A Source Book for Ancient Church HistoryAyer, Joseph Cullen
History
A Source Book for Ancient Church History
Ayer, Joseph Cullen
Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600 -- Sources
‘for no one is pure,’ as one said, ‘from pollution.’ ” But the hypothesis
of Basilides says that the soul, having sinned before in another life,
endures punishment in this—the elect soul with honor by martyrdom, the
other purged by appropriate punishment.
(_c_) Irenæus, _Adv. Hær._, I, 24:3 _ff._ (MSG, 7:675.)
The system of Basilides, as presented by Irenæus, is dualistic and
emanationist; with it is to be compared the presentation of the
system by Hippolytus in his _Philosophumena_, where it appears as
evolutionary and pantheistic. The trend of present opinion appears
to be that the account given by Irenæus is more correct, or, at
least, is earlier. The following account has all the appearance of
having been taken from an original source (_cf._ Hilgenfeld,
_Ketzergeschichte_, 195, 198). It represents the esoteric and more
distinctively Gnostic teaching of the school.
Ch. 3. Basilides, to appear to have discovered something more sublime and
plausible, gives an immense development to his doctrine. He declares that
in the beginning the Nous was born of the unborn Father, that from him in
turn was born the Logos, then from the Logos the Phronesis, from the
Phronesis Sophia and Dynamis, and from Dynamis and Sophia the powers and
principalities and angels, whom he calls the first; and that by these the
first heaven was made. Then by emanation from these others were formed,
and these created another heaven similar to the first. And in like manner,
when still others had been formed by emanations from these, corresponding
to those who were over them, they framed another third heaven; and from
this third heaven downward there was a fourth succession of descendants;
and so on, in the same manner, they say that other and still other princes
and angels were formed, and three hundred and sixty-five heavens.
Wherefore the year contained the same number of days in conformity with
the number of the heavens.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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