itself beyond being. Beginning with an initial identity as a sort of potential or

1 On these sources, see Turner (1990), (2000a), (2000b), (2001), (2004).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004355385_017 Sethian Gnostic Appropriations of Plato 293 prefigurative existence of a given product with its source, there then occurs an indefinite procession or spontaneous emission of the product from its source, whereupon the product undergoes a contemplative visionary reversion upon its own prefiguration within its source whereby it becomes aware of its sepa- rate existence and thereby takes on its own distinctive form and definition.2 The later Neoplatonists named these three stages Permanence or Remaining, Procession, and Reversion, and – like the Sethian Platonizing treatises – often characterized the three successive modes of the product’s existence during this process by the terms of the noetic triad of Existence or Being, Life, and Intellect. Although Plotinus has often been credited with being the first major philosopher to elaborate such a scheme explicitly, it is clear that a similar model of dynamic emanation occurs in Gnostic thought, some of which precede Plotinus chronologically.3

2 A classic example is offered by Plotinus in Enn. V 2 [11], 1.8–13: “It is because there is nothing in it that all things come from it: in order that Being may exist, the One is not being, but the generator of being. This, we may say, is the first act of generation: the One, perfect because it seeks nothing, has nothing, and needs nothing, overflows, as it were, and its super- abundance makes something other than itself. This, when it has come into being, turns back upon the One and is filled, and becomes Intellect by looking towards it. Its halt and turning towards the One constitutes Being, its gaze upon the One, Intellect. Since it halts and turns towards the One that it may see, it becomes at once Intellect and Being.” All translations of Plotinus are from Armstrong (1966–88). 3 Thus at the beginning of the Tripartite Tractate NHC I 56.16–57.3, the ineffable Father has a thought of himself, which is the Son. Likewise in Clement of Alexandria, Excerpta ex Theodoto 7 [Casey], the Unknown Father is said to emit the second principle, the Monogenes-Son, “as if knowing himself” (ὡς ἂν ἑαυτὸν ἐγνωκώς, … προέβαλε τὸν Μονογενῆ). In both Eugnostos the Blessed and its Christianized version, the Sophia of Jesus Christ, the divine Forefather sees himself “within himself as in a mirror”, and the resultant image is the second principle, the Self- Father. Eugnostos NHC III 74.21–75.12: “The Lord of the Universe is not rightly called ‘Father’ but ‘Forefather.’ For the Father is the beginning (or principle) of what is visible. For he (the Lord) is the beginningless Forefather. He sees himself within himself, like a mirror, having appeared in his likeness as Self-Father, that is, Self-Begetter, and as Confronter, since he is face to face with the Unbegotten First Existent. He is indeed of equal age with the one who is before him, but he is not equal to him in power.” Also 72.10–11: “It looks to every side and sees itself from itself.” Cf. The Sophia of Jesus Christ NHC III 98.24–99.13 & 95.6. In Ps-Hippolytus’ account (Refutatio omnium haeresium VI.13 [Markovich]) of Simonian doctrine, the pre-existent first principle abides in absolute unity, but gives rise to an intellectual principle through self-manifestation: “manifesting himself to himself, the one who stood became the second.” According to the initial theogony of the Apocryphon of John, the supreme Invisible Spirit emanates an overflow of luminous water in which he then sees a reflection of himself; this self-vision then becomes the second, intellectual, principle, Barbelo, the divine First Thought. Ap. Jn. BG 8502 26.1–30.4: