declined to what was below it, and with it some sort of ‘Wisdom’ (Gk. ‘Sophia’), whether Soul started it or whether Wisdom was a cause of Soul being like this, or whether they mean both to be the same thing, and then they tell us that the other souls came down too, and as members of Wisdom put on bodies, human bodies for instance.”33 Next, Plotinus describes a different version of the Gnostic fall of Sophia, probably quoting from a version of Zostrianos:34
But again they say that very being for the sake of which these souls came down did not come down itself, did not decline, so to put it, but only illuminated the darkness, and so a reflection (εἴδωλον) from it came into existence in matter. Then they fabricate an image of the image (εἰδώλου εἴδωλον πλάσαντες) somewhere here below, through matter or materiality or whatever they like to call it—they use now one name and now another, and say many other names just to make their meaning obscure—and produce what they call the Maker, and make him revolt from his mother and drag the universe which proceeds from him down to the ultimate limit of reflections (έπ’ ἔσχατα ειδώλων). The man who wrote this just meant to be blasphemous!35
Plotinus counters both versions. With reference to the first, he simply disagrees that the Soul descended;36 instead, it stays above.37 Without a descent, then, Soul creates the world, and, with souls, enters it. This entrance is described variously in the Enneads; in one early treatise, it is a “self-willed gliding downward” that is freely made but also necessary, since the world’s body must be inhabited by a soul (Plat. Tim. 34b8).38 But, he emphasizes, this is not a “descent to the below and away from contemplation,” although it does have a sense of “audacity” (τόλμα).39
The second version—that Soul did not decline but illuminated the darkness—is actually largely in agreement with Plotinus.40 Consequently, he does not have much of an answer for it, instead (somewhat unfairly) conflating the two myths, and moving on to a critique of the demiurge himself: the craftsman of the Gnostic narrative is not much of a craftsman at all.41 It works with reference to a mere “image of an image” of reality, hardly a fitting blueprint for the world.42 Again, the temporality of the events in the myth is an issue: why would a demiurge wait to produce with images? How would it know an image by memory if it has only just been born, an ontological level below the image?43
Plotinus’s disagreement with the Gnostics in these chapters clearly stems from a disagreement about the composition of the World-Soul, its relationship to time and to matter, and the logistics of its creative activity. Plotinus’s position is unsatisfying to readers ancient and modern, but the issue strikes at the heart of his thought.44 For Plotinus, as for Aristotle, philosophy begins with the individual soul’s wonder about the origin of the world, leading to questions about its creation that blaze the path into Intellect and ascent to its ultimate source, the One.45 Thus, the problem of the world’s creation must be treated respectfully and produce an answer worthy of the dignity of the life of the mind. Plotinus never explicitly attacks Gnostic aetiology and eschatology, but many of his jabs clearly show that he recognizes, and disapproves of, the idea that the world has a beginning and an end. Second, like Porphyry after him, Plotinus invokes the language of literary criticism to tar the Gnostic account of creation with the lowest possible philosophical categories used for production, imitation, and image. Philosophically speaking, the central debate of the first ten chapters of Ennead 2.9 concerns the Soul; however, the argument is consistently framed with reference to creation, temporality, and narrative imagery.
AGAINST THE GNOSTIC SAVIOR
The makeup of the Soul and its relationship to creative activity and time is inextricable from matters of physics and practical philosophy.46 Most immediate is the issue of theodicy.47 Plotinus accuses his opponents of wishing the world to be not just an image of the intelligible but the intelligible itself;48 this is impossible, since the One must extend itself as far as possible, even, via the Soul, into an image of itself in the spatiotemporal realm.49 Thus, we live in the best possible world, an “image (εἰκών)” of reality without an evil origin, despite the “many unpleasant things in it.”50 Such Panglossian indifference to inequality and human suffering, emphasized by his opponents, has surprised scholars by its “pitilessness.”51 But, for Plotinus, one must not “despise (καταφρονεῖν) the universe” but look to the whole order of beings, and, in this greater order, there is the greater good.52 Later in the treatise, the same argument will be deployed to defend the traditional civic cult: despising the universe is tantamount to despising the gods in it, and that is just what makes someone bad (κακός).53
References to this “order in succession” (τάξις τῶν εφεξῆς),54 contrasted with the break in the cosmos described in the classic Gnostic myth of the fall of Sophia, litter the Enneads.55 As Plotinus notes in his discussion of matter, “of necessity, then, all things must exist forever in ordered dependence on one another,” and this includes the “unpleasantries.”56 More contested and central to the administration of the cosmos than the banal injustices of daily life are the stars, whose goodness Plotinus expends considerable energy defending.
While his opponents esteem themselves superior to the planetary deities, he proclaims that the celestial bodies are good gods, have virtue, and are irrefutable evidence of a beautiful divine order that is not to be feared but imitated.57 “They are essential to the completeness of the All and are important parts of the All,” Plotinus argues.58 What he means is that the stars order the cosmos; more specifically, while they do not determine our fates,59 they transmit providential care to the subintelligible: “Every soul is a child of That Father. And there are souls in (the heavenly bodies) too, and intelligent and good ones, much more closely in touch with the beings of the higher world than our souls are. How could this universe exist if it was cut off from that other world? How could the gods be in it? But we spoke of this before, too: our point is now that because they despise (καταφρονοῦντες) the kindred of those higher realities, also, they do not know the higher beings either but only talk as if they did.”60 Several arguments are embedded in this transitional passage. First, the heavenly beings ontologically link the subintelligible to the supramundane.61 Consequently, knowledge of the heavens is transmitted through them. Thus, by rejecting the stellar deities, the Gnostics have no knowledge of what lies beyond them.
Plotinus’s opposition to Gnostic violation of the cosmic hierarchy, both with respect to theodicy and the administration of providence, is directly incumbent on the issue of soteriology, to which he immediately turns: “Then, another point, what piety is there in denying that providence extends to this world and to anything and everything? And how are they consistent with themselves in this denial? For they say that God does care providentially for them, and them alone.”62 For Plotinus, this view is philosophically unpalatable because it violates the modulated hierarchy of beings: the Gnostics do not know their place. They exalt themselves, set themselves separately above Intellect, claim to be “sons of God”63—but on the contrary, providence extends not to separate parts (individual, special humans) but unified wholes (all of humanity).64 Second, this leads them to reject “the beings received from tradition (έκ πατέρων).”65 For Plotinus, Hellenic tradition emphasizes the unity of the cosmos with all of humanity;66 he wishes to defend the traditional, civic Greek cult, which is precluded by these exclusive claims to salvation.67 Third, such claims presume an incoherent psychology, making an unsupportable distinction between “true,” elect souls and false, “reflections” (εἴδωλα)” of souls, the non-elect.68 In contrast, Plotinian salvation is universally accessible to all those who imbibe Hellenic learning (παιδεία).69 As noted by Arthur Hilary Armstrong, Plotinus’s criticism may have particular Gnostics in mind, but it extends to “all those who
