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| The Adventures of Achamoth Outside the Pleroma. The Mission of Christ in Pursuit of Her. Her Longing for Christ. Horos' Hostility to Her. Her Continued Suffering.
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Chapter
XIV.—The Adventures of Achamoth Outside the Pleroma. The Mission
of Christ in Pursuit of Her. Her Longing for Christ. Horos’
Hostility to Her. Her Continued Suffering.
For Enthymesis, or rather Achamoth—because
by this inexplicable6766
name alone must she
be henceforth designated—when in company with the vicious
Passion, her inseparable companion, she was expelled to places devoid
of that light which is the substance of the Pleroma, even to the void
and empty region of Epicurus, she becomes wretched also because of the
place of her banishment. She is indeed without either form or feature,
even an untimely and abortive production. Whilst she is in this
plight,6767
| 6767 Tertullian’s
“Dum ita rerum habet” is a copy of the Greek οὕτω τῶν
πραγμάτων
ἔχουσο. | Christ descends
from6768
the heights, conducted by Horos, in order to
impart form to the abortion, out of his own energies, the form of
substance only, but not of knowledge also. Still she is left with some
property. She has restored to her the odour of immortality, in order
that she might, under its influence, be overcome with the desire of
better things than belonged to her present plight.6769
Having accomplished His merciful mission,
not without the assistance of the Holy Spirit, Christ returns to the
Pleroma. It is usual out of an abundance of things6770
| 6770 Rerum ex
liberalitatibus. | for names to be also forthcoming.
Enthymesis came from action;6771
| 6771 De actia fuit. [See
Vol. I. pp. 320, 321.] | whence Achamoth
came is still a question; Sophia emanates from the Father, the Holy
Spirit from an angel. She entertains a regret for Christ immediately
after she had discovered her desertion by him. Therefore she hurried
forth herself, in quest of the light of Him Whom she did not at all
discover, as He operated in an invisible manner; for how else would she
make search for His light, which was as unknown to her as He was
Himself? Try, however, she did, and perhaps would have found Him, had
not the self-same Horos, who had met her mother so opportunely, fallen
in with the daughter quite as unseasonably, so as to exclaim at her
Iao! just as we hear the cry
“Porro Quirites” (“Out of the way,
Romans!”), or else Fidem Cæsaris!”
(“By the faith of Cæsar!”), whence (as they will have
it) the name Iao comes to be found is the
Scriptures.6772
| 6772 It is not necessary,
with Rigaltius, to make a difficulty about this, when we remember that
Tertullian only refers to a silly conceit of the Valentinians touching
the origin of the sacred name. | Being thus hindered
from proceeding further, and being unable to surmount6773
| 6773 Or does
“nec habens supervolare crucem”
mean “being unable to elude the cross?” As if
Tertullian meant, in his raillery, to say, that Achamoth had not the
skill of the player who played the part of Laureolus. Although so often
suspended on the gibbet, he had of course as often escaped the real
penalty. | the Cross, that is to say, Horos, because
she had not yet practised herself in the part of Catullus’
Laureolus,6774
| 6774 A notorious robber,
the hero of a play by Lutatius Catullus, who is said to have been
crucified. | and given
over, as it were, to that passion of hers in a manifold and complicated
mesh, she began to be afflicted with every impulse thereof, with
sorrow,—because she had not accomplished her enterprise, with
fear,—lest she should lose her life, even as she had lost the
light, with consternation, and then with ignorance. But not as
her mother (did she suffer this), for she was an Æon. Hers,
however, was a worse suffering, considering her condition; for another
tide of emotion still overwhelmed her, even of conversion to the
Christ, by Whom she had been restored to life, and had been
directed6775
to this very
conversion.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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