Page:Ante-Nicene Christian Library Vol 5.djvu/42

Chap. iv.—Account given by the heretics of the formation of Achamoth; origin of the visible world from her disturbances.

1. The following are the transactions which they narrate as having occurred outside of the Pleroma: The enthymesis of that Sophia who dwells above, which they also term Achamoth,^[1] being removed from the Pleroma, together with her passion, they relate to have, as a matter of course, become violently excited in those places of darkness and vacuity [to which she had been banished]. For she was excluded from light^[2] and the Pleroma, and was without form or figure, like an untimely birth, because she had received nothing^[3] [from a male parent]. But the Christ dwelling on high took pity upon her; and having extended himself through and beyond Stauros,^[4] he imparted a figure to her, but merely as respected substance, and not so as to convey intelligence.^[5] Having effected this, he withdrew his influence, and retarned, leaving Achamoth to herself, in order that she, becoming sensible of her suffering as being severed from the Pleroma, might be influenced by the desire of better things, while she possessed in the meantime a kind of odour of immortality left in her by Christ and the Holy Spirit. Wherefore also she is called by two names—Sophia after her father (for Sophia is spoken of as being her father), and Holy Spirit from that Spirit who is along with Christ. Having then obtained a form, along with intelligence, and being immediately deserted by that Logos who had been invisibly

1. This term, though Tertullian declares himself to have been ignorant of its derivation, was evidently formed from the Hebrew word הכמה—chockmah, wisdom.
2. The reader will observe that light and fulness are the exact correlatives of the darkness and vacuity which have just been mentioned.
3. As above stated (ii. 3), the Gnostics held that form and figure were due to the male, substance to the female parent.
4. The Valentinian Stauros was the boundary fence of the Pleroma, beyond which Christ extended himself to assist the enthymesis of Sophia.
5. The peculiar gnosis which Nous received from his father, and communicated to the other Æons.