Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/125

will overtake even the Archon of the Hebdomad, that grief and pain and sighing may depart from him: yea, it will overtake the Great Archon of the Ogdoad, and all the creations subject to him, that nothing may in any respect crave for aught that is against nature or may suffer pain. "And in this wise shall be the Restoration, all things according to nature having been founded in the seed of the universe in the beginning, and being restored at their due seasons. And that each thing has its due seasons is sufficiently proved by the Saviour's words, 'My hour is not yet come,' and by the beholding of the star by the Magi; for even He Himself was subject to the 'genesis' [nativity] of the periodic return (ἀποκαταστάσεως, here used in the limited astrological sense, though above as 'restoration' generally) of stars and hours, as foreordained [προλελογισμένος: cf. c. 24, s. f.; x. 14] in the great heap." "He," adds Hippolytus, evidently meaning our Lord, "is [in the Basilidian view] the inner spiritual man in the natural [psychical] man; that is, a sonship leaving its soul here, not a mortal soul, but one remaining in its present place according to nature, just as the first sonship up above hath left the Limitary Holy Spirit in a fitting place; He having at that time been clothed with a soul of His own" (27).

These last two remarks, on the subjection to seasons and on the ultimate abandonment of the immortal but earth-bound soul by the ascending sonship or spiritual man, taking place first in the Saviour and then in the other "sons of God," belong in strictness to an earlier part of the scheme; but they may have been placed here by Basilides himself, to explain the strange consummation of the Great Ignorance. The principle receives perhaps a better illustration from what purports to be an exposition of the Basilidian view of the Gospel, with which Hippolytus concludes his report. "According to them," he says, "the Gospel is the knowledge of things above the world, which knowledge the Great Archon understood not: when then it was shewn to him that there exists the Holy Spirit, that is the Limitary Spirit, and the sonship and a God Who is the author (αἴτιος) of all these things, even the not-being One, he rejoiced at what was told him, and was exceeding glad: this is according to them the Gospel." Here Hippolytus evidently takes too generally the special form under which Basilides represented the Gospel as made known to the Great Archon. Nor, when he proceeds to say that "Jesus according to them was born in the manner that we have previously mentioned," is it clear that Basilides gave a different account of the Nativity itself from that accepted by the church, because he gave a peculiar interpretation to the angel's words. "After the Nativity already made known," adds Hippolytus, "all incidents concerning the Saviour came to pass according to them [the Basilidians] as they are described in the Gospels." But all this is only introductory to the setting forth of the primary principle. "These things" (apparently the incidents of our Lord's life) "are come to pass that Jesus might become the first fruits of the sorting of the things confused" (τῆς φυλοκρι-

νήσεῶς τῶν συγκεχυμένων). For since the world is divided into the Ogdoad and the Hebdomad and this stage in which we dwell, where is the formlessness, "it was necessary that the things confused should be sorted by the division of Jesus. That therefore suffered which was His bodily part, which was of the formlessness, and it was restored into the formlessness; and that rose up which was His psychical part, which was of the Hebdomad, and it was restored into the Hebdomad; and he raised up that which belonged to the summit where sits the Great Archon (τῆς ἀκρωρείας τοῦ μ. ἄ.), and it abode beside the Great Archon: and He bore up on high that which was of the Limitary Spirit, and it abode in the Limitary Spirit; and the third sonship, which had been left behind in [the heap] to give and receive benefits, through Him was purified and mounted up to the blessed sonship, passing through them all." "Thus Jesus is become the first fruits of the sorting; and the Passion has come to pass for no other purpose than this [reading γέγονεν ἢ ὑπέρ for γέγονεν ὑπό], that the things confused might be sorted." For the whole sonship left behind in the formlessness must needs be sorted in the same manner as Jesus Himself hath been sorted. Thus, as Hippolytus remarks a little earlier, the whole theory consists of the confusion of a seed-mass, and of the sorting and restoration into their proper places of things so confused (27).

Clement's contributions to our knowledge of Basilides refer chiefly, as has been said, to the ethical side of his doctrine. Here "Faith" evidently played a considerable part. In itself it was defined by "them of Basilides" (οἱ ἀπὸ Β.) as "an assent of the soul to any of the things which do not excite sensation, because they are not present" (Strom ii. p. 448); the phrase being little more than a vague rendering of Heb. xi. I, in philosophical language. From another unfortunately corrupt passage (v. p. 645) it would appear that Basilides accumulated forms of dignity in celebration of faith. But the eulogies were in vain, Clement intimates, because they abstained from setting forth faith as the "rational assent of a soul possessing free will." They left faith a matter of "nature," not of responsible choice. So again, while contrasting the honour shewn by the Basilidians to faith with its disparagement in comparison with "knowledge" by the Valentinians, he accuses them (οἱ ἀμφὶ τὸν Β.) of regarding it as "natural," and referring it to "the election" while they apparently considered it to "discover doctrines without demonstration by an intellective apprehension" (τὰ μαθήματα ἀναποδείκτως εὑρίσκουσαν καταλήψει νοητικῇ). He adds that according to them (οἱ ἀπὸ Β.) there is at once a faith and an election of special character (οἰκείαν) in each "stage" (διάστημα), the mundane faith of every nature follows in accordance with its supermundane election, and for each (? being or stage) the [Divine] gift of his (or its) faith corresponds with his (or its) hope (ii. 433 f.). What "hope" was intended is not explained: probably it is the range of legitimate hope, the limits of faculty accessible to the beings inhabiting