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CANON J. A. MacCCLLOCH, D.D.. 0\ 



her. She strained herself to discover him, but Horos prevented 

 her further progress by uttering the mystic name lao. Xow 

 began her passion, from which she was saved by another Mon, 

 Christ or Soter, sent forth to her aid by the HigherChrist. This 

 Lower Christ afterwards descended on the earthly, phantasmal 

 Christ at His baptism, forsaking Him before the Crucifixion. 

 The phantasmal Christ suffered in order that Achamoth might 

 exhibit through Him a t^-peof the Christ above, \'iz.,of Him who 

 isolated himself from the Pleroma by extending Himself through 

 Stauros for her aid. "For,'' says Irenseus, "they say that all 

 therie transactions were counterparts of what took place above." * 



In this sentence we obtain a clue to the problem of these 

 three personahties, Stauros or Horos, the Higher Christ, and 

 the Lower Christ. If Horos, according to one reading, is the 

 product of all the i5ions, so also is the Lower Christ. All 

 three perform a work of redemption, while their functions 

 and various names have much in common. In the same way 

 the mystic Cross, in a fragment of the Acts of John, has 

 many names. Thus it can hardly be doubted that the -^on 

 Stauros is also the two-fold Christ, while in the system as reported 

 by Epiphanius there is but one Sa^-iour, called Horos, Soter, and 

 Christ. I The three beings are reduphcations of one redeeming 

 spirit, just as those redeemed in the heavenly sphere — the upjoer 

 and the lower Sophia, are duphcates. Ha\ang redeemed them, 

 Stauros or Christ proceeds to redeem men on earth. Horos 

 and Stauros, in Valentinian thought, symboHzed two important 

 elements in the redemptive process, Horos that of separating, 

 i.e., separating all admixture from each form of existence ; 

 Stauros that of supporting, i.e., supporting every existence thus 

 purified. But the two functions were in fact interchangeable. 

 Horos as Stauros supported Sophia ; as Horos he separated her 

 Enthumesis from her. Similarly Christ, while supporting and 

 gi^nng form to Achamoth, separated her passion from her. 



Thus in the Valentinian system, though the idea of emanation 

 as in some sense a " fall,'' followed by some kind of enlightenment, 

 may have been a non-Christian philosophic idea, the terminology 

 apphed to it is derived from the Cross. On the other hand, 

 redemptioii as mere Gnosis or enHghtenment takes the place of 

 the Christian redemption. The Cross had to be accepted, but 

 it became a symbol of, and gave a name to, a Di\'ine Person, who, 



* Irenaeus, i, 1, ff. 



t Epiphanius, Contra Haereses, xxxi. 4. 



