Aeonic Emanations: From the Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library, Part 2 of 2

“The Father brought forth everything, like a little child, like a drop from a spring, like a blossom from a vine, like a flower, in need of gaining nourishment and growth and faultlessness. He withheld it for a time. He Who had thought of it from the very beginning, possessed it from the very beginning, and saw it, but He closed it off to those who first came from Him. (He did this,) not out of envy, but in order that the aeons might not receive their faultlessness from the very beginning and might not exalt themselves to the Glory, to the Father, and might think that from themselves alone they have this. But just as He wished to grant that they might come into being, so too, in order that they might come into being as faultless ones, when He wished, He gave them the perfect idea of beneficence toward them. The One Whom He raised up as a Light for those who came from Himself, the One from Whom they take their name, He is the Son, Who is full, complete and faultless. He brought Him forth mingled with what came forth from Him, partaking of the Totality.”

“Therefore, the Greatness of His Loftiness consists in the fact that they speak about Him and see Him. He becomes manifest, so that He may be hymned because of the abundance of His Sweetness. And just as the admirations of the silences are eternal generations and they are mental offspring, so too the dispositions of the Word are spiritual emanations. Both of them admirations and dispositions, since they belong to a Word, are seeds and thoughts of His Offspring, and roots which live forever, appearing to be offspring which have come forth from themselves, being minds and spiritual offspring to the Glory of the Father.”

“The Father, in accordance with His exalted position over the Totalities, being an unknown and incomprehensible One, has such Greatness and Magnitude, that, if He had revealed Himself suddenly, quickly, to all the exalted ones among the aeons who had come forth from Him, they would have perished. Therefore, He withheld His power and His inexhaustibility within that in which He is. He is ineffable and unnameable and exalted above every mind and every word. This One, however, stretched Himself out and it was that which He stretched out which gave a foundation and a space and a dwelling place for the Universe, a Name of His being ‘the One through Whom,’ since He is Father of the All, out of His Laboring for those who exist, having sown into their thought that they might seek after Him.”