Creator-as-God vs Creator-as-Demiurge and antinomianism

[GakuseiDon]

Secret Alias made an interesting comment recently about Marcion and antinomianism (salvation is attained solely through faith rather than adherence to Law), about how Marcion-like beliefs would be more antithetical towards Roman gods than proto-orthodox (PO) beliefs. It made me think: if PO Christians believed that a good God had created a 'good' world, then the authorities had been appointed by God and so should be obeyed. On the other hand, if a Demiurge had created a 'bad' world, then authorities who rule the world would arguably be evil and so resisted by followers of the good 'unknown' god.

The Gospels of the Docetists, gnostics and POs had a fairly consistent Jesus walking around, doing and saying many of the same things. Their Jesus' origin story differed, depending on whether the world had a Creator-as-God or a Creator-as-Demiurge. But there does seem to be a consistent theme of obeying authorities in early Christian literature.

Starting from the Old Testament and moving through to the Gospel and the Epistles:

Proverbs 8:15 By me kings reign, and rulers enact just laws;

Daniel 2:21 He changes the times and seasons; He removes kings and establishes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning.

Gospel of John:

19:10 Then saith Pilate unto him, Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?
11 Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.

Romans:

Romans 13:1 Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which is from God. The authorities that exist have been appointed by God.
2 Consequently, whoever resists authority is opposing what God has set in place, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.…

Titus:

Titus 3:1 Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work,

1 Peter:

1Pet.2:13 Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme;
14 Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.
15 For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men

Then on to Second Century CE apologists:

Justin Martyr, First Apology
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... ology.html

And everywhere we, more readily than all men, endeavour to pay to those appointed by you the taxes both ordinary and extraordinary, as we have been taught by Him; for at that time some came to Him and asked Him, if one ought to pay tribute to Caesar; and He answered, "Tell Me, whose image does the coin bear?" And they said, "Caesar's." And again He answered them, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." Whence to God alone we render worship, but in other things we gladly serve you, acknowledging you as kings and rulers of men, and praying that with your kingly power you be found to possess also sound judgment.

Irenaeus, in his "Against Heresies", Book 5:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... book5.html

Earthly rule, therefore, has been appointed by God for the benefit of nations, and not by the devil, who is never at rest at all, nay, who does not love to see even nations conducting themselves after a quiet manner, so that under the fear of human rule, men may not eat each other up like fishes; but that, by means of the establishment of laws, they may keep down an excess of wickedness among the nations. And considered from this point of view, those who exact tribute from us are "God's ministers, serving for this very purpose."...

For by the law of the same Being as calls men into existence are kings also appointed, adapted for those men who are at the time placed under their government. Some of these [rulers] are given for the correction and the benefit of their subjects, and for the preservation of justice; but others, for the purposes of fear and punishment and rebuke: others, as [the subjects] deserve it, are for deception, disgrace, and pride; while the just judgment of God, as I have observed already, passes equally upon all. The devil, however, as he is the apostate angel, can only go to this length, as he did at the beginning, [namely] to deceive and lead astray the mind of man into disobeying the commandments of God, and gradually to darken the hearts of those who would endeavour to serve him, to the forgetting of the true God, but to the adoration of himself as God.

Origen, Against Celsus, Book 2:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... en162.html

... there is abundance of peace, which took its commencement at His birth, God preparing the nations for His teaching, that they might be under one prince, the king of the Romans, and that it might not, owing to the want of union among the nations, caused by the existence of many kingdoms, be more difficult for the apostles of Jesus to accomplish the task enjoined upon them by their Master, when He said, "Go and teach all nations." Moreover it is certain that Jesus was born in the reign of Augustus, who, so to speak, fused together into one monarchy the many populations of the earth. Now the existence of many kingdoms would have been a hindrance to the spread of the doctrine of Jesus throughout the entire world...

I can't find anything about the Docetists and gnostics' views of obeying earthly authorities, but I found this in Justin Martyr's First Apology:

And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works. All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds--the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh--we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions.

This suggests that there were self-declared Christians who were NOT persecuted on account of their opinions. This suprised me, since I think Secret Alias's comment made sense. I suggest that maybe the PO Christianity was more politically active than the docetics/gnostics. Or perhaps a belief in a Christ that was coming to end the world was seen as a much greater threat to the political order than a belief in a Christ who was helping to free the individual spark of life in each gnostic?

Any thoughts on this?

[Leucius Charinus]

Any thoughts on this?

Yes. Sooner or later the demiurge leads us to Plato. AFAIK it was the heretical Gnostics who first adopted the term demiurge into Christian writings. Exemplars of these in the NHL. Their adoption was systematic.

Antinomianism seems to be the agenda of these heretics in rejecting the book with the lawful canonical creator God and writing their own version incorporating Platonist creationism. They also rejected Adam and instead started with Seth. That sounds like the definition of Antinomianism:

Antinomianism (Ancient Greek: ἀντί [anti] "against" and νόμος [nomos] "law") is any view which rejects laws or legalism and argues against moral, religious or social norms (Latin: mores), or is at least considered to do so.[1] The term has both religious and secular meanings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinomianism

[GakuseiDon]

Yes. Sooner or later the demiurge leads us to Plato.

You mean that guy that we read about in mostly medieval copies of documents going through the Christian monk copying system and which the provenance of such documents has been determined by Church tradition? (Just messing with you!)

AFAIK it was the heretical Gnostics who first adopted the term demiurge into Christian writings. Exemplars of these in the NHL. Their adoption was systematic.

I don't know whether Christians adopted the idea of Demiurge or whether it was pagans with the idea of the Demiurge adopted Jesus Christ. I suspect that it went both ways once "Jesus Christ" became a heavenly resource that could be invoked for magical power by independent religious entrepreneurs.

Antinomianism seems to be the agenda of these heretics in rejecting the book with the lawful canonical creator God and writing their own version incorporating Platonist creationism. They also rejected Adam and instead started with Seth. That sounds like the definition of Antinomianism:

Yes, and I wonder how the gnostics rejecting the idea of a Good Creator affected their relations with the Roman authorities, i.e. whether they rejected the authority of Roman leaders as a consequence. Justin Martyr suggests that it didn't, since heretical Christians weren't persecuted, even though they carried the name of "Christian", for which Christians could be persecuted. There is an inconsistency there that I don't understand. It may come down to politics: the POs were naturally more politically active, what with the world coming to an end; while the gnostics were more about individual salvation through personal growth.

[dbz]

Sooner or later the demiurge leads us to Plato. AFAIK it was the heretical Gnostics who first adopted the term demiurge into Christian writings.

The significance of all this for the origins of Christian beliefs about Jesus Christ as Logos, mediator, creator, etc scarcely needs to be pointed out.

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—Godfrey, Neil (2 December 2010). "The Second God among Ancient Jewish Philosophers and Commoners". Vridar.

N.B.: O'Brien, Carl Séan (2015). The Demiurge in Ancient Thought: Secondary Gods and Divine Mediators. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-1-316-24065-6. "This monograph resulted from my PhD thesis at the School of Classics/Centre for the Study of the Platonic Tradition at Trinity College, Dublin."

Christian scripture teaches that god alone is good (Luke 18:19). Marcion, following Plato, went further by his assumption that god, to be god, must be good—in fact the Good and source of all good for all beings. This [MIDDLE] Platonized Christian divinity was immensely powerful but had one limitation: he could not do evil. Indeed, it was sacrilegious to say that god did anything morally base.

By Marcion’s time, belief in god's exclusive goodness had become cultural common coin. The idea appears in Philo, Plutarch, Alcinous, Numenius, and Apuleius—all leading Middle Platonists of the period. The Chaldean Oracles scold the ignorant: “you do not know that every god is good, you drudges. Sober up!” Bellerophon, a character in one of Euripides’s famous plays, declared “If the gods do something bad, they are not gods.” The idea that god(s) must be good was widespread. In essence, then, all Marcion had to show was that the actions and character of the Judean creator were not—or not exclusively—good. Marcion could thereby show that the Judean god was no god at, but rather an imposter. (p. 61)

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—Litwa, M. David (2021). The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-756643-5. "[Source: Publisher] This book examines the origins of the evil creator idea chiefly in light of early Christian biblical interpretations. It is divided into two parts. In Part I, the focus is on the interpretations of Exodus and John. Firstly, ancient Egyptian assimilation of the Jewish god to the evil deity Seth-Typhon is studied to understand its reapplication by Phibionite and Sethian Christians to the Judeo-catholic creator. Secondly, the Christian reception of John 8:44 (understood to refer to the devil's father) is shown to implicate the Judeo-catholic creator in murdering Christ. Part II focuses on Marcionite Christian biblical interpretations. It begins with Marcionite interpretations of the creator's character in the Christian "Old Testament," analyzes 2 Corinthians 4:4 (in which "the god of this world" blinds people from Christ's glory), examines Christ's so-called destruction of the Law (Eph 2:15) and the Lawgiver, and shows how Christ finally succumbs to the "curse of the Law" inflicted by the creator (Gal 3:13). A concluding chapter shows how still today readers of the Christian Bible have concluded that the creator manifests an evil character."

Walsh argues that Paul uses “middle platonic” philosophy. Cf. Walsh, Robyn Faith (2021). The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-83530-5. (Middle Platonism & Paul the Apostle: pp. 7, 126, 192)

N.B.: The idea that this world is corrupt and evil and we have to escape it is not only entirely orthodox, it’s canonical (2 Peter 3, 2 Peter 2, 1 Thess. 4, Jude, Romans 8, Galatians 4, 1 John 2, 1 John 5, Ephesians 6, Colossians 2, 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Corinthians 4-5).

Screenshot 2023-02-21 at 13-40-48 The Christ Myth Theory.png (241.28 KiB) Viewed 102034 times

In Plato's philosophy, the demiurge is an intermediary being between the supreme deity (the Good) and the physical world. The demiurge is responsible for creating the physical world according to the Forms or Ideas that exist in the realm of the Forms. The demiurge is often seen as a kind of "craftsman" or "creator" who shapes matter into the forms that correspond to the Ideas.

The term "logos" also has a significant role in some philosophical and religious traditions, including in ancient Greek philosophy and in Christianity. In Greek philosophy, logos can refer to reason or the principles of order and intelligibility in the universe. In Christianity, the term is used to refer to Jesus Christ, who is believed to be the embodiment of the divine Word or Logos.

It's worth noting that the concept of the demiurge and the use of the term "logos" can vary depending on the philosophical or religious tradition in which they are used.

The term "demiurge" comes from the Greek word "demiourgos" (δημιουργός), which can be translated as "craftsman," "artisan," or "creator." In some contexts, it could be translated as "architect" since the demiurge is often seen as a kind of creator or designer who shapes and arranges the physical world according to the Forms or Ideas that exist in the realm of the Forms.

So, while "architect" is not the most common translation for the term "demiurge," it is not entirely inappropriate, as the demiurge is often associated with the creation and design of the physical world. However, it's important to note that the term "demiurge" has a more specific philosophical and religious meaning in the context of Plato's philosophy and other ancient philosophical and religious traditions.

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Output per "ChatGPT". Wikipedia. 20 February 2023.

[GakuseiDon]

Christian scripture teaches that god alone is good (Luke 18:19). Marcion, following Plato, went further by his assumption that god, to be god, must be good—in fact the Good and source of all good for all beings. This [MIDDLE] Platonized Christian divinity was immensely powerful but had one limitation: he could not do evil. Indeed, it was sacrilegious to say that god did anything morally base.

By Marcion’s time, belief in god's exclusive goodness had become cultural common coin. The idea appears in Philo, Plutarch, Alcinous, Numenius, and Apuleius—all leading Middle Platonists of the period.

Here is the description of the Middle Platonist Plutarch's belief:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Platonism

[Plutarch] cherished a pure idea of God that was more in accordance with Plato.[5] Nevertheless, he adopted a second principle in order to explain the constitution of the physical world.[5] This principle he sought not in any indeterminate matter, but in the evil world-soul which had from the beginning been bound up with matter, but in the creation was filled with reason and arranged by it.[5] Thus it was transformed into the divine soul of the world, but continued to operate as the source of all evil.[5]

He elevated God above the finite world, but he believed that God comes to our aid by direct revelations; this enabled Plutarch to justify popular belief in prophecy.[6] The gods of popular religion are merely different names for one and the same divine Being and the powers that serve them.[6] Daemons were for him agents of God's influence on the world.

This is pretty much the same beliefs held by many of the heretics. It's even consistent with the proto-orthodox, though in that case the Creator of the physical world was God rather than Satan/Demiurge. We tend to think of the beliefs of the different religions in the Roman world as being separate towers, like they are today in the modern world. But they weren't. They shared a common belief system about underworlds, the lower heavens, the higher heavens, the remoteness of God and intermediaries that bridged the gap between humans and the gods.

[Leucius Charinus]

Christian scripture teaches that god alone is good (Luke 18:19). Marcion, following Plato, went further by his assumption that god, to be god, must be good—in fact the Good and source of all good for all beings. This [MIDDLE] Platonized Christian divinity was immensely powerful but had one limitation: he could not do evil. Indeed, it was sacrilegious to say that god did anything morally base.

By Marcion’s time, belief in god's exclusive goodness had become cultural common coin. The idea appears in Philo, Plutarch, Alcinous, Numenius, and Apuleius—all leading Middle Platonists of the period.

Here is the description of the Middle Platonist Plutarch's belief:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Platonism

[Plutarch] cherished a pure idea of God that was more in accordance with Plato.[5] Nevertheless, he adopted a second principle in order to explain the constitution of the physical world.[5] This principle he sought not in any indeterminate matter, but in the evil world-soul which had from the beginning been bound up with matter, but in the creation was filled with reason and arranged by it.[5] Thus it was transformed into the divine soul of the world, but continued to operate as the source of all evil.[5]

He elevated God above the finite world, but he believed that God comes to our aid by direct revelations; this enabled Plutarch to justify popular belief in prophecy.[6] The gods of popular religion are merely different names for one and the same divine Being and the powers that serve them.[6] Daemons were for him agents of God's influence on the world.

This is pretty much the same beliefs held by many of the heretics.

I think it is vital to be able to define these heretics - whoever they were - in terms of the books that they wrote and NOT in terms of whatever others say about them, or indeed whatever others (such as Philo or Plutarch for example) may have written about Platonism. We have the books of those deemed heretics by the heresiologists. We have the Sethian tracts in the NHL in which YHWH of the Septuagint is relegated to the demiurge.

It's even consistent with the proto-orthodox, though in that case the Creator of the physical world was God rather than Satan/Demiurge. We tend to think of the beliefs of the different religions in the Roman world as being separate towers, like they are today in the modern world. But they weren't. They shared a common belief system about underworlds, the lower heavens, the higher heavens, the remoteness of God and intermediaries that bridged the gap between humans and the gods.

Neither Philo or any of the middle Platonists mentioned above (or indeed Marcion) wrote NT apocryphal literature (as far as we know) in which the god of the Christian Bible was subordinated. It is clear (in my mind anyway) that the way out of this heresiological morass is to come back to the primary evidence which is now available as "heretical texts" in the NHL. It seems clear that the whole reason that the orthodox disdained these authors as heretics is not because of their philosophical or religious beliefs, but because they dared to write these books which we now find in the NHL. In these books (of the NT apocrypha) the Christian Father god and his son Jesus were demoted. Does this approach make any sense?

[DCHindley]

The difference between Plato and Philo has to do with divine principals:

Plato believed that there were three

1) The One,
2) the Demiurge (he actually uses three Greek words for this principal), and
3) unformed matter.

All were timelessly existent, The One developed by expanding mathematically to include all necessary intellectual constructs. The Demiurge (or Craftsman) simply gave physical form to the cosmic unformed matter.

Philo was not happy with that. He followed the traditional Judean holy book Genesis, and felt that the God described there could have been nothing but all these principals in one. The God of the Jews had created matter as well as fashioned it, in addition to being the source of all intellectual constructs. The supreme God was also the creator of the material and spiritual hierarchies.

Christians like Clement of Alexandria and Origen followed Philo for the most part, only they teased Philo's system to include Jesus Christ as the Christ of God descending to save mankind. There was some disagreement over his place in the divine godhead, until it was settled in 4th century as a "trinity." They added the Holy Spirit in the process.

Gnostics of "our" kind saw the creation of the material world as a failure in the spiritual world. The myth of Sophia overstepping her natural bounds and relationships within the spiritual world resulting in the physical universe, is an example, such as you find in Valentinians. Others held that one of the angelic entities in the intellectual world had overstepped his authority and created the world of matter, such as Sethians held. In both cases the breach in protocol was unintentional, but was very "real" and required action to bring everything back into harmony. A Demiurge does not have to be evil in these systems, impulsive (Sophia) or ignorant (Yaldabaoth/Saklas), maybe.

DCH

[neilgodfrey]

A Demiurge does not have to be evil in these systems, impulsive (Sophia) or ignorant (Yaldabaoth/Saklas), maybe.

DCH

Indeed. We don't have to blame Plato for everything. His Demiurge was a good god who created a good cosmos. But he delegated to his lesser gods the task of creating humans. So the Demiurge could "plausibly deny" responsibility for the corruption that followed.

[neilgodfrey]

If Plato's Demiurge was the perfect and good god, immaterial and beyond space and time, (actually the god we conceptualize in the word God), then whence the gnostic idea of the demiurge being a lesser divinity, one removed from the Most High?

The answer, I think, is found in Russell Gmirkin's study in Plato's Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts in which he finds evidence of the influence of Plato in the Genesis 1 Creation narrative. What happened was that particularly militant Yahwists, in writing Exodus, conflated the Elohim of Genesis 1 with Yahweh, the terrestrial god who was jealous, genocidal, and anything but "perfectly good". How that amalgam of the two gods happened is the focus of his last chapter that I recently outlined at https://vridar.org/2023/02/20/where-did ... critias-8/

Once Yahweh was equated with the Creator God of Genesis 1, the original Elohim in Genesis 1 was lost from view. The creator of the Bible became identified with Yahweh and so made room, for gnostic type interpreters, for the future demotion of that Creator from being the Most High to the Second Most High.

So don't blame Plato. Blame Yahweh.

[MrMacSon]

If Plato's Demiurge was the perfect and good god, immaterial and beyond space and time

But Plato's Demiurge, iiuc, wasn't Plato's perfect and good god. Plato's Τὸ Ἕν / 'To Hen’ ( aka The Monad / The One ) was.

Plato's Demiurge was "a lesser divinity, one removed from the Most High".

The third level of Plato's hierarchy were the Daimones. And, iiuc, these were often seen as regional.

So, I've seen it said, Yahweh (and perhaps Elohim) would have been a Daimone. Which, when Judaism was developed, got elevated ...

[o]nce Yahweh was equated with the Creator God of Genesis 1 (the original Elohim in Genesis 1 was lost from view). The Creator of the [Hebrew] Bible became identified with Yahweh

I'm not sure that that

made room, for gnostic type interpreters, for the future demotion of that Creator from being the Most High to the Second Most High.

There would have been a range of perceptions of Plato's hierarchy, the Jewish hierarchy, and other hierarchies.

IIUC, Marcion (+/- others) decided the evil Yahweh could not have been the High [Creator] God, so introduced his (their) Father Creator and his (their) Jesus into his (their) Christian hierarchy.


None of that precludes all or even a lot of what Neil has said. Though I would modify the following thus:

The answer, I think, is found in Russell Gmirkin's study in Plato's Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts in which he finds evidence of the influence of Plato in the Genesis 1 Creation narrative. What happened was that particularly militant Yahwists, in writing Exodus, conflated the Elohim of Genesis 1 with Yahweh [a] god who was jealous, genocidal, and anything but "perfectly good". How that amalgam of the two gods happened is the focus of his last chapter that I recently outlined at https://vridar.org/2023/02/20/where-did ... critias-8/

Once Yahweh was equated with the Creator God of Genesis 1, the original Elohim in Genesis 1 was lost from view. The creator of the [Hebrew] Bible became identified with Yahweh ...

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* See M David Litwa's The Evil Creator: there were a lot of things going on with regard to perception of Yahweh within Greco-Egyptian cultures, within Greco-Roman cultures, and within emerging Christian cultures eg.

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