Page 50 - Gnosis volume 2

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The problem was reduced, thus, to the personal fate of the individual. On another hand,

the imperfection of the phenomenal world was naively explained away as a heavenly

catastrophe, brought about either by God's error or His cruelty. We have mentioned this
conceptional error already in the first volume of Gnosis. One can recognize here the

influence of hellenistic thought which, ever since Homer, attributed human motives to

the gods. This tendency was not foreign to the Jewish spirit either, which went so far as
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to say that God repented having created man , and attributed to Him the feelings of
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fear and vengeance .
The more important the question under consideration, the more it should be studied

under all its aspects: otherwise a synthesis, which is the only way to resolve it, is

impossible. For the value of isolated elements of an analysis is always debatable. The
fact that they are arbitrarily separated from other elements which are absolutely

necessary to obtain a clear picture, renders the entire representation fallacious.

The problem of man outstrips immeasurably his immediate interests down here, and
even beyond. In order to understand this problem, one has to go back to the source of

all Tradition – to the divine Wisdom, mysterious and hidden, which God ordained before

the world unto our glory, wisdom which, says St. Paul, none of the Archons of this world
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knew . It is the only way to avoid falling into heresy when dealing with this subject.

30
Genesis, VI, 6.
31 Genesis, III, 22.
32
Nahum, I, 2.
33
I Corinthians, II, 6-8.