DeConick A.D

255
SPIRITUAL AVATARS
This deceased woman did not have a typical end to her life.
She died, yet she lives, and sees a truly immortal light.
She really is living among the living, and is dead to the dead.
Earth, why are you astonished by this dead body?
Are you terrified?
Here, Sophe’s redemption is highlighted as atypical for the time. She was
not a mortal dying, turning to dust in the earth, but an immortal rising to
the light of the transcendent sphere. She is a god living among the gods,
not a corpse interned among the dead. Such a death must be terrifying
to the cosmic powers, who do not have the authority to detain her in the
shadow world or to force her into another body.
The Terror of Bold Speech
Why were the cosmic powers so afraid of Sophe? There is a letter written
by Valentinus, which provides an answer (Valentinus, frag. 1, in Clement
of Alexandria, Miscellanies 2.36.2–4). In this letter, Valentinus describes
the creation of Adam, when the lords of creation stand around him in awe
of his beauty. They had created Adam in the image of the transcendent
Man, and so he was much more lovely than they. There was something
different about him, too, something powerful that was a part of him but
not part of them.
Unknown to them, Adam had been endowed with a seed of the divine
spirit. Because the spirit is literally truth, this means that Adam had the
ability to speak the truth, what the ancient Greeks called parrhesia (bold
speech) (see Valentinus, frag. 2, in Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies
2.114.3–6; Dunderberg 2008, 46–59). And his truth-telling struck terror
into his creators, who realized that Adam was on to them and their
lies. They did everything they could think of to stop him from spreading
the truth.
Parrhesia was considered a fundamental duty of Greek citizens in the
Athenian democracy. They understood that freedom of speech and frank
criticism is necessary for a democracy to be successful. It is the obligation
of the citizen to maintain the welfare of the city-state by speaking the
truth, even when the majority of the population may not agree. In the