# Hans Jonas - Quotes: 25 - Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/hans-jonas ## Books - [The Gnostic Religion](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hans-jonas/the-gnostic-religion.md) — 25 quotes ## Recently added quotes > In the Mandaean literature, it is a standing phrase: life has been thrown into the world, light into darkness, the soul into the body. ...Ejected into the world, life is a kind of trajectory projecting itself forward into the future. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hans-jonas/the-gnostic-religion/in-the-mandaean.md) > The ontological relation of Sophia and is best expressed in the statement "the Sophia is called ',' the Demiurge, 'soul' "... For the rest, we meet in the Demiurge of the Valentinians... traits of the world-god... his ignorance first... which in the first place relates to things above him. These, including his mother, remain entirely unknown to him; but also considering his own fashioning beneath himself he "is unthinking and foolish, and knows not what he does and effects"... which permits his mother to slip her own designs into what he believes he does on his own. On his ignorance then is based the second major trait which he shares with the general gnostic conception of the Demiurge: the conceit and presumption in which he believes himself to be alone and declares himself to be the unique and highest God. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hans-jonas/the-gnostic-religion/the-ontological-relation.md) > The purity of their substance, the perfection of their circular motion, the unimpededness with which in thus moving they follow their own law, the incorruptibility of their being and the immutability of their courses—all these attributes make them in the sense of Greek philosophy "divine"... eminence of being. Among these constancy of being and immortality of life are paramount. Divine, therefore, are the stars, primarily not by their action but by the rank which they occupy in the hierarchy of things according to their immanent properties. And these are just the properties of order, eternity, and harmony which constitute the "cosmos" character of the All in general: this they represent most purely and completely. ...Beyond this ideal significance, their perfection is also the real guarantee of the duration of the whole, i.e., of the eternity of cosmic movement and life. Thus they are the most powerful assurance which the Greek affirmation of the world had been able to conceive. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hans-jonas/the-gnostic-religion/the-purity-of-their.md) > This is how the Stoics viewed the cosmic position of fire: "This warm and fiery essence is so poured out in all nature that in it inheres the power of procreation and the cause of becoming"... to them it is a "rational fire," "the fiery Mind of the universe," the most truly divine element in the cosmos. But what to the Stoics is thus the bearer of cosmic Reason, to the Valentinians is with the same omnipresence in all creation the embodiment of Ignorance. Where Heraclitus speaks of "the everlasting fire," they speak of fire as "death and corruption" in all elements. Yet even they would agree that as far as cosmic "life" so-called and demiurgical "reason" so-called are concerned these are properly symbolized in fire, as indeed in many gnostic systems the is expressly called the god of the fire; but since that kind of "life" and of "reason" are in their nature death and ignorance, the agreement in effect amounts to a subtle caricature of the Heraclitean-Stoic doctrine. We observe here the transition to the conception of fire as the hellish element: as such we shall meet it in the "burning fire of darkness" which the Manichaeans regarded as one of the properties of "Matter." [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hans-jonas/the-gnostic-religion/this-is-how.md) > [C]osmos is said to be the "shape" (schema) of "Deficiency"; Deficiency we could equate with the "Oblivion"... Oblivion in turn is there related to "Error" (planē) and its formation (plasma), this in turn to "Anguish" and "Terror," they again to "Ignorance"—and so the whole chain of apparently psychological and human concepts, through which the mysterious tale moves, has almost by accident its cosmic meaning authenticated... [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hans-jonas/the-gnostic-religion/c-osmos-is-said.md) > Out of the mist of the beginning of our era there looms a pageant of mythical figures whose vast, superhuman contours might people the walls and ceiling of another Sistene Chapel. ...The tale has found no Michelangelo to retell it, no Dante and no Milton. The sterner discipline of biblical creed weathered the storm of those days, and both the Old and New Testament were left to inform the mind and imagination of Western man. Those teachings which, in the feverish hour of transition, challenged, tempted, [and] tried to twist the new faith are forgotten, their written record buried in the tomes of their refuters or in the sands of ancient lands. Our art and literature and much else would be different, had the gnostic message prevailed. ...[W]ithout its voice, its insights, and even its errors, the evidence of humanity is incomplete. ...Its glow throws light upon the beginnings of Christianity, the birth pangs of our world; and the heirs of a decision made long ago will better understand their heritage by knowing what once competed with it for the soul of man. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hans-jonas/the-gnostic-religion/out-of-the.md) > It is no accident that, whereas the libertinistic version of gnostic morality was represented by decidedly esoteric types, our examples for the ascetic version are taken from... exoteric types of Gnosticism. Both Marcion and Mani intended to found a general church... and ... was a community religion of popular complexion. Anarchy is incompatible with institution... and any religious establishment will lead in the direction of discipline. To some extent the church takes over the function of the ; ideally it aspires to being an all-embracing itself, in this world though not of this world, replacing the secular civitas in regulating the lives of its members. This must necessarily give rise to a canon of "virtues"... In short, institutionalized salvation, that is, the very idea of the "church," favors the discipline of ascetic morality over a literal understanding of the ideal of pneumatic freedom, which the anticosmic position... suggests. ...The Christian Gnostics listed by Irenaeus as holding libertine views regarded their "freedom" as an executive privilege never meant for the ordinary members... Generally... except for a brief period of revolutionary extremism, the practical consequences from gnostic views were more often in the direction of asceticism than of libertinism. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hans-jonas/the-gnostic-religion/it-is-no-accident.md) > [T]he individual correlation of elements with passions varies greatly... from the turning back or supplication resulted the "soul" of the world and of the and everything psychical, and from the rest of the passions the material elements: e.g., from the tears the moist substance, from the laughter the luminous, from the grief and shock the more solid elements of the cosmos; or "from shock (terror) and perplexity as the more inarticulate condition, the corporeal elements of the cosmos—namely earth according to the stiffening of terror; then water, according to the movement of fear; air, according to the flight of grief; the fire, however, is inherent in all of them as death and corruption, just as ignorance is hidden in the three passions"... [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hans-jonas/the-gnostic-religion/t-he-individual-correlation.md) > Ptolemy's ... is at pains to make it clear from the outset that the , though certainly not from the perfect Father, is neither from Satan; nor is the world: both are the work of a god of justice. Those who attribute creation to an evil god are as much in error as those who ascribe the Law to the supreme God: the former err because they do not know the god of justice, the latter, because they do not know the Father of All. ...The "God" who ordained this Law, being neither the perfect Father nor the devil, can only be the , the maker of the universe... holding a median rank between them and therefore called the "middle principle." [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hans-jonas/the-gnostic-religion/ptolemys-is-at-pains.md) > What matters for the progress of the myth is the fact common to all versions that the godhead, to meet the aggressor, had to produce a special "creation" representing his own self... in response to the ensuing fate of this divine hypostasis the further multiplication of divine figures out of the supreme source comes about. This is the general gnostic principle of emanation... [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hans-jonas/the-gnostic-religion/what-matters-for.md) > This second edition... had been enlarged by two substantial additions: a new chapter... dealing with the great find at Nag Hamadi in Egypt... and... an essay... "Gnosticism, Nihilism, and Existentialism." [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hans-jonas/the-gnostic-religion/this-second-edition.md) > In the opening lines the is declared to be "a joy for those who have received from the Father of Truth the gift of knowing Him through the power of the Word (Logos) who has come from the ... and for the redemption of those who were in ignorance of the Father"; the name "gospel" (evangelium) itself is then explained as the "the manifestation of hope" (i.e., of the hoped-for). ...evangelium has here the original and literal meaning of "glad tidings" that hold out hope and give assurance of fulfillment of that hope. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hans-jonas/the-gnostic-religion/in-the-opening.md)