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SOPHIA OF WISDOM III - SOPHIA (GNOSTICISM)
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JULY 23, 2007
RE: Sophia (Gnosticism)
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For the Gnostic Christians, the Sophia was a central element in their cosmological understanding of the Universe. A Feminine figure, analogous to the human soul but also simultaneously one of the Feminine aspects of God and the Bride of Christ, she is considered to have fallen from grace in some way, in so doing creating or helping to create the material world. For the Gnostics, the drama of the redemption of the Sophia through Christ or the Logos is the central drama of the universe. The Sophia resides in all of us as the Divine Spark. According to the Pistis Sophia, Christ is sent from the Godhead in order to bring Sophia back into the fullness of Pleroma following her repentance.
In Gnostic tradition, the term Sophia (Σoφíα, Greek for "wisdom") refers to the final and lowest emanation of God. In most if not all versions of the gnostic myth, Sophia brings about an instability in the Pleroma, in turn bringing about the creation of materiality. Thus a positive or negative view of materiality depends a great deal on the interpretations of Sophia's actions in the myths. She is occasionally referred to by the Hebrew equivalent of Achamoth (this is a feature of Ptolemy's version of the Valentinian gnostic myth).[citation needed]
Almost all gnostic systems of the Syrian or Egyptian type taught that the universe began with an original, unknowable God, referred to as the Parent or Bythos, or as the Monad by Monoimus. It can also be equated to the concept of Logos in stoicism, esoterism, or theosophical terms (The 'Unknown Root') as well as the Ein Sof of the Kabbalah and Brahman in Hinduism. It is also known as the first Aeon by still other traditions. From this initial unitary beginning, the One spontaneously emanated further Aeons, being pairs of progressively 'lesser' beings in sequence. The lowest of these pairs were Sophia and Christ. The Aeons together made up the Pleroma, or fullness, of God, and thus should not be seen as distinct from the divine, but symbolic abstractions of the divine nature.
Contents [hide]
1 Sophia in the Nag Hammadi
2 The fall of Sophia
3 Sophia and non-Gnostic Christianity and Judaism
4 Bibliography
5 See also
[edit] Sophia in the Nag Hammadi
In the Nag Hammadi, Sophia is the lowest æon, or anthropic expression of the emanation of the light of God. She is the syzygy of Jesus Christ (i.e. she forms a unity with Christ, being cojoined with him), and Gnostics believed that she was the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. Sophia is depicted as the creator of the material universe in On the Origin of the World. Furthermore, the planet Earth and everything on it was indeed created by the Jewish God Yahweh, but he is depicted as fundamentally corrupt. Because Sophia created the material universe and its god (also known as Yaldabaoth, Samael, and Demiurge) either without her syzygy Jesus Christ or, in another tradition, because she tried to breach the barrier between herself and the unknowable Bythos.
Furthermore, she is also depicted as the destroyer of both this material universe, and Yaldabaoth/Yahweh and all his Heavens. Later in "On the Origin of the World," it states:
"She [Sophia] will cast them down into the abyss. They [the archons] will be obliterated because of their wickedness. For they will come to be like volcanoes and consume one another until they perish at the hand of the prime parent. When he has destroyed them, he will turn against himself and destroy himself until he ceases to exist. And their heavens will fall one upon the next and their forces will be consumed by fire. Their eternal realms, too, will be overturned. And his heaven will fall and break in two. His [...] will fall down upon the [...] support them; they will fall into the abyss, and the abyss will be overturned. The light will [...] the darkness and obliterate it: it will be like something that never was."
[edit] The fall of Sophia
Sophia's fear and anguish of losing her life (just as she lost the light of the One) caused confusion and longing to return to it. Because of these longings, matter (Greek: hyle, ‘υλη) and soul (Greek: psyche, ψυχή) accidentally came into existence through the four elements: fire, water, earth, and air. The creation of the lion-faced Demiurge is also a mistake made during this exile, according to some Gnostic sources as a result of Sophia trying to emanate on her own, without her male counterpart. The Demiurge proceeds to create the physical world in which we live, ignorant of Sophia, who nevertheless managed to infuse some spiritual spark or pneuma into the creation of the Demiurge.
After this the savior (Christ) returns and lets her see the light again, bringing her knowledge of the spirit (Greek: pneuma, πνευμα). Christ was then sent to earth in the form of the man Jesus to give men the gnosis needed to rescue themselves from the physical world and return to the spiritual world. Note that, in Gnosticism, the Gospel story of Jesus is itself allegorical: it is the Outer Mystery, used as an introduction to Gnosis, rather than being literally true in a historical context.
In Valentinian cosmology, the three sensations experienced by Sophia create three correspondent types of humans:
hylics (who bond to matter, the principle of evil)
psychics (who bond to the soul and are partly saved from evil)
pneumatics who can return to the pleroma if they achieve gnosis and can behold the world of light. The gnostics regarded themselves as members of this group.
The analogy of the fall and recovery of Sophia is echoed (to a varying degree) in many different myths and stories (see Damsel in distress). Among these are:
Persephone and her descent into Hades, from which she returns to life [but is bound to return to Hades for 3 months every year]
The canonical Christian Gospels: The church as the bride of Christ
The story of Eve and the birth of Christ through the Virgin Mary
The descent of Orpheus into the underworld to rescue his wife, Eurydice
The abduction and rescue of Helen of Troy
The return of Odysseus to his kingdom, Ithaca, to reclaim his wife, Penelope
The rescue of Andromeda by Perseus
The story of Pandora
The stories of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty
The slaying of the Dragon by St George to rescue the Princess
[edit] Sophia and non-Gnostic Christianity and Judaism
Although the Divine Sophia is central to so many Gnostic movements she is by no means a figure unique to Gnosticism. In Judaism the Sophia appears alongside the Shekinah, 'the Glory of God', a figure who plays a key role in the cosmology of the Kabbalists as an expression of the feminine aspect of God.
Sophia is an oft controversial figure, especially when she is taken as 'the Wisdom of God' (Chokhmah in Hebrew). While traditional Christianity says this is a description of an aspect of God or as another name for Jesus Christ, a more Gnostic view is that these passages describe a separate individual, namely Sophia. A key passage which personifies Wisdom/Sophia in Christian/Jewish Scriptures is Proverbs 8:22-31.
At one point in time in the Russian Orthodox Church, the Sophia was championed by some individuals as a key part of the Godhead by religious thinkers. These included Vladimir Solovyov, Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky, Nikolai Berdyaev and Sergei Bulgakov whose book Sophia: The Wisdom of God is in many ways the apotheosis of Sophiology. His work was denounced by the Russian Orthodox Authorities as heretical. For Bulgakov, the Sophia is co-existent with the Trinity, operating as the Feminine Aspect of God in concert with the three Masculine principles of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. This contrary to the official view of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is that she is the same person as the Divine Logos, referred to in the feminine, who became incarnate as Jesus Christ.
In Roman Catholicism Dame Hildegard of Bingen also celebrated the Sophia as a cosmic figure both in her writing and art. Within the Protestant tradition in England, 17th Century Mystic, Theosophist and founder of the Philadelphia Society Jane Leade wrote copious descriptions of her visions and dialogues with the 'Virgin-Sophia' who, she said, revealed to her the spiritual workings of the Universe. Leade was hugely influenced by the theosophical writings of Jakob Boehme, who also speaks of the Sophia in works such as the Way to Christ.
Some commentators view the Virgin Mary as an expression of the Sophia, although in one sense much reduced. The Sophia is seen as being expressed in all Creation, the Natural World, and, for some of the Mystics mentioned above, integral to the spiritual well-being of mankind and the Church. The Virgin is seen as outside Creation but compassionately interceding on behalf of humanity to alleviate its suffering. The main difference between the Gnostic idea of the Sophia and one more aligned with established Christianity is that for the latter she is not fallen or in need of redemption. Conversely, she is not as central as she is in the Gnosticism, if she is mentioned at all.
[edit] Bibliography
Caitlin Matthews, Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom (London: Mandala, 1991) ISBN 0044405901
Brenda Meehan, ‘Wisdom/Sophia, Russian identity, and Western feminist theology’, Cross Currents, 46(2), 1996, pp149-168
Thomas Schipflinger, Sophia-Maria (in German: 1988; English translation: York Beach, ME: Samuel Wiser, 1998) ISBN 1578630223
Arthur Versluis, Theosophia: hidden dimensions of Christianity (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1994) ISBN 0940262649
Arthur Versluis, Wisdom’s children: a Christian esoteric tradition (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999) ISBN 0791443302
Arthur Versluis (ed.) Wisdom’s book: the Sophia anthology (St.Paul, Min: Paragon House, 2000) ISBN 1557787832
[edit] See also
Pistis Sophia
Sophia of Jesus Christ
Gnosticism
Valentinus
Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky
Sergei Bulgakov
Hildegard of Bingen
Vladimir Solovyov
Jane Leade
Shekinah
Jakob Boehme
Wisdom literature
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_%28Gnosticism%29"
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