For the world as a whole, vast as it appears to its inhabitants, we have thus the visual image of an enclosed cell—what Marcion contemptuously called haec cellula creatoris—into which or out of which life may move. “To come from outside” and “to get out” are standard phrases in gnostic literature. Thus the Life or the Light “has come into this world,” “has travelled here”; it “departs into the world,” it can stand “at the outer rim of the worlds” and thence, “from without,” “call into” the world. We shall later deal with the religious significance of these expressions: at present we are concerned with the symbolic topology and with the immediate eloquence of the imagery.

The sojourn “in the world” is called “dwelling,” the world itself a “dwelling” or “house,” and in contrast to the bright dwellings, the “dark” or the “base” dwelling, “the mortal house.” The idea of “dwelling” has two aspects: on the one hand it implies a temporary state, something contingent and therefore revocable—a dwelling can be exchanged for another, it can be abandoned and even allowed to go to ruin; on the other hand, it implies the dependence of life on its surroundings—the place where he dwells makes a decisive difference to the dweller and determines his whole condition. He can therefore only change one dwelling for another one, and the extra-mundane existence is also called “dwelling,” this time in the seats of Light and Life, which though infinite have their own order of bounded regions. When Life settles in the world, the temporary belonging thus established may lead to its becoming “a son of the house” and make necessary the reminder, “Thou wert not from here, and thy root was not of the world” (G 379). If the emphasis is on the temporary and transient nature of the worldly sojourn and on the condition of being a stranger, the world is called also the “inn,” in which one “lodges”; and “to keep the inn” is a formula for “to be in the world” or “in the body.” The creatures of this world are the “fellow-dwellers of the inn,” though their relation to it is not that of guests: “Since I was one and kept to myself, I was a stranger to my fellow-dwellers in the inn” (“Hymn of the Pearl” in the Acta Thomae).

The same expressions can refer also to the body, which is eminently the “house” of life and the instrument of the world’s power over the Life that is enclosed in it. More particularly, “tent” and “garment” denote the body as a passing earthly form encasing the soul; these too, however, can also be applied to the world. A garment is donned and doffed and changed, the earthly garment for that of light.

Cut off from its fountainhead, the Life languishes in the bodily garment:

I am a Mana of the great Life. Who has made me live in the Tibil, who has thrown me into the body-stump?

(G 454)

A Mana am I of the great Life. Who has thrown me into the suffering of the worlds, who has transported me to the evil darkness? So long I endured and dwelt in the world, so long I dwelt among the works of my hands.

(G 457 f.)

Grief and woe I suffer in the body-garment into which they transported and cast me. How often must I put it off, how often put it on, must ever and again settle my strife and not behold the Life in its sh’kina.

(G 461)

From all this arises the question addressed to the great Life: “Why hast thou created this world, why hast thou ordered the tribes [of Life] into it out of thy midst?” (G 437). The answer to such questions differs from system to system: the questions themselves are more basic than any particular doctrine and immediately reflect the underlying human condition. [Hans Jonas  ]