Demiurge

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Demiurge ( ancient Greek δημιουργός dēmi (o) urgós "craftsman", "builder", "creator") is a term used in ancient Greek colloquial language and - with a special meaning - philosophical technical language.

As demiurges (δημιουργοί dēmio (u) rgoí , Attic ) or Damiurgen (δαμιο (υ) ργοί damio (u) rgoí , Dorian ) were called specialized workers in ancient Greece , especially commercial producers. In Attica it was originally a question of tenants ( hectemoroi ) or free, but landless craftsmen, wage workers and traders ( thets ).

Later, in philosophical and theological teachings such as Platonism , the expression was understood figuratively as a divine “maker”, the creative principle “God” as the master builder of the cosmos. Aristotle defines his conception of the demiurge as a motionless mover . Representatives of the Gnosis , a religious movement of the Roman Empire , and Christians outside the large church took up this idea and reinterpreted it in its meaning. While in Plato and Aristotle the demiurge is a sublime being who only wants and produces the best possible, in the Gnostic tradition he appears as a questionable figure who has created a flawed world characterized by diverse evils. At Marcion , as the creator of the world and the steward of matter , he is an authority independent of the “good God” proclaimed by Christ .

In modern religious studies and philosophy history texts, a creator god is called a demiurge who is not identical with the highest principle, but of a lower rank. The term is used to describe religious or philosophical systems in which, in addition to the supreme deity, who is not directly involved in creating the world, there is a creator of the world.

Etymology and general use of terms

The word dēmiourgós (δημιουργός, adjective “active for the general public”, noun “public worker”, “craftsman”, “artist”) consists of the components dēmio- (derived from the adjective dḗmios “concerning the people”, “public”) and - (ϝ) orgós or - (ϝ) ergós (“producer”, “worker”, derived from (ϝ) érgon “work”). Originally meant was a worker for public affairs, a specialized professional who professionally manufactures products or provides services for the public. In this sense Homer counted not only craftsmen but also doctors and heralds among the demiurges. Later artists and some civil servants were also called demiurges.

In the archaic attica , the demiurges allegedly formed in the 6th century BC In addition to the farmers and the nobles, one of the three citizenship classes, but this structure of the citizenship is not considered reliable. Up until the classical era, craftsmen in particular were referred to as demiurges. However, as there was an increasing devaluation of craft professions in the course of time, the term bánausos (" banause "), which was mostly used disparagingly, became common for the craftsman , while members of respected professions continued to be called demiurges.

Ancient philosophy and theology

Socrates and Plato

The concept of the demiurge was unknown to the pre-Socratics , but the use of the term "demiurge" for the creator god was apparently not first introduced by Plato. Plato's contemporary Xenophon reports that Socrates had already compared the creator god with a wise and friendly foreman (demiourgos) .

Plato emphasized the primacy of spirit over matter. He taught that material things are of spiritual origin. They are not the result of a coincidental occurrence, but rather generated and reasonably ordered by a divine authority. The sensually perceptible ephemeral objects and conditions are images of timeless archetypes, the Platonic ideas .

Schematic representation of the Platonic doctrine of ideas . Derived from the Platonic dialogues

In his dialogue Timaeus , Plato describes in mythical language the connection between spiritual ( intelligible ) archetypes and material images. To this end, he introduces the demiurge, a creator god who, like an artist or craftsman, creates and arranges the world in a sensible way. Plato points out that the Demiurge is difficult to find and cannot be announced to all people; he finds it difficult to say anything about the Creator and His work. Since he represents the demiurge as a living being, he also attributes feelings to him; he states that the Creator was delighted with his work.

According to the description in Timaeus, there is only the disordered movement of matter in chaos before creation, which follows "necessity". The demiurge intervenes in this chaos. He does not create from nothing, but orders the already existing matter by shaping it through shape and number and giving things measure. So he brings the world out of chaos, which he shapes into a spherical cosmos, the well-ordered universe. He ensures harmony between the components of the universe and establishes the mathematical laws following the best possible world order. He carries out his creative activity by “looking” at the ideas and conveying something of the nature of the spiritual models to the originally formless matter. He does not accomplish this directly, however, for it he needs the world soul , which he creates as a mediating authority between the purely spiritual world of ideas and the physical world body. The task of the world soul is to enliven and direct the cosmos. A product of the Creator God that emerged a little later is the imperishable part of every individual human soul. Eventually the Demiurge withdraws, although creation is not yet completed; The rest of the creative activity, including the creation of the transitory part of the soul and the human body, he leaves to subordinate gods, who are his creatures.

In the myth of Timaeus , the creation processes are described in such a way that the impression arises that an act of creation is meant that took place at a certain time. Accordingly, the sensually perceptible world would not have existed before and would have to be added to the time-dependent things that have arisen. Since this conception leads to considerable philosophical difficulties within the framework of Platonism, most of the ancient Platonists were of the opinion that Plato described the creation of the world as a temporal process only for the purpose of illustration, in reality he meant a timeless causality and held the cosmos for ever . According to this interpretation, which probably reflects Plato's view correctly, creation has neither a beginning nor an end.

Epoch of the Platonic Academy

In the time between Plato's death (348/347 BC) and the fall of the school he founded, the Platonic Academy , in the early 1st century BC. The concept of the Creator God seems to have played a minor role among the Platonists. Plato's pupil Speusippus believed that the demiurge was identical to the pure intellect ( nous , world reason). This interpretation probably corresponds to Plato's view. Aristotle , a disciple of Plato who later turned away from Platonism, was of a different opinion . He made arguments against the assumption of creation. Aristotle was of the conviction that the hypothesis of a cosmos that had arisen and belonged to the realm of growth and decay was incompatible with the idea of ​​an immutably good demiurge. Both assumptions are erroneous; the world is eternal and there is no demiurge.

In the last phase of the academy's history, the epoch of skepticism ("academic skepticism"), the verifiability of philosophical and theological statements was generally disputed. The academic skeptics also counted the idea of ​​a world creation and divine world control among the unprovable hypotheses, against which they raised weighty objections and to which they as mere conjectures did not grant any cognitive value.

Middle Platonism

In Middle Platonism , which developed after the end of the Academy, a new examination of the theme of creation began. In the context of the Plato interpretation, the Middle Platonists classified the demiurge described in Timaeus in different ways in the systematics of the ontological entities of Platonism. Some of them, including Attikos , identified him with the supreme deity, which they equated with the idea of ​​the good , others considered him to be a subordinate authority. The equation of the demiurge with the supreme deity was problematic if creation was viewed as an activity or endeavor (a kind of "work") (as Plato's metaphor of the craftsman-demiurge suggests), because this was considered unworthy of the supreme being. Philosophical opponents of Platonism like the Epicureans attacked the notion of a world-caring deity.

The opinion that the demiurge was the nous was widespread among the Middle Platonists, but whether the nous is identical with the supreme deity or subordinate to it, opinions differed. Often the tasks of the demiurge were divided between different authorities. Some Middle Platonists were of the opinion that the world soul, which emerged from the nous and was subordinate to it, had a demiurgic function. Another problem was the question of whether the demiurge precedes or follows the archetypal world of ideas (paradigm) in the hierarchical order of being, or is of the same rank. In addition to these questions of classification, the philosophers also discussed the significance of Plato's statement that the Demiurge was not only the creator but also the father of the universe.

The Middle Platonist Numenios of Apamea distinguished between the first, supreme god, who was completely separated from the material cosmos and therefore could not be the world creator, and the second god. He considered the first god to be the demiurge of being (the source of the unchangeable spiritual world), the second to be the demiurge of becoming (the creator of the world of the senses in the sense of Timaeus ). The first God is good in itself, the second, subordinate to him, is good through sharing in the good. The demiurge of becoming brings forth the idea of ​​the cosmos through contemplation of the first god and, according to this idea, shapes the universe by structuring formless matter. In contrast to the first god, he was moved. The demiurge of becoming creates, organizes and directs the sensually perceptible world; when viewed in terms of this function, he appears as the third god. Like Numenios, Harpocration of Argos assumed three gods or three aspects of the deity. He made a distinction between the supreme, inactive God and the demiurge, whom he viewed as double or divided into two aspects.

The Jewish thinker Philon of Alexandria was strongly influenced by Platonism , who adopted the term demiurge and introduced it into the Jewish doctrine of creation. The demiurge also appears in Hermetic literature ; there he is equated with the nous, with Zeus or with the sun.

The famous doctor Galen considered the demiurge to be the author of the body, the nature of which he had optimally determined in every detail. The demiurge, however, is not omnipotent like the God of the Jewish religion, but he can only create what is best possible under the given circumstances; He could not ignore the necessities of nature.

Neoplatonism

In Neoplatonism , the absolutely transcendent and undifferentiated One is the supreme deity; from it emerges the nous, from the nous the world soul, which enlivens the sensually perceptible cosmos. In the Neoplatonic view of the world, no direct connection is possible between the one, the highest entity separated from everything else, and the material world. Only indirectly, through the mediation of the nous and the world soul, is the one cause of the existence of the visible cosmos. Therefore, the supreme deity can in no way be identical with the world-creating demiurge. Only the nous and the world soul come into consideration for the role of the world creator.

Plotinus , the founder of Neoplatonism, assigns the task of the demiurge to both the nous and the world soul. In his doctrine, the nous appears as a demiurge with regard to his creative productivity, that is, as the authority which contains the forms (the Platonic ideas) and communicates them to the area below him. Plotin's 'Demiurge' does not act with will and deliberation, but acts instantaneously in such a way that the world order he has created could not be better if it were the result of deliberation.

The Neo-Platonist Porphyrios , a pupil of Plotinus, opposes the view that the Demiurge works like a craftsman on an already existing matter; He thinks that the Creator creates the world including matter from himself through his mere being, he works like a seed of the cosmos. Porphyrios assumes a very close connection between the nous and the world soul, the world soul for him is the unfolded nous; therefore both - understood as a unit - are the demiurge. On the other hand, Iamblichus and Proclus , who sharply separate nous and world soul and assign no demiurgic function to the world soul, turn .

In the later Neo-Platonism, the hierarchically structured world model is more differentiated; the Neoplatonists insert a number of intermediate stages between the one and the lowest realm of the spiritual world. This creates a considerable gap between the One and the Demiurge in some models. With thinkers of the late antique Neoplatonic school of Athens ( Syrianos , Proklos) the demiurge was given a low rank in the spiritual world, since his level was far removed from that of the One. In mythological terminology, Proclus' Demiurge corresponds to the god Zeus. Parents are his mother Rhea and his father Kronos . In Proclus these three gods form a triad (group of three), the lowest of the three gods triads of the spiritual world. Proclus characterizes the area of ​​this triad as "intellectual" (noerós) ; it is the most highly developed triad and thus furthest from unity.

A tendency towards differentiation can also be seen in the fact that the demiurge is given an internal structure in some models. As early as the 3rd century, Amelios Gentilianos , a student of Plotinus, divided the nous, which he equates with the demiurge, into three areas or differentiates between three aspects: the first, second and third intellect. He characterizes the first intellect as wanting, the second as creating through thinking, the third as physically creating. Amelios regards all three as demiurgic, whereby he attributes the creator quality primarily to the third. Also Theodorus of Asine that assigns the demiurges ontological a contained area between the Intellektebene and the soul level, holds it up as a triad.

In the 5th century the Neo-Platonist Hierocles of Alexandria , the demiurge, whom he also calls Zeus and equates with the Pythagorean Tetraktys (tetrad, tetrad), was the creator of the entire visible and invisible world order. Immediately below the demiurge, he classifies the immortal gods who, in his opinion, owe their existence to the demiurge, but were not created in time.

Gnosis and Christianity

Gnosis

During the Roman Empire , writers with a gnostic orientation took up the idea of ​​a god acting as a demiurge, but radically reinterpreted it. They rejected the conviction of the Platonists and the major Christian Church that the Demiurge was exclusively good and only wanted and created the best possible. In their opinion, the imperfection of evil creation forces the conclusion that the Creator himself is imperfect in character. Therefore they differentiated between two gods: an ethically questionable, ignorant or even 'malicious demiurge' as the creator and lord of the existing bad world and an absolutely good god who appears from an earthly point of view as a stranger. The 'alien God' did not want creation and was not involved in it. Therefore he is not responsible for the conditions in the world. For the Gnostics, this model represented the solution to the problem of theodicy .

Characteristic for the various religious teachings and groupings of the 2nd and 3rd centuries and their earlier forerunners was a pessimistic worldview, an unease that humans were being held in an improper, limited place, an earthly limitation of their existence. Or more urgently, the world is in the 'hand of evil'. In contrast, there would be 'the good', the divine source, the heavenly, which in earthly people is expressed in the metaphor of a 'spark of light' and leads to 'awakening' and 'knowledge' (= Gnosis).

According to Kurt Rudolph (1977), the "Gnostic worldview [...] literally calls for revelation that comes from outside the cosmos and that shows the possibility of salvation". The gnostic expected the 'salvation' from a strictly transcendently presented 'supreme god', while the 'god of the world', the demiurge, represented an inferior quantity and, together with his result of the earthly world, was despised by the gnostic as the cause of his existence of suffering .

As rulers of the world, the Gnostics viewed a group of powerful, tyrannical demons whom they called " archons " (rulers). They either considered the whole group to be the creators of the world or assigned this role only to the leader of the archons, whom they then referred to as the demiurge. The souls of men were not an original part of this creation, but came in from outside or were brought in by force. Then they were bandaged with their bodies and so were captured. The demiurge was to blame for this disaster by "throwing" souls into bodies. According to a special Gnostic tradition, the Demiurge later regretted this act and considered it stupid.

According to the Gnostic teachings, the otherworldly “alien” God is normally hidden from the inhabitants of the world, because the archons want to keep the creatures they rule in ignorance so that they do not escape. An escape from the cosmic prison is still possible, because the alien god reveals himself to people through his "call" and shows them a way to leave the cosmos and thus to redemption.

Nevertheless, the Gnostic conception of a duality between a demiurge, 'bad God' and a 'good God' is rejected. For example in the confession of the one who is also (creator) God at the beginning of the Johannine prologue ( Joh 1,3  EU ). On the other hand, the confession of the “Incarnation of the Redeemer” ( Jn 1.14  EU ) or the proclamation of the “Atonement of the Lamb” by John the Baptist ( Jn 1.29  EU ) reject a docetistic position as in many Gnostic systems. In Jn 3 : 13-14 EU, on the other hand, a Gnostic figurehead  is used to state the necessity of suffering and the possibility of knowledge through faith.

Marcionism

The theology of Marcionism , an early Christian doctrine that Marcion founded in the 2nd century, is related in some respects to Gnostic thinking and in some respects even more radical . Marcion found many followers and created a religious community. He identified the 'demiurge' with the God of the Old Testament , who had severe character defects. The 'demiurge' is the creator and ruler of the world, the author of the Old Testament law, but not the Father of Christ . Christ proclaimed another, absolutely good God, about whom the 'demiurge' knew nothing. May this God be perfect and merciful; grace and redemption proceed from him.

Great Church

In the Greek translation of the Tanakh , the Septuagint , the word demiurge and the corresponding verb dēmiourgeín are avoided as designations for the creator or his activity, since the creation of the world should appear as a purely spiritual process and the technical-technical aspect of demiurgic creation should not echo. Here, God is the ruler who, like a royal city-founder, creates something through his mere will and thus differs fundamentally from a manufacturer who produces something demiurgically. In the New Testament, on the other hand, God is referred to as a demiurge in Hebrews . Early church fathers such as Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria endorsed essential aspects of the Platonic concept; they see in God the good demiurge who, as creator, ordered the chaos of matter.

As early as the 2nd century, not only God the Father but also Jesus Christ appeared in patristic literature as a demiurge. In the 3rd century the well-known church writer Origen said that God the Father asked his son to create the world; the term “demiurge” is to be applied to both.

The church father Eusebios of Caesarea , who was strongly influenced by Platonics, also describes both God the Father and Christ as Demiurge, but uses this term mainly for the Son (the Logos ). He considers the Logos to be the cosmic mediator between the distant, absolutely transcendent, unknowable God the Father and the material universe. The logos looks at the father's world of ideas in order to depict it in things and to shape and order matter. The famous theologian Basil of Caesarea deals with the concept of the creative activity of the demiurge presented in the Timaeus and opposes its Neoplatonic interpretation.

Modern reception

In modernity, the philosopher John Stuart Mill in his 1874 posthumously published essay Theism ( " theism ") discusses the possibility that the world was created by a skilled, but not omnipotent demiurge. In doing so, Mill limits his considerations to what, in his opinion, a natural theology can say about it. According to the hypothesis, the demiurge did not create the world from nothing, but by combining already existing materials of a given nature. He did not create the two great elements of the universe, matter and force, but found them. While he was able to create the world, he encountered obstacles that only partially enabled him to achieve his purposes. According to Mills, these obstacles can lie either in the given properties of the material or in the limited capabilities of the demiurge. Mill doubts that, like the ancient Platonists, it can be said that the demiurge's skill had “reached the extreme limit of perfection compatible with the material he used and the forces with which it had to work ".

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Demiurg  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Remarks

  1. ↑ On these meanings see Henry George Liddell , Robert Scott : A Greek-English Lexicon. 9th edition. Oxford 1996, p. 386 (with evidence); Wilhelm Gemoll , Karl Vretska : Greek-German school and manual dictionary. 10th, revised edition. Munich 2012, p. 203 (without documents).
  2. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 17.382-385; 19,135.
  3. ↑ Françoise Bader: Les composés grecs du type de demiourgos. Paris 1965, pp. 133-141; Hjalmar Frisk : Greek etymological dictionary , volume 1. Heidelberg 1960, p. 380; Pierre Chantraine : Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. Histoire des mots. Paris 2009, p. 261 f.
  4. ↑ Xenophon, Memorabilia 1,4,7. For the origin of this use of the term see Willy Theiler : Demiurgos . In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christianentum , Volume 3. Stuttgart 1957, Sp. 694–711, here: Sp. 696 f .; Carl Joachim Classen : Approaches. Contribution to the understanding of early Greek philosophy. Amsterdam 1986, pp. 3-27.
  5. ↑ Walter Mesch: Demiurg provides an overview . In: Christian Schäfer (Ed.): Platon-Lexikon. Darmstadt 2007, pp. 74-76.
  6. ↑ Plato, Timaeus 28c; see. Matthias Baltes: Dianoemata. Stuttgart 1999, p. 323 f.
  7. ↑ Plato, Timaeus 37c; Vinzenz Rüfner : Homo secundus Deus. A study of the history of ideas on human creativity. Philosophisches Jahrbuch 63, 1955, pp. 248–291 [1]
  8. ↑ On the role of the demiurge in Timaeus, see Luc Brisson : Le Même et l'Autre dans la Structure Ontologique du Timée de Platon. 3. Edition. Sankt Augustin 1998, pp. 29-54, 71-106.
  9. ↑ Matthias Baltes: Dianoemata. Stuttgart 1999, pp. 303-325.
  10. ↑ Luc Brisson: Le Même et l'Autre dans la Structure Ontologique du Timée de Platon. 3. Edition. Sankt Augustin 1998, pp. 55-58.
  11. ↑ Hans Krämer : Speusipp . In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy . The Philosophy of Antiquity , Volume 3: Older Academy - Aristotle - Peripatos. 2nd Edition. Basel 2004, pp. 13–31, here: p. 37.
  12. ^ Franco Ferrari: The demythologized demiurge . In: Dietmar Koch u. a. (Ed.): Plato and the Divine. Tübingen 2010, pp. 62–81; Stephen Menn: Plato on God as Nous. Carbondale 1995, pp. 6-13; Eric D. Perl: The Demiurge and the Forms: A Return to the Ancient Interpretation of Plato's Timaeus . In: Ancient Philosophy 18, 1998, pp. 81-92; Jens Halfwassen: The demiurge: his position in the philosophy of Plato and its interpretation in ancient Platonism . In: Ada Neschke-Hentschke : Le Timée de Platon. Contributions to the history of the reception. Louvain 2000, pp. 39-62.
  13. ↑ On Aristotle's argument, see Jaap Mansfeld : Bad World and Demiurge: A 'Gnostic' Motif from Parmenides and Empedocles to Lucretius and Philo . In: Roelof van den Broek, Maarten Jozef Vermaseren (ed.): Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions. Leiden 1981, pp. 261-314, here: pp. 299-303.
  14. ↑ Willy Theiler: Demiurgos . In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christianentum , Volume 3. Stuttgart 1957, Sp. 694–711, here: Sp. 698; see. Woldemar Görler : Carneades. In: Outline of the History of Philosophy. The philosophy of antiquity , Volume 4/2: The Hellenistic philosophy. Basel 1994, pp. 849-897, here: pp. 884-887.
  15. ^ Jan Opsomer: Demiurges in Early Imperial Platonism . In: Rainer Hirsch-Luipold (Ed.): God and the gods at Plutarch. Berlin 2005, pp. 51–99, here: pp. 56–62.
  16. ↑ On the different concepts of the Middle Platonists see Luc Brisson: Le Même et l'Autre dans la Structure Ontologique du Timée de Platon , 3rd edition, Sankt Augustin 1998, pp. 58–64; Jan Opsomer: Demiurges in Early Imperial Platonism . In: Rainer Hirsch-Luipold (Ed.): God and the gods at Plutarch. Berlin 2005, pp. 51-99, here: pp. 51-83, 87-96; Matthias Baltes: On the philosophy of the Platonist Attikos . In: Matthias Baltes: Dianoemata , Stuttgart 1999, pp. 81–111, here: pp. 83–100.
  17. ↑ On the doctrine of the gods of Numenios see Charles H. Kahn: Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. Indianapolis 2001, pp. 122-130; John Peter Kenney: Proschresis Revisited: An Essay in Numenian Theology . In: Robert J. Daly (Ed.): Origeniana Quinta. Leuven 1992, pp. 217-230; Eric Robertson Dodds : Numenios and Ammonios . In: Clemens Zintzen (Ed.): The Middle Platonism. Darmstadt 1981, pp. 495-499; Michael Frede : Numenius . In: Rise and Fall of the Roman World , Vol. II.36.2. Berlin 1987, pp. 1034-1075, here: pp. 1054-1070; Matthias Baltes: Numenios of Apamea and the Platonic Timaeus . In: Matthias Baltes: Dianoemata. Stuttgart 1999, pp. 1–32, here: pp. 19–29.
  18. ^ David T. Runia : Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato. Leiden 1986, pp. 420-426, 438-442, 449-451, 456-458.
  19. ↑ Relevant passages are compiled by Willy Theiler: Demiurgos . In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christianentum , Volume 3. Stuttgart 1957, Sp. 694–711, here: Sp. 700 f.
  20. ^ See also Luc Brisson: Le démiurge du Timée et le créateur de la Genèse . In: Monique Canto-Sperber , Pierre Pellegrin (eds.): Le style de la pensée. Paris 2002, pp. 25-39.
  21. ↑ Charlotte Köckert: Christian cosmology and imperial philosophy. Tübingen 2009, p. 202 f .; Jan Opsomer: A craftsman and his handmaiden. Demiurgy according to Plotinus . In: Thomas Leinkauf, Carlos Steel (ed.): Plato's Timaeus as the basic text of cosmology in late antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Leuven 2005, pp. 67-102.
  22. ↑ Charlotte Köckert: Christian cosmology and imperial philosophy. Tübingen 2009, pp. 201, 204-212; Jan Opsomer: Who in Heaven is the Demiurge? Proclus' exegesis of Plato Tim. 28C3-5 . In: The Ancient World 32, 2001, pp. 52–70, here: pp. 60 f .; Werner Deuse : The demiurge with Porphyrios and Iamblich . In: Clemens Zintzen (ed.): The philosophy of Neo-Platonism. Darmstadt 1977, pp. 238-278, here: pp. 238-260.
  23. ↑ Jan Opsomer: Who in Heaven is the Demiurge? Proclus' exegesis of Plato Tim. 28C3-5 . In: The Ancient World 32, 2001, pp. 52-70, here: pp. 52-57; Willy Theiler: Demiurgos . In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christianentum , Volume 3, Stuttgart 1957, Sp. 694–711, here: Sp. 703 f .; Ilsetraut Hadot: Is the teaching of Hierocles Christian influenced by the demiurge? In: Adolf Martin Ritter (Ed.): Kerygma and Logos. Göttingen 1979, pp. 258-271, here: pp. 267-270.
  24. ^ John Dillon: The Role of the Demiurge in the Platonic Theology . In: Alain-Philippe Segonds, Carlos Steel (ed.): Proclus et la Théologie Platonicienne. Leuven / Paris 2000, pp. 339-349, here: pp. 343-349.
  25. ↑ On Amelios' doctrine of Nous see Massimo Massagli: Amelio neoplatonico e la metafisica del Nous . In: Rivista di Filosofia neo-scolastica 74, 1982, pp. 225-243; Ruth Majercik: The Chaldean Oracles and the School of Plotinus . In: The Ancient World 29, 1998, pp. 91-105, here: pp. 100-102; Kevin Corrigan: Amelius, Plotinus and Porphyry on Being, Intellect and the One. A reappraisal . In: Rise and Fall of the Roman World, Vol. II.36.2, Berlin 1987, pp. 975–993, here: pp. 975–984.
  26. ↑ On the doctrine of the demiurge in Hierocles see Ilsetraut Hadot: Le démiurge comme principe dérivé dans le système ontologique d'Hieroclès . In: Revue des Études grecques 103, 1990, pp. 241-262; Ilsetraut Hadot: Is the teaching of Hierocles Christian influenced by the demiurge? In: Adolf Martin Ritter (Ed.): Kerygma and Logos. Göttingen 1979, pp. 258-271.
  27. ↑ On the Gnostic conception of the Demiurge and its origin, see Jarl Fossum: The Origin of the Gnostic Concept of the Demiurge . In: Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 61, 1985, pp. 142-152; Howard M. Jackson: The Lion Becomes Man. The Gnostic Leontomorphic Creator and the Platonic Tradition. Atlanta 1985, pp. 13 ff .; Gilles Quispel: The Origins of the Gnostic Demiurge . In: Patrick Granfield, Josef Andreas Jungmann (eds.): Kyriakon , Vol. 1. Münster 1970, pp. 271–276.
  28. ↑ Norbert Brox : Enlightenment and rebirth. Timeliness of Gnosis. Kösel, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-466-20311-2 , p. 16.
  29. ↑ Hyam Maccoby : The Mythmaker. Paul and the Invention of Christianity. Transl. And ed. by Fritz Erik Hoevels. Ahriman-Verlag, Freiburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-89484-605-3 , p. 206.
  30. ↑ Norbert Brox : Enlightenment and rebirth. Timeliness of Gnosis. Kösel, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-466-20311-2 , p. 21.
  31. ↑ Kurt Rudolph: The Gnosis. Nature and history of a religion of late antiquity. Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 1977 (3rd edition, Vandenhoeck 1990), ISBN 3-8252-1577-6 , p. 137 ( digitized [PDF; 13.2 MB]).
  32. ↑ Norbert Brox: Enlightenment and rebirth. Timeliness of Gnosis. Kösel, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-466-20311-2 , p. 35.
  33. ↑ Hans Jonas : Gnosis. The message of the strange god. Frankfurt am Main 1999, pp. 69-73, 90-96.
  34. ↑ Hans Jonas: Gnosis. The message of the strange god. Frankfurt am Main 1999, pp. 69-73, 103-114.
  35. ↑ An overview of Markion's teaching of the two gods is provided by Gerhard May : Markion , Mainz 2005, pp. 3–12. See Willy Theiler: Demiurgos . In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christianentum , Vol. 3. Stuttgart 1957, Col. 694–711, here: Col. 707.
  36. ↑ Werner Foerster: κτίζω. In: Gerhard Kittel (ed.): Theological dictionary to the New Testament , Vol. 3, Stuttgart 1938, pp. 999-1034, here: 1022-1027.
  37. ↑ Hebrews 11:10.
  38. ↑ On the position of Origen see Charlotte Köckert: Christliche Kosmologie und Kaiserzeitliche Philosophie. Tübingen 2009, pp. 244-247.
  39. ↑ Friedo Ricken : The logos doctrine of Eusebios of Caesarea and the Middle Platonism . In: Theologie und Philosophie 42, 1967, pp. 341–358.
  40. ↑ On the conception of Basil, see Charlotte Köckert: Christian cosmology and imperial philosophy. Tübingen 2009, p. 340 f.
  41. ↑ John Stuart Mill: Theism , ed. by Richard Taylor. Indianapolis 1957, pp. 33-45 (citation: p. 36).