is tempting to differentiate the Gnostics of 2.9 [33] from (proto)-orthodox Christians on the basis of Plotinus’s accusations of moral libertinism and general lack of interest in ethical philosophy.71 However, his account of Gnostic libertinism is no more valid than the lurid descriptions, probably false, of a Clement or Epiphanius.72 Rather, his opponents’ rejection of the civic cult is tantamount in his mind to atheism. Together with the doctrine of elect soteriology (mutually exclusive with his view on providence), it thus merits a tarring with the brush of Epicureanism.73 Moreover, he says that they do not compose treatises on virtue. This indifference to ethical matters puts them out of order with the hierarchy yet again, this time not with the hierarchy of the cosmos but with a philosophical approach to it: virtue precedes and even reveals God, not the other way around.74
Much as the debate over the composition of the World-Soul and its demiurgic activity presumed a rejection of Gnostic temporality and narrative imagery, these arguments over theodicy, soteriology, and ethics presume that the Gnostics failed to ascertain the proper location of divinity, its transmission, and how people show evidence of interaction with it. Multiplying needless intermediary entities, the Gnostics reject the entities that are actually necessary for the dissemination of providence (the stars), asserting that they have a special access to God via theophanies that exist outside the proper order of the universe. The ramifications of this axiom of divine theophany extend to a criminal soteriology, empty ethics, and, ultimately, pedagogy antithetical to the philosophical enterprise and its Hellenic heritage.
AGAINST THE GNOSTIC TRADITION
The beginning and end of Ennead 2.9. [33] 6 is worthy of special attention, because Plotinus embeds his discussion of the Gnostic World-Soul in various criticisms of the relationship between the Gnostics and Hellenic philosophical tradition. Scholars generally agree he is concerned with maintaining the integrity of Hellenic pedagogy against oriental “alien balderdash.”75 However unfairly, Plotinus here attempts to characterize the Gnostics as thinkers who initiate, not teach, and for him, this is not philosophy, but dangerous authoritarianism.
At the beginning of the chapter, he deplores the introduction of the subintelligible aeons of the Sojourn, Repentance, and Aeonic Copies (discussed in extant passages of Zostrianos and the Untitled Treatise).76 These are “the terms of people inventing a new jargon to recommend their own school (εἰς σύστασιν τῆς ἰδίας αἱρέσεως). They contrive this meretricious language as if they had no connection with the ancient Hellenic school (τῆς ἀρχαίας Ἑλληνικῆς), though the Hellenes knew all this and knew it clearly, and spoke without delusive pomposity (ἀτύφως) of ascents (ἀναβἀσεις) from the cave and advancing gradually closer and closer to a truer vision (τὴν θέαν ἀληθέστεραν).”77 He continues: some of their ideas “have been taken from Plato but others, all the new ideas they have brought in to establish a philosophy of their own, are things they found outside the truth. For the judgments (δίκαι)78 too, and the rivers in Hades and the reincarnations come from Plato. And the making a plurality in the intelligible world, Being, and Intellect, and the Maker different, and Soul, is taken from the words in the Timaeus (39e)…. They themselves have received what is good in what they say (about) the immortality of the soul, the intelligible universe, the first god, the necessity for the soul to shun fellowship with the body, the separation from the body, the escape from becoming to being, for these doctrines are there in Plato.”79 The Platonic background of the Gnostics is not in question for Plotinus; nonetheless, they have founded their own school (αἵρεσις) by coining their own terminology to supplement the venerable teaching of Plato. What they add, however, sullies this teaching: useless subintelligible hypostases, and an incoherent doctrine of the World-Soul and the Demiurge. Moreover, much of what they take from Plato they misuse, especially with respect to the human soul’s fallen nature and the worth of the body.80 Finally, they justify the deviations from Plato by claiming that he and the “blessed philosophers” had no real knowledge of the intelligible nature (τὴν νοητὴν φύσιν), “ridiculing and insulting the Greeks … and saying that they are better than them,” and “hunting fame by censuring men who have been judged good from ancient times by men of worth.”81
Plotinus defends not only the philosophers’ teaching on the composition of the intelligible world but also their mode of speech and pedagogy. The ancient Hellenes speak in a way “appropriate for the educated (πεπαιδευμένως).”82 By contrast, the Gnostics need to learn to discourse courteously and philosophically (εὐμενῶς καὶ φιλοσόφως) and fairly (δικαίως), to learn with good will (εὐγνωμόνως).83 Bestowing membership in the elect, they say their “gnosis” is “cultured (πεπεαιδυμένης) and harmonious,” that they alone are capable of contemplation (while deviating from Plotinus’s sense of the term) and “worthy of honor” on the basis of their souls.84 Instead, they’re stupid (ἀνόητοι), speaking provincially (ἀγροικιζόμενος).85 With audacity (αὐθάδεια), they make “arrogant assertions” without proofs (ἀποδείξεις).86 Twice, he says that since they do not argue like philosophers, “another way of writing” (ἄλλου ὄντος τρόπου) would be more appropriate to respond to them, and that he will quit describing their doctrines; and, twice he breaks his resolve by denigrating them anew.87
CONCLUSION: WITH “FRIENDS” LIKE THAT … (A THICKER DESCRIPTION)
Aside from the two versions of the Sophia myth and his paraphrases of positions on cosmology, theodicy, and other philosophical topics, Plotinus tells the reader little about what his opponents actually think or believe. He does not give any references to their extra-Hellenic sources. He does not explain who his opponents say they are or where they came from. Nonetheless, the contours of Ennead 2.9 tell us a bit about his opponents, and this is firmly in agreement with Porphyry’s evidence: they are steeped in Greek thought, and even identify with it, while deviating from it in significant ways. The most significant departure concerns the World-Soul and its demiurgic function, from which follow a number of un-Hellenic doctrines, including a cosmos created by an evil demiurge who wishes to destroy it, and which is engineered by malevolent stellar deities. Its illogical providential model transmits salvation to an elect few, who have a concept of salvation that is not earned as much as bestowed by an authority that rejects the cultic and intellectual traditions of Hellenism. It is a disordered universe, dreamt by disordered men who feel alien to it. Plotinus’s critique is that of a conservative.
Reading Plotinus’s works in conjunction with Porphyry’s evidence, scholars have hypothesized numerous sectarian identities for the Gnostics of Ennead 2.9. Valentinians have been contenders for several reasons: the prominence of the school in Rome, the similarity of Plotinus’s account of the fall of Sophia to that given by Valentinians, and perhaps most importantly the relative plenitude of evidence about Valentinians prior to the Nag Hammadi discovery.88 The surfacing of Sethian rather than Valentinian texts with the titles of treatises mentioned by Porphyry has mitigated this hypothesis.89 Other groups associated with Sethian tradition have also been suggested, such as the Barbelo-Gnostics known to Irenaeus or the Archontics.90 Earlier scholarship suggested a pagan Gnostic group, reading Porphyry’s evidence as referring to “Christians and others (belonging to non-Christian groups).”91 Other contenders include the followers of one Alcibiades, who brought an “Apocalypse of Elchasai” from Syrian baptismal groups to Rome in the early third century CE, inspired by Pope Callistus I’s support for second baptism for the remission of new sins—a thesis that is revisited in the conclusion.92
Based on the reading of evidence presented in this chapter, it is impossible to distinguish whether these Gnostics were Valentinians, Sethians, Barbelo-Gnostics, or Elchasaites, but it would be unlikely that they were Hellenes.
