No Incarnation of Divinity and No Resurrection
In one
sense the Gnostics held to a notion of incarnation. They believed that the
sparks, i.e. souls, from the creation of the Aeons became unwillingly trapped
in human flesh. However, the kind of special incarnation that is being
discussed here is the voluntary incarnation of a divine being into human flesh.
Platonism has no need to deny this kind of doctrine since it was outside its
scope of inquiry. Within the religious context of Alexandria, Plotinus came out
against special incarnation, but he also came out against myth, magic,
allegorical hermeneutic, and special creation. Like the Gnostics, Plato held to
the pre-existence of the soul which traveled the universe, and once arriving
upon Earth the soul lost its ability to travel becoming a composition structure
of body and soul (Plato Phaedrus 246c-e). In the Phaedrus, the
soul became less perfect in exchange for stability, but this was not explicitly
because it came in contact with the evil of the material universe. (David Falk,
Ancient Egypt and the Origins of Gnosticism: An Exploration into Egyptian
pre-Socratic Literary Traditions and Philosophy [Lambert Academic
Publishing, 2011], 51)
Plato, Perseus 246 reads thusly:
[246a]
that that which moves itself is nothing else than the soul,—then the soul would
necessarily be ungenerated and immortal. Concerning the immortality of the soul
this is enough; but about its form we must speak in the following manner. To
tell what it really is would be a matter for utterly superhuman and long
discourse, but it is within human power to describe it briefly in a figure; let
us therefore speak in that way. We will liken the soul to the composite nature
of a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the horses and charioteers of
the gods are all good and [246b] of good descent, but those of other races are
mixed; and first the charioteer of the human soul drives a pair, and secondly
one of the horses is noble and of noble breed, but the other quite the opposite
in breed and character. Therefore in our case the driving is necessarily
difficult and troublesome. Now we must try to tell why a living being is called
mortal or immortal. Soul, considered collectively, has the care of all that which
is soulless, and it traverses the whole heaven, appearing sometimes in one form
and sometimes in another; now when it is perfect [246c] and fully winged, it
mounts upward and governs the whole world; but the soul which has lost its
wings is borne along until it gets hold of something solid, when it settles
down, taking upon itself an earthly body, which seems to be self-moving,
because of the power of the soul within it; and the whole, compounded of soul
and body, is called a living being, and is further designated as mortal. It is
not immortal by any reasonable supposition, but we, though we have never seen
[246d] or rightly conceived a god, imagine an immortal being which has both a
soul and a body which are united for all time. Let that, however, and our words
concerning it, be as is pleasing to God; we will now consider the reason why
the soul loses its wings. It is something like this. The natural function of
the wing is to soar upwards and carry that which is heavy up to the place where
dwells the race of the gods. More than any other thing that pertains to the
body [246e] it partakes of the nature of the divine. But the divine is beauty,
wisdom, goodness, and all such qualities; by these then the wings of the soul
are nourished and grow, but by the opposite qualities, such as vileness and
evil, they are wasted away and destroyed. Now the great leader in heaven, Zeus,
driving a winged chariot, goes first, arranging all things and caring for all
things. (source)
