Free Will Is Essential 2024

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. Last week we finished up our four-part series on David Bentley Hart's book, That All Shall Be Saved, and I skipped over the Free Will chapter because we just ran out of time. But this week I'm going to re-record an episode that was first aired on April 29th of 2023, and this time I'll include the transcript with the audio post so that you can read it as well as hear it. This week's episode is called Free Will is Essential, and essential means necessary. It's baseline, it's foundational, it's a must-have. All of us Second-Order Powers have free will. The Aeons have free will. That's how it is that Logos was able to choose to fall. We're not helpless puppets. We do become helpless puppets when we sign up with the Demiurge, rather than with the Father in the Fullness. The Fullness and the Father allow us free will because that is essential to God's nature, and we are direct emanations as fractals of that nature. We are made in the image of God. The Demiurge does not want you to have free will. That's what causes all the troubles with the Demiurge and these pesky humans in particular, because we have free will, and the Demiurge hates free will. The original economy was that of the hierarchy of the Fullness, where every Aeon knew its place, position, and duties for cooperative overall functioning. Each of the Fullnesses lived in a state of joy, benevolence, and harmonious agreement, giving glory to the Father and never to each other or to themselves, according to the Tripartite Tractate in verse 86. The Second Order of Powers was created in order to bring life and love into what is called the new economy or new organization. This new economy was in the mind of the Father all along, even before the Fall. It is a unique feature of the Tripartite Tractate that the book does not describe the Fall in terms of sin and blame, but rather as an event that was destined to come about in order to usher in a new economy that differed from the ethereal pleroma where the Aeons dwell. The Tripartite Tractate says, The free will which was begotten with the totalities was a cause for this one, such as to make him do what he desired, with no one to restrain him. The intent then of the Logos, who is this one, was good, and before he begot anything else for the glory of the will and in agreement with the totalities, he acted magnanimously from an abundant love and set out toward that which surrounds the perfect glory. Thomason translates the word magnanimously in the scripture above as presumptuously. Yet the intention of the Logos was good. The Tripartite Tractate is unique in its gentle assessment of not blaming Logos for the Fall. The Tripartite Tractate says that this act of disobedience by Logos was within the will of the Father after all, and it was necessary to usher in an organization that needed to come forth for the revelation of the Fullness. The Tripartite Tractate says, For it was not without the will of the Father that the Logos was produced, which is to say, not without the will will he go forth. But he, the Father, had brought him forth for those about whom he knew that it was fitting that they should come into being. The Father knew what would happen, and the Father found it fitting that Logos should be conceived as he was and take the action that he did. The Father knew that this was the path that would lead to material creation, the economy that was to come, “So that the things which have come to be might become an organization which would come into being.” After the Fall, the Self of Logos rejoined his fellow Aeons above in the Fullness. Logos and the Totalities joined together to create a new fruit from their union that would bring life, love, and consciousness to the Deficiency below. Logos and the Fullness brought forth these little ones of the Second Order out of his newly restored pleroma, so that they could receive the life-giving light born from the thought of brotherly love of the preexistent Fullness, in contrast to the phantoms that had arisen from the Fall. These powers of remembrance resembled the Aeons whose likenesses they were, and they were in harmony with themselves and with others of their kind. And, as you know by now, the Second Order of Powers manifests as every living thing that is on this planet Earth, from the cells on up through the humans. The new economy of the Second Order of Powers reflected a different method of doing business from their images in the Fullness. In the new economy, the powers vied for position and authority within a limited space known as the Boundary. Here, those of the imitation who continued to wholeheartedly embrace the shadows left over from the Fall actively fought against those of the remembrance. For their part, those of the remembrance forgot all about the values of the Fullness due to the law of mutual combat that they were enacting against the Deficiency. The new Powers—that's us—acquired the same lust for domination and all of the other passions of this sort, and wound up acting against itself on account of its rage. It was during this endless war that a myriad of various kinds of matter and all sorts of powers were mixed with one another, and in great number. Clearly another solution was required if peace were to enter the Deficiency. The endless war reflects our battle with the hylic or material nature of our universe and our material bodies. The life within us does battle against the non-living material created by the Demiurge. As our Self descends into this economy, the first spark unites with the material of the molecules to make up the fertilized egg. And it is the Self, replicating the patterns of the Fullness of God, that directs each organism's growth. It is also the overall plan that directs evolution. As the myriad of various kinds of matter and all sorts of powers become mixed with one another, and in great number, remember that none of this was due to an error of planning. Rather, these steps were all necessary to bring about an economy still to come. For this reason, then, it is wrong to condemn the movement of Logos as the cause that made an ordained economy come to pass. The Aeons of the Fullness took upon themselves the Fall that had happened, as if it were their own, with concern, goodness, and great kindness. For the one who had become deficient could be made perfect in no other way except by the Fullness of the Father. Free will is the core of our being. It was the free will of Logos that caused him to leave the Fullness in the Fall. It was the free will of the restored Logos and the Totalities that created us Second-Order Powers. And it is the free will of the Powers, by way of our aeonic inheritance, that directs our lives here below. It is our own free will that causes us to forget about the Father and the Fullness of God from which we come. It is our own free will that allows us to bow to the rule of the Demiurge and dig our own graves. Because of the nature of free will, we turn to an outside source to assist us in our remembrance and salvation. This Aeon is known as the Christ. And so the Aeons of the Fullness, everyone individually and all of them collectively, gave glory in unison to their Father while praying for help for the Deficiency. They brought forth one that combined every attribute of the All, manifested in the image of the Father of whom they had been thinking while they gave glory and prayed for help. This one was called the Son of His Will and Of the Good Pleasure of the All. It is the knowledge of the Father who wished… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cydropp.substack.com/subscribe