DeConick A.D

63
THE GNOSTIC TRUE MAN
tic assertion that the nous (or pneuma, as the Gnostics preferred) is the
uncreated God within the human.
Although Philo thought very highly of the human nous, he is unwilling
to conceive of it as God within, as the Gnostics understood this, and
makes highly detailed arguments to this effect. He walks a razor’s edge
between exaltation of the nous as divine and subordination of it as human.
For Philo, the nous was the piece of the puzzle that helped explain
the oddities of the creation story in the Bible. How can it be, he wondered,
that chapter 1 of Genesis articulates a story about the creation of
humankind in the image of God, while chapter 2 tells about Adam being
fashioned from dust?
Philo solves this problem by arguing that chapter 1 refers to the creation
of a heavenly man, whereas chapter 2 refers to the creation of an earthly
man. The heavenly man is the ideal model for the creation of the earthly
man. He is the spiritual prototype, the archetypal human being molded
in the image of God. Philo calls this figure the Logos (Reason), as well as
Nous (Mind). This figure represents mind or reason on the universal level.
Chapter 2 of Genesis refers to the formation of the earthly man from
clay—Adam, who is endowed with a living breath. The earthly man is the
visible, physical human that is formed with an individual human mind.
The model for this human being is the heavenly man, who is God’s image.
For Philo, then, the individual human mind is the sovereign element
of the soul, the aspect of the human that is most akin to God (Philo, De
opificio mundi 69). It is the common denominator between human and
God, linking them in kind (Kooten 2008, 272–75). The human being is
more like God than any other creature on earth, Philo writes, because
the human possesses a mind, which is “a closer likeness and copy than
anything else on earth of the eternal and blessed Archetype” (Philo, De
decalogo 134).
But how did our minds get into our bodies? What are they made of?
Since Philo assumes that the mind is the closest thing to God we possess,
certainly it could not have been created merely from the clay that was
used to fashion Adam’s body. Philo insists that something has to happen
to the “earthlike” human mind to make it incorruptible (Philo, De opificio
mundi 135, 139–140). But what?
This is where Genesis 2:7 helps him out: “Then the Lord God formed
man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath