Apocalypse of the Alien God. Dylan M. Burns
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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. An objection to this view is that if Plotinus’s opponents were Christians, why did not he simply say so, as Celsus and Porphyry did in their polemical works? Yet it is not clear that Plotinus would have been able to recognize a Christian. As a longtime resident of Alexandria, he must have been familiar with Christian intellectuals like the Valentinians or the catechetical school of Clement and Origen.93 As a longtime Platonist, he could have been familiar with Celsus’s critique of Christianity or with Numenius’s quip about the “Attic Moses.”94 Despite all this, there is no explicit evidence in his corpus of any knowledge of Christianity, and therefore such knowledge cannot be assured.95
Another factor is the question of how well Plotinus knew his opponents. In this context, it is worthwhile recalling the following passage from Against the Gnostics: “We feel a certain regard for some of our friends (φίλοι) [italics mine] who happened upon this way of thinking before they became our friends, and, though I do not know how they manage it, continue in it.… But we have addressed what we have said so far to our own intimate pupils, not to them (for we could make no further progress towards convincing them), so that they might not be troubled by these latter, who do not bring forward proofs—how could they?—but make arbitrary, arrogant assertions. Another way of writing would be appropriate to repel (them).”96 Did Plotinus have Christian “friends”? Apparently so, and he considered them to be “votaries of Plato”;97 the problem is that they were also votaries of much else. If the evidence from Porphyry’s Vita Plotini chapter 16 about Aculinus can be squared with Eunapius, Mark J. Edwards is most likely correct that Plotinus here attacks the Platonism of Gnostic colleagues from the circle of his old teacher in Alexandria, Ammonius Saccas. These colleagues were with him in Rome around the same time as Porphyry (ca. 263 CE), at a time when the group focused on discussing the makeup of the Soul and the intelligible world, just the topics that occupy the bulk of Against the Gnostics.98 Therefore, the gulf between the Gnostic and Hellenic parties extended far beyond the single issue of authority, which then turned on the Christian invocation of Jewish seers against the speculations of the divine Plato.99
His polemic also allows us to “thicken” the description determined in Chapter 1 of his Christian “friends.” Plotinus sharply criticizes them for “despising” the world instead of engaging it politically, which in turn leads them to reject the civic cult and festivities, worship of “the beings received from the tradition of our fathers.”100 Considering the close proximity of philosophers and sophists to political power (as discussed in Chapter 1), his claim that the Gnostics thumbed their noses at current events is striking. Moreover, despite their claim that their teaching is philosophical (πεπαιδευμένης), Plotinus says they are stupid (ἀνόητοι) and that they speak like bumpkins (ἀγροικιζόμενος), that is, not like Hellenes.101 What Plotinus means is not that they are incapable of engaging technical metaphysics (the evidence from Nag Hammadi, as we will see, demonstrates otherwise); rather, they eschew the contemporary culture of philosophy, a way of life that goes back to ancients like Pythagoras and that encourages civic and popular cultic activity.
The situation was exacerbated by the pseudepigraphic appeal to the authority of Judeo-Christian