Sophia ( "Wisdom", "the Sophia") is a figure, along with Knowledge ( gnosis, ), among many of the early Christian knowledge theologies grouped by the heresiologist Irenaeus as (), "knowing". Gnosticism is a 17th-century term expanding the definition of Irenaeus' groups to include other syncretic faiths and the Greco-Roman mysteries.
In Gnosticism, Sophia is a feminine figure, analogous to the human soul but also simultaneously one of the feminine aspects of God. Gnostics held that she was the syzygy, or female twin, of Jesus, i.e. the Bride of Christ, and the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. She is occasionally referred to by the term (, ) and as (). In the Nag Hammadi texts, Sophia is the highest aeon or anthropic emanation of the godhead.
Gnostic mythos Many Gnostic systems, particularly those of the Syrian or Egyptian, teach that the universe began with an original, unknowable God referred to as the Parent, Bythos ('Depth') or the Monad. From this primordial source, a series of emanations, or Aeons, emerged. These Aeons, which often appear in male-female pairs called syzygies, collectively form the Pleroma, or 'Fullness' of the divine. This concept emphasizes that the Aeons are not separate from the divine but are symbolic representations of its attributes.
The transition from the immaterial to the material, from the noumenal to the sensible, is brought about by a flaw, or a passion, or a sin, in one of the Aeons. In most versions of the Gnostic mythos, it is Sophia who brings about this instability in the Pleroma, in turn bringing about the creation of materiality. According to some Gnostic texts, the crisis occurs as a result of Sophia trying to emanate without her syzygy or, in another tradition, because she tries to breach the barrier between herself and the unknowable Bythos.
After cataclysmically falling from the Pleroma, Sophia's fear and anguish of losing her life (just as she lost the light of the One) causes confusion and longing to return to it. Because of these longings, matter (Greek: , ) and soul (Greek: , ) accidentally come into existence. The creation of the Demiurge, also known as Yaldabaoth, is also a mistake made during this exile. The Demiurge proceeds to create the physical world in which we live, ignorant of Sophia, who nevertheless manages to infuse some spiritual spark or pneuma into his creation.
In the Pistis Sophia, Christ is sent to bring Sophia back into the Pleroma. Christ enables her to again see the light, bringing her knowledge of the spirit (Greek: , ). Christ is 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. 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 humans as the divine spark.
Book of Proverbs Jewish Alexandrine religious philosophy was much occupied with the concept of the Divine Sophia, as the revelation of God's inward thought, and assigned to her not only the formation and ordering of the natural universe (comp. Clem. Hom. xvi. 12) but also the communication of knowledge to mankind. In Wisdom is described as God's Counsellor and Workmistress (Master-workman, R.V.), who dwelt beside Him before the Creation of the world and sported continually before Him.
Following the description given in the Book of Proverbs, a dwelling place was assigned by the Gnostics to the Sophia and her relation to the upper world was defined as well as to the seven planetary powers placed under her. The seven spheres or heavens were for the ancients the highest regions of the created universe. They were thought of as seven circles rising one above another and dominated by the seven Archons, the Hebdomad.
Above the highest of the regions and vaulting over it, was the Ogdoad, the sphere of immutability, which was nigh to the spiritual world (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, iv. 25, 161; comp. vi. 16, 138 sqq.). In , "Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn out its seven pillars." These were interpreted as the planetary heavens; the habitation of the Sophia herself was placed above the Hebdomad in the Ogdoad (Excerpt. ex Theodot. 8, 47). It is said further of the same divine wisdom (), "She takes her stand at the topmost heights, by the wayside, at the crossroads." According to the Gnostic interpretation, the Sophia thus has her dwelling place above the created universe between the upper and lower world, between the Pleroma and the . She sits at "the gates of the mighty", i.e. at the approaches to the realms of the seven Archons, and at the "entrances" to the upper realm of light, her praise is sung. The Sophia is therefore the highest ruler over the visible universe and at the same time the mediator between the upper and the lower realms. She shapes this mundane universe after the heavenly prototypes, and forms the seven star-circles with their Archons under whose dominion are placed, according to the astrological conceptions of antiquity, the fates of all earthly things, and more especially of man. She is "the mother" or "the mother of the living". (Epiph. Haer. 26, 10). As coming from above, she is herself of pneumatic essence, the (Epiph. 40, 2) or the (Epiph. 39, 2) from which all pneumatic souls draw their origin.
Descent In reconciling the doctrine of the pneumatic nature of the Sophia with the dwelling-place assigned her, according to the Proverbs, in the kingdom of the midst, and so outside the upper realm of light, there was envisioned a descent of Sophia from her heavenly home, the Pleroma, into the void () beneath it. The concept was that of a seizure or robbery of light, or of an outburst and diffusion of light-dew into the , occasioned by a vivifying movement in the upper world. But inasmuch as the light brought down into the darkness of this lower world was thought of and described as involved in suffering, this suffering must be regarded as a punishment. This inference was further aided by the Platonic notion of a spiritual fall.
Syrian Gnosis
The Sophia mythos has in the various Gnostic systems undergone great variety of treatment. The oldest, the Syrian Gnosis, referred to the Sophia, the formation of the lower world and the production of its rulers the Archons; and along with this they also ascribed to her the preservation and propagation of the spiritual seed.
Formation of the lower world
As reported and criticised by Irenaeus in his account of certain Gnostic sects in Against HeresiesAgainst Heresies II.18.2–5, the great Mother-principle of the universe appears as the first woman, the Holy Spirit () moving over the waters, and is also called the mother of all living. The four material elements are inside her—water, earth, air, and life. With her, these combine into two supreme masculine lights, the first and the second man, the Father and the Son, the latter being also designated as the Father's . From their union proceeds the third imperishable light, the third man, Christ. But unable to support the abounding fullness of this light, the mother in giving birth to Christ, suffers a portion of this light to overflow on the left side. While, then, Christ as (He of the right hand) mounts upward with his mother into the imperishable Aeon, that other light which has overflowed on the left hand, sinks down into the lower world, and there produces matter. And this is the Sophia, called also (she of the left hand), and the male-female.
There is here, as yet, no thought of a fall, properly so called, as in the Valentinian system. The power which has thus overflowed leftwards, makes a voluntary descent into the lower waters, confiding in its possession of the spark of true light. It is, moreover, evident that though mythologically distinguished from the (Greek: , ), the Sophia is yet, really nothing else but the light-spark coming from above, entering this lower material world, and becoming here the source of all formation, and of both the higher and the lower life. She swims over the waters, and sets their hitherto immoveable mass in motion, driving them into the abyss, and taking to herself a bodily form from the . She compasses about, and is laden with material every kind of weight and substance, so that, but for the essential spark of light, she would be sunk and lost in the material. Bound to the body which she has assumed and weighed down thereby, she seeks in vain to make her escape from the lower waters, and hasten upwards to rejoin her heavenly mother. Not succeeding in this endeavour, she seeks to preserve, at least, her light-spark from being injured by the lower elements, raises herself by its power to the realm of the upper region, and there spreading herself out she forms out of her own bodily part, the dividing wall of the visible firmament, but still retains the . Finally seized with a longing for the higher light, she finds, at length, in herself, the power to raise herself even above the heaven of her own forming, and to fully lay aside her corporeity. The body thus abandoned is called "Woman from Woman".
Creation and redemption The narrative proceeds to tell of the formation of the seven Archons by Sophia herself, of the creation of man, which "the mother" (i.e. not the first woman, but the Sophia) uses as a means to deprive the Archons of their share of light, of the perpetual conflict on his mother's part with the self-exalting efforts of the Archons, and of her continuous striving to recover again and again the light-spark hidden in human nature, till, at length, Christ comes to her assistance and in answer to her prayers, proceeds to draw all the sparks of light to Himself, unites Himself with the Sophia as the bridegroom with the bride, descends on Jesus who has been prepared, as a pure vessel for His reception, by Sophia, and leaves him again before the crucifixion, ascending with Sophia into the world or Aeon which will never pass away (Irenaeus, i. 30; Epiph. 37, 3, sqq.; Theodoret, h. f. i. 14).
As world-soul In this system the original cosmogonic significance of the Sophia still stands in the foreground. The antithesis of Christus and Sophia, as He of the right () and She of the Left (), as male and female, is but a repetition of the first Cosmogonic Antithesis in another form. The Sophia herself is but a reflex of the "Mother of all living" and is therefore also called "Mother". She is the formatrix of heaven and earth, for as much as mere matter can only receive form through the light which, coming down from above has interpenetrated the dark waters of the ; but she is also at the same time the spiritual principle of life in creation, or, as the world-soul the representative of all that is truly pneumatic in this lower world: her fates and experiences represent typically those of the pneumatic soul which has sunk down into chaos.
Prunikos
In the Gnostic system described by Irenaeus (I. xxi.; see Ophites) the name "Prunikos" (Greek: Προυνικος) several times takes the place of Sophia in the relation of her story. The name Prunikos is also given to Sophia in the account of the kindred Barbeliot system, given in the preceding chapter of Irenaeus. Celsus, who shows that he had met with some Ophite work, exhibits acquaintance with the name Prunikos (Orig. Adv. Cels. vi. 34) a name which Origen recognizes as Valentinian. That this Ophite name had really been adopted by the Valentinians is evidenced by its occurrence in a Valentinian fragment preserved by Epiphanius (Epiph. Haer. xxxi. 5). Epiphanius also introduces Prunikos as a technical word in the system of the Simonians (Epiph. Haer. xxi. 2) of those whom he describes under the head of Nicolaitans (Epiph. Haer. xxv. 3, 4) and of the Ophites (Epiph. Haer. xxxvii. 4, 6).
Etymology