By Saint Seraphim (Sobolev)
Chapter Thirteen. The Designation of Sophia as an Eternally United Being, Temporally Uniting All That Is with the Divinity
We will not cite St. Irenaeus’s new objection to this absurdity of the Valentinians.663 We will only note that the Valentinians call, as St. Irenaeus, Achamoth, the Ogdoad, Wisdom, Earth, and Jerusalem.664 Concerning these names, Harvey says: “All these names show that Achamoth occupies an intermediate position between the divine archetypal idea and creation: she was a reflection of one, and therefore she is masculine-feminine, and at the same time served as a model for the realization in the latter, and therefore she is called Earth and Jerusalem.”665
From the quoted words of Harvey, it is evident that the Valentinians considered Achamoth to be the model of all creation, which is the same as the prototype of the latter, just as the Pleroma was, in their eyes, for creation. Consequently, all creation was an image of the Pleroma and Achamoth, as its prototypes. From this it is clear that, according to the teaching of the Valentinians, not only the eternal fire, the devil, and his angels are its images, but also all creation in general. 3. The special significance, according to the Valentinian-Marcosian teachings, of the number of the Pleroma, as underlying created phenomena. The meaning of the letters of the Greek alphabet, according to the teachings of the Gnostic Mark.
In connection with the Valentinian teachings of created beings as images and likenesses of the Pleroma, we find among them a teaching on the special significance of the number of the Pleroma, i.e., the 30 Divine Aeons, as well as the numbers 8, 10, and 12, which constitute individual parts of the Pleroma. According to their ideas, and in particular the teachings of the Marcosians, followers of Mark, the main representative of one of the Valentinian schools,666 the number of the Pleroma underlies all phenomena in natural and human life, as images and likenesses of the same number of the Divine Pleroma.667 In this sense, according to the testimony of St. According to Irenaeus, the Valentinians explain many passages in the Bible that mention the numbers 8, 10, 12, and 30.668.
Accordingly, as St. Irenaeus testifies, the Valentinians ascribe the same significance to the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet669, which in their silent, semivowel, and vowel combinations represent the number of all the Divine Aeons; as well as to names, the number of whose letters relates to the same number of all the Divine Aeons of the Pleroma.
Reporting the Gnostic Mark’s fictitious vision of the “Heavenly Four” in female form, St. Irenaeus cites the following words that she allegedly said to Mark: “Know that yours twenty-four letters are the figurative outflows of the three powers670, containing the entire number of the celestial elements671 (30 Divine Aeons). Imagine that the nine silent letters (φ, χ, θ, π, κ, τ, β, γ, δ)672 are images of the Father and Truth, because these too are silent, that is, ineffable and unutterable; and the semi-vowels, of which there are eight (λ, μ, ν, ρ, σ, ζ, ξ, ψ)673 are images of the Word and Life, because they are, as it were, intermediate between the silent and vowel letters and participate in the nature of the higher and lower. The vowels, of which there are seven (α, ε, η, ι, ο, υ, ω),674 are images of Man and the Church, for the voice, proceeding from Man, gave form to everything, for the sound of the voice gave form to everything. Thus, there are eight letters of the Word and Life, seven of Man and the Church, nine of the Father and Truth. But because of the inequality of numbers, one descended, who dwelt in the Father and was sent down to him from whom he was separated, to correct what had been done, so that the unity of the pleroma, having equality, would develop in all one power, which proceeds from all. And thus the seven-numbered division received the power of the eight-numbered, and the three divisions became similar in number, that is, 8-numbered, which, repeated three times, give the number twenty-four. Meanwhile, the three elements (of which Mark says that they are connected with three powers, which is why there are six of them, and from them flowed twenty-four elements), quadrupled according to the number of the ineffable Tetrad, constitute the same number as the Ogdoads, and of them Mark says that they are the elements of the Unnamable. They are held together, like the invisible, by three powers. The images of the images of these elements are our double letters (namely: ζ, ξ, ψ – δσ, κσ, πσ), which, when combined with the twenty-four elements, by the power of similarity, make up the number thirty”676.
4. The Absurdity of the Teaching of the Marcosian Gnostics
In the cited words of the Gnostic teaching, the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet are first defined pantheistically, for they are called effluxes of the Divine aeons and, moreover, figurative; that is, these effluxes depict the Divine aeons, are their images. Since, in the pantheistic worldview, the effluxes of the Deity are of the same essence with it, and in the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet there was disorder due to numerical inequality, the Marcosians, noting this defect, thereby attest to their Divine Pleroma from the negative side.
But further The words of the “Heavenly Four” show that these emanations are living images of the Divine Aeons, destined to act with the same power as the Divine Pleroma. Therefore, one Divine Aeon, dwelling in the Father, descends to the letters of the Greek alphabet and establishes equality in their numerical divisions, without which there would not be the development of one power in everything (obviously, in both Pleromas).
The idea that the letters of the Greek alphabet represent real images of the Divine elements, or Aeons, is also expressed at the end of the aforementioned words of St. Irenaeus. Here, as we have seen, Mark speaks of three double letters, resulting in six letters, and of three elements combined with three powers, which ultimately results in six Divine Aeons. He establishes an analogy between the aforementioned double letters and the elements. But it is not only analogy that is at issue here. Mark also speaks of the combination of these double letters with the twenty-four elements, i.e., the Divine aeons, the result of which is the number thirty. Undoubtedly, the essence of the matter here is not in the number alone, but in the composition of which it is composed. It consists of 24 elements, i.e., the 24 aeons of the Divine Pleroma and three double letters, conjugated with another three letters. It is clear from this that Mark places these letters in a row with the aeons themselves and even identifies them with the above-mentioned three powers; moreover, the latter, according to the teaching of the Marcosians, are the most important among the other Divine aeons.679
This is the significance the Valentinians ascribe to letters, and especially to double letters.
Let us note another inconsistency in Mark’s teaching, which is also mentioned at the end of the above-quoted words of St. Irenaeus. Mark teaches that the three elements (conjugated with the three powers, which is why there are six of them and from them flowed twenty-four elements), “quadrupled according to the number of the ineffable “The tetrads constitute the same number as the octads.”680 The question arises: for what purpose are these three elements, or rather six elements, quadrupled into a tetrad? Mark specifies absolutely no purpose here. But it is clear as day that this purpose is his sole arbitrary desire to combine numbers so as to produce the combinations he desires, even if these latter, in their groundlessness, are absurd, which is precisely what is observed here.
However, St. Irenaeus fundamentally undermines the entire hypothesis of Mark and other Gnostic-Valentinians regarding the correspondence of the letters of the Greek alphabet to the number of the Divine Pleroma when he says: “If we return to the beginning, then, according to the confession of the Greeks, they recently, namely, as they say, yesterday or the day before yesterday, first received sixteen letters from Cadmus, then, in the course of time, they themselves invented, sometimes aspirates, sometimes double ones; and last of all, they say, Palamedes added to them the long ones.”681
5. The Absurdity of the Marcosian Gnostic Teaching Regarding Names, the Number of whose Letters Corresponds to the Number of the Pleroma. Conclusion of the Exposition of Valentinian’s Teaching
The same absurdity is contained in the Valentinian teaching regarding names, the number of whose letters, in their opinion, corresponds again to the same number of Divine Aeons. Therefore, among other names, the Marcosians ascribe special significance to the name: Jesus. True, this name has only six letters, but, according to the testimony of the Valentinians, it is significant: ἐπίσημον, for the number six has the power of creation and regeneration, and by adding this significant number to the twenty-four elements, a thirty-letter name is formed according to the number of the Pleroma.682
Furthermore, the name Jesus is, according to the teaching of the Marcosians, ineffable: ἀρρητον, for if each letter of this word were written with letters, then a name of twenty-four letters would result.683 As a result, the name Jesus, having these six and these twenty-four letters, again represents a thirty-letter name, through the knowledge of which people ceased to be in ignorance and passed from death to life.684 Finally, the name Jesus is significant, according to Valentinian teaching, because it expresses the mysterious number 888685. This number, they claim, is the number of the Greek alphabet, for the latter has eight units, eight tens, and eight hundreds.686 The letters of the Greek alphabet, as we saw above, “are, according to the teaching of Mark, figurative outflows of the three powers containing the entire number of the supernal elements,” i.e., thirty aeons.687
Of course, the Gnostic teaching of 30 Divine aeons is in itself absurd. Equally absurd are the Gnostic proofs that the name Jesus expresses the number of the Divine Pleroma, for the artificiality and strained nature of these proofs is all too obvious. But the Valentinian view that the name Jesus, expressing the number 888, is related to the number of the Divine Pleroma, is the height of Gnostic absurdity, as is evident from Mark’s discussion of the ineffable origin of Jesus. Saint Irenaeus relates this discussion to Mark in these words: “Jesus,” says Mark, “has such an ineffable origin. From the Mother of all—the first Tetrad—came the second Tetrad in the form of a daughter; and the Ogdoad was formed, from which the Ten-fold was produced. The Ten-fold, joining the Ogdoad and increasing it tenfold, produced the number eighty. Then, increasing the eighty tenfold, it produced the number eight hundred, so that the total number of letters produced from the Ogdoad multiplied by the Ten-fold is eight hundred eighty-eight, and this is Jesus, for the name Jesus, according to the number contained in the letters, is eight hundred eighty-eight…”688 From this Gnostic reasoning, it is clear that instead of 30 aeons, the Pleroma contained 888 aeons. Thus, in this reasoning, Mark destroys his own idea of the correspondence between the number of letters in the name “Jesus” and the number in the Pleroma, and at the same time, in the eyes of Valentinus himself, he utters an absurdity, for, according to the latter’s teaching, the Pleroma consists of 30 aeons, which, upon their appearance, did not increase to such a colossal number.
True, Mark, while constantly speaking in his aforementioned discourse about the tetrad, octad, and decad—that is, about the Divine Aeons—suddenly ends by referring to letters, and that these letters amount to 888. But this doesn’t change the essence of the matter, for we saw above that the letters of the Greek alphabet, in his opinion, are the efflux of Aeons, and that double letters are even identified, as something real, with the Divine Aeons themselves, by virtue of similarity. Even if we assume that Mark, in his discourse on the ineffable origin of Jesus, distinguishes letters from Aeons, his discourse on the ineffable origin of Jesus would still be absurd. For he added and multiplied Aeons, and the result was a full eight hundred and eighty-eight letters. He spoke of one thing all along, and ended up with something entirely different.
Therefore, St. Irenaeus calls the proofs that the Valentinians borrow from numbers, letters, and words absurd. “Here,” he says, “is revealed the confusion and absurdity, the inconsistency and strainedness of their ‘knowledge.’ For, translating the name Jesus, which belongs to a completely different language, into the Greek numerals, they call it either a significant number (episimon), since it consists of six letters, or “the fullness of the octads,” since it contains the number eight hundred and eighty-eight. But they are silent about His Greek name Soter, i.e., Savior, since it does not fit their invention either in its number or in its letters… For this word Σωτήρ consists of five letters, and its number is 1408 (σ = 200, ω = 800, τ = 300, η = 8, ρ = 100, a total of 1408)689. “This doesn’t fit their Pleroma at all, and therefore their interpretations of the Pleroma are not true. Moreover, the name Jesus in the Hebrew language, as their scholars say, has only two and a half letters… Consequently, their number 888 falls completely short.”690
But despite all the confusion in the Valentinian teaching on numbers and letters, as indicated by the words of St. Irenaeus just quoted and as we have discussed above, the presence of their idea that the number of the Pleroma is the essence and basis of all creation is indisputable and obvious. Here, according to the testimony of the same St. Irenaeus, as in their teaching on forms, images, likenesses, and the model of the world, the Valentinians borrowed from the works of pagan philosophers.691 “What they (the Valentinians),” says St. Irenaeus, “translate this universe into numbers, they borrowed from the Pythagoreans.” “And these first men made numbers the beginning of all things and placed even and odd numbers at their foundation, from which everything sensible and insensible arose.”692 “And calling these things images of what exists in the upper world, they evidently express the opinion of Democritus and Plato. For Democritus was the first to say that many and varied forms descended from universal space into this world. Plato, however, speaks of matter, model, and God. Following them, the Valentinians called the forms (of Democritus) and the model (of Plato) likenesses of what is above, changing only the names, and they claim to be the inventors and creators of this imaginary fiction.”693
Undoubtedly, the doctrine of letters of the branch of the Valentinians, headed by the Gnostic Mark, was influenced by the Kabbalah, with its doctrine of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, through which God supposedly created the world.694 Moreover, this opinion of ours is confirmed by Robertson’s history, who, among other sources from which Valentinus drew for his teaching, lists Kabbalah, saying: “Valentine apparently borrowed his teaching from the religions of Egypt and Persia, from Kabbalah, from Plato, Pythagoras, and from Hesiod’s Theogony.”695
But let us conclude our exposition of Valentinus’s teaching. Representing Achamoth as the creator of the world, Valentinus and his followers regard her as an intermediary being in the work of creation between the Deity and the world. For this reason, the Valentinians say that “the Thought, desiring to do everything in honor of the aeons, created their likeness; or rather, the Savior created through the agency of the Thought.”696 That Achamoth is an intermediary being is evidenced by the fact that the Valentinians call her “an octad, preserving the number of the primordial and first octad of the Pleroma.”697 This expresses two ideas: in addition to the fact that Achamoth, according to Valentinus’s teaching, is the creative principle or true creator of the world, she is also an intermediary being between God and the world. For the primordial activity of the first octad of the Pleroma, after the generation of all other divine beings, reaches Achamoth. And from this latter, since it is placed in parallel with the primordial octad, another kind of creative activity begins: the creation of creatures existing outside the Divine Pleroma. Achamoth, then, is the boundary separating God from the world. This is why Harvey, in naming Achamoth as an octad, sees its mediating position between the Divine archetypal idea and creation.698
However, St. Irenaeus also conveys to us direct evidence of Valentinian’s teaching on the middle position of Achamoth between God and the world, when he says: “She (Achamothe) occupies a place in the middle: above the Demiurge and below or outside the Pleroma, “until the very end”699. “And after the end of everything she will enter the Pleroma”700.
This is the teaching of the Gnostics and in particular the Valentinians.
Notes
663.Ibidem [Creation St. Irenea, page 127].
664.Ibid., p. 34.
665.Ibid., p. 34; note 55.
666.Ibid., p. 14.
667.Ibid., pp. 75–76.
668.Ibid., pp. 76–79.
669.Ibid., p. 64.
670.These three powers refer to the three Divine Aeons: the Father, the Word, and the Man, as is evident from the 149th note in the first book of St. Irenaeus, p. 65.
671.According to the Valentinian teaching, the “Father” is the beginning of all things. And the “Word” and “Man,” together with the “Father,” are in the primordial Ogdoad in relation to all the other Divine Aeons that have proceeded from it. (Works of St. Irenaeus, pp. 21–22).
672.Ibid., p. 64; note 146.
673.Ibid., p. 64; note 147.
674.Ibid., note 148.
675.By these three elements, associated with the three powers, i.e., “Father,” “Word,” and “Man,” are meant, as is evident from the preceding words, the “Heavenly Quaternary” – “Truth,” “Life,” and “Church.”
676.Works of St. Irenaeus, pp. 64–66; note 151.
677.See note 151. Works of St. Irenaeus, book 1, p. 65.
678.Ibid., note 149.
679.Works of St. Irenaeus, pp. 21–22.
680.Ibid., pp. 64–65.
681.Works of St. Irenaeus, Book I, p. 70.
682.Ibid., pp. 64, 66.
683.Ibid., p. 68, note 169.
684.Ibid., p. 69.
685.Ibid., p. 68, note 143.
686.Ibid., pp. 68–69.
687.Ibid., p. 64.
688.Ibid., p. 68.
689.See note 84 in Book II of the Works of St. Irenaeus, p. 178.
690.Ibid., bk. II, pp. 178–179.
691.Ibid., p. 147; note 36.
692.Ibid., p. 147.
693.Ibid., p. 146.
694.Guide to Basic Theology, Archimandrite Augustine, pp. 304–305.
695.History of the Christian Church, Robertson, vol. 1, p. 47.
696.Works of St. Irenaeus, p. 33.
697.Works of St. Irenaeus, bk. 1, pp. 33–34.
698.Ibid., p. 34, note 55.
699.Ibid., p. 34; cf. “History of the Church.” Robertson, Part I, p. 51.
700.Ibid., p. 34, note 56.
Source in Russian: The New Teaching on Sophia, the Wisdom of God / Archbishop Seraphim Sobolev. – (Reprinted edition of 1935) / Publisher: Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, NI, USA, 1993. – 525 pp. ISBN 0-88465-054-5.
