Neoplatonism, a 3rd-century-ce development from Plato’s thought, conceived the cosmos as a harmony with a succession of levels emanating from an ultimate unit. There was in the system, nevertheless, a rupture of the harmony of the cosmos called tolma (“the audacity”), which served as an explanation for the descent of Soul into the material world—and thus constituted a dualistic element.
In gnosticism, a Hellenistic religious movement that entered original Christianity from earlier pagan sources and that viewed matter as evil and spirit as good, dualism manifested itself in a more dramatic way. Gnostic dualism cannot be understood without reference to both Judaism and Christianity, and perhaps even to Zoroastrianism, since gnostic eschatological characteristics were derived from them. Gnosticism was also connected with certain principles of Orphism and Platonism; reflecting the Orphic body-tomb doctrine, for example, gnosticism adopted a firmly antisomatic stance (against the body) and similarly adopted the concept of the divine soul—the pneumatic, or spiritual, soul, as the gnostic would say, of the same substance as the divinity—that is destined to free itself from the tyranny of a material, cosmic demiurge (or subordinate deity). Certain gnostics, moreover, developed a radical anticosmism in which they registered their animosity against the material universe by cursing the stars—which brought them bitter reproach from Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism. As viewed by the gnostic Ophite sect, which venerated the ophis (“snake”) as a symbol of knowledge, the cosmos comprises three parts: the superior world, the inferior world (material and chaotic), and the intermediate world, or logos (“word” or “reason”)—the logos being depicted as a snake that impresses spiritual forms into the chaotic matter. These forms—life, soul, and vital masculine substance—are later freed again, a liberation that completely empties the material world.
Such gnostic views are of two types: Iranian and Syrian-Egyptian. Iranian gnosticism is characterized by an absolute, radical dualism: light and darkness, pneuma (“spirit”) and chaotic formless matter, oppose each other from eternity. Syrian-Egyptian gnosticism is characterized by a dualism that is mitigated (as earlier defined) but also drastic: the inferior world, the chaotic darkness, begins to exist only at a special moment owing to an accident in the divine world, and this accident is usually also identified with an “audacity,” a defect in one of the “aeons,” or divine entities.
Iran
In the Indo-Iranian period (2nd millennium bce) there were already tendencies toward dualistic thought, especially in myths relating to monstrous and demonic beings who still the movement of the waters and thus make cosmic life impossible. In later archaic Indian speculation there was also a tendency to oppose devas (“gods”) to asuras (“demons”). Iranian dualism, however, expressed itself most characteristically in Zoroastrianism. In the Zoroastrian religious texts, the Gāthās, there is an opposition between two spirits, the Beneficent Spirit (Spenta Mainyu) and the Destructive Spirit (Angra Mainyu, or Ahriman). These two spirits are different, irreducible principles; at the beginning they have chosen life and nonlife, respectively. Though the Beneficent Spirit is almost a hypostasis (the substance) of the divinity (Ahura Mazdā, or Ormazd), nothing is said in the Gāthās about the origin of the Destructive Spirit. In any case, the very fact that the Destructive Spirit is said to be the “twin brother” of the Beneficent One does not imply that he is a son of Ahura Mazdā but implies only that the two spirits are “symmetrical”—i.e., equal and contrary as to their respective efficacy and orientation.
Medieval Zoroastrian treatises present radical and eschatological dualisms in their extreme forms. According to the Bundahishn (“Primordial Creation”) text, Ormazd and Ahriman have always existed. Ormazd is represented as lofty, in the light, full of omniscience and goodness, while Ahriman is represented as debased, in darkness, full of aggressiveness and ignorance. Ormazd’s omniscience allows him to conceive and to actualize the Creation and Time, because only these can offer him an arena in which to accost Ahriman and eliminate him.
The medieval Zoroastrian treatises also describe another dual formulation, the two realms of creation and of reality: the mēnōk (“potential, embryonic, initial, heavenly, and invisible”) and the gētīk (“realized, final, worldly, concrete, and visible”). But this opposition does not imply a devaluation of the gētīk, of this world.
Zurvanism, a Zoroastrian heretical movement (c. 3rd/4th century bce–7th century ce), was also dualistic. The very names of Zurvān (Time-Destiny) and the partially synonymous zamān (“time”) already appear in the later Avesta and in medieval treatises, in which Time is the milieu in which Ormazd and Ahriman fight. Also, a myth attributed to Zoroastrian priests by later, non-Iranian sources speaks of Zurvān as the father of Ormazd and Ahriman. At times Zurvanite mythology tends toward formulations of a gnostic and Manichaean type (women paid allegiance, for example, to Ahriman, who has partial authority in the world). Zurvanism also developed theosophic characteristics (involving mystical insights), such as that which discerned the ambivalence of Zurvān—namely, that although an evil element (an evil thought or spiritual corruption) has always existed within him, he nonetheless, so it seems, eliminates the evil by expressing it and is thus worthy to be identified with the supreme divinity (Yazdān).
Among South and East Asian religions
Dualisms have also appeared in various forms in the religions of India and China.
India
Indian dualism has involved the opposition of the One and the many, of reality and appearance. In an ancient Hindu hymn (Rigveda, 10.90), Purusha, the ancient primordial Man and “the Immortal that is in heaven,” is opposed to this world. The three quarters of Purusha that comprise the transcendent world are opposed to the other quarter of him (his limbs) that is this world; i.e., the divine foundation, the divine substance of this world, is made out of his limbs. Early speculation on the identity of the atman (“self”) and brahman (the very core of reality), as opposed to the material and visible world that is subject to maya (“mundane illusion”), has been mentioned above.
The Samkhya school of Indian philosophy presents another, probably later, formulation of dualism based on two eternal and opposed cosmic principles: prakriti (“original matter”) and purusha (“spirit”). Matter is differentiated into three different gunyas (“qualities”) that articulate the three levels of the being and essential nature of humanity in hierarchical connection with each other. Spirit, in itself free, eternal, and infinite, becomes involved in matter by the development of the latter. Salvation coincides with the knowledge of the state of things: “I (spirit) am one thing and It (matter) is another.”
China
Classical Chinese thought—which began with the teaching of the philosopher Confucius (flourished early 5th century bce) and ended with the close of the Warring States period in 221 bce—upheld the notion of a dynamic universe and thus generally eschewed the radical dualism that emerged in India, Iran, and Europe. The notion of yinyang, the opposed polarities of cosmic flux, may at first seem dualistic: yin is associated with passivity and femininity, yang with activity and masculinity. Yet yin and yang are not radically separate; they complement and permeate each other, emerging as two extreme aspects of the constant transformation of the Dao (the “Way” of the universe). Likewise, all of the ten thousand things (a Chinese metaphor for the world) are seen as the cumulative product of the generative forces of heaven and earth (tiandi). Like yin and yang, however, heaven and earth are complementary aspects of a continuous process of creation and not radically separate entities.
A more extreme dualism appeared as Chinese thinkers encountered intellectual systems—most notably, Buddhism—that originated outside China. Even so, the emphasis in Chinese thought remained primarily on harmony, rather than tension, between opposites. Wang Bi (226–249), who developed much of the terminology and many of the concepts of Chinese ontology, distinguished being (you) from nonbeing (wu), the latter of which he equated with the Dao. Rather than nothingness, however, nonbeing is pure being. Wang referred to wu as the “Great Note” that harmonizes the other notes (beings) that constitute the symphony of the universe.
The philosophy of the neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi (1130–1200), which subsequently influenced greater East Asian culture, gave rise to controversies between dualistic interpretations of his system. Zhu stated that the universe and everything in it is a combination of li (principle, but also connoting a concept akin to natural law; literally “pattern”) and qi (life force or matter energy; literally “vital breath”). When principle combines with matter-energy, a thing exists. For Zhu, principle and matter-energy are obverse sides of the same coin: both are generated by the fluctuations of the Great Ultimate (taiji). Yet, while he insisted that principle and matter-energy are never separate, Zhu seemed to give ontological priority to principle, which provides order to dynamic, chaotic matter-energy. The question of the relationship between li and qi generated intense debate among neo-Confucian thinkers not only within China but also in Korea and Japan.
Among religions of the West
Dualisms have appeared in Western religions chiefly under the impact of gnostic influences.
Judaism
No real dualism is found in Judaism, except in the gnostic and theosophic forms of Jewish mysticism known as Kabbala. The presence of a vigorous and universal monotheism implies not only faith in a single creative god but also faith in a god who is the uncontested master of history, and neither Satan nor Belial detracts from this absolute monotheism. Within these limitations, however, a tendency toward dualistic thought can be seen in such late noncanonical texts as the First Book of Enoch (c. 1st century bce), in which certain angels are said to have fallen as a consequence of their wedding with the daughters of human beings. These angels, it is held, taught humans the malevolent arts of magic, seduction, and violence, together with such elements of culture as writing and the use of metals. Though there is no dualism in the proper sense in the Manual of Discipline, one of the Qumrān texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a certain polarity is nonetheless displayed in a passage that asserts of God that
he created man to have dominion over the world and made for him two spirits, so that he may walk by them until the time of his visitation: they are the spirits of truth and error. In the dwelling of light are the origins of the truth, and from a spring of darkness are the origins of error. In the hand of the Prince of Lights is dominion over all the children of righteousness, in the ways of light they walk. And in the hand of the angel of darkness is all dominion over the children of error; and in the ways of darkness they walk.
The context of this passage, however, is completely monotheistic. It expresses a doctrine also found in the Didachē, a Jewish-Christian work of the early 2nd century ce (better known as the Teachings of the Twelve Apostles), that of the two roads on which an individual may walk, the good road and the bad, the road of life and that of death, with God leaving the choice of the road to one’s free will. It also expresses the later rabbinic doctrine of the struggle between the good and evil inclinations (yetzer) within each human. There is also no hint of dualism in the two “sources” mentioned in the Qumrān texts, the bright source and the dark. These are hardly dualistic principles (in the ontological sense of the term) but are simply radical (i.e., original) polarities in spiritual orientation. (Not even the “Angel of Darkness,” mentioned in the same context, is a principle, though he is a person and a power.)
There is thus no true parallelism with the two principles that appear in Iranian Zurvanism. Elements of dualistic thought (in a Platonic sense) are also found in the works of the Jewish Hellenistic philosopher Philo of Alexandria (1st century ce), whose philosophy was dualistic in its doctrines about the universe and humanity but without shaking his basic adherenceto biblical monotheism.
Christianity
In Christianity, dualistic concepts appeared principally in its gnostic developments. But even in the 2nd-century Judaizing sect of the Encratites, which was not really gnostic, there were dualistic aspects that had modified some tendencies of later Judaism. These teachings were also particularly prominent in the writings of the supporters of Docetism (the doctrine that Christ, being divine, did not suffer and die; 2nd century), who held that matter is essentially evil and that the soul is a preexistent substance. According to the Encratites, the preexistent soul, once it “gets effeminated by concupiscence,” drops into the carnal world. Since generation perpetuates the soul’s state of decay in this bodily world, the Encratites condemned all sexual relations.
The dualism of Marcion (a 2nd-century semi-gnostic Christian heretic) was really a ditheism (a system positing two gods), though common gnostic presuppositions—such as antisomatism and anticosmism, the condemnation of the body and the material universe—were also present in his thought. For Marcion, the God of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is an inferior and harsh creator demiurge, author of the world and of humankind, who is nonetheless completely distinct from the supreme divinity, who manifested himself in Jesus and is a stranger to this world.
For Saturninus (or Satornil) of Antioch, the founder of a 2nd-century Syrian gnostic group that was commonly connected with the tradition of Simon Magus (reputed leader of an earlier gnostic sect), the God of the Hebrew Bible is only one of the angels, the martial angel of the Judaic nation, although (as with Marcion) he is distinct from the Devil, who is in fact his opponent. According to Saturninus, a primordial accident caused a wave of pneuma (“spirit”) to land in the inferior darkness, where it is said to have remained prisoner and now continues its existence in those who, characterized by the presence in them of this superior element, will later be conducted back to their heavenly origin by Jesus, a messenger coming from above.
Conceptions of a similar type are also found in the “Psalm [or Hymn] of the Naassenes” (Naassene is the Hebrew term for Ophite, mentioned above) and in the “Song of the Pearl” in the gnostic Acts of Thomas; here also occurs the concept of a “saviour to be saved,” who has been sent from above and was made a prisoner by darkness. This basic concept was developed fully only in Manichaeism.
Among religions of modern indigenous peoples
Religious dualism also manifests itself among nonliterate peoples, especially in the concept of a “second” figure, an ambivalent demiurge-trickster who can be both a collaborator and a rival of the supreme being and independent of the latter in origin. Such tricksters include the Coyote (in North American Indian mythology), the Raven (among Paleo-Siberians), and the Crow (among the Southeast Australian tribes). To these animal figures are attributed the origin of such negative aspects of life as death and illness. But they are also credited as benefactors—e.g., in creating utilities in the cosmos and in the invention of fire. The demiurge-trickster is typically ambivalent, tremendously frightful and efficacious, but also frequently limited in power. For example, such tricksters are often incapable of animating the beings that they have molded and must therefore request the help of the supreme being in bringing them to life. They are said to be selfish, lonely, and unhappy, and because of these qualities they are moved, despite their arrogance, to attempt to relate themselves to or unite with the supreme being.
A typically dual composition (involving the coexistence and cooperation of two elements), or even a dualistic opposition (as two opposed elements that function as principles in respect to the actual creation), is found in the Dogon (western Sudanese) notions about Nommo and Yurugu, already mentioned. A series of words refers to both principles; i.e., a series of realities and categories can be named that constitute the world in its functional variety, which transcend the simple good-evil opposition, and according to which both Nommo and Yurugu are dualistic “principles” essential to the actual dynamics of the world.
Other dualistic concepts among indigenous peoples posit opposite the supreme being a violent and death-bearing second figure of a demiurgical type. The character of Erlik in the mythologies of the Central Asiatic Turks (e.g., among the Altaics) is typical.
Erlik is a king of the dead and master of death who assumes the role of a fraudulent and unfortunate collaborator with the supreme being. In stories about the origin of the universe, he appears as an aquatic bird in charge (under the supreme being) of fishing a little earth from the bottom of the primordial sea—a theme also well-known in eastern European folklore. In other myths, a similar being spits on human beings at the time they are created by God or breathes his bad spirit into man or woman. Elsewhere there is depicted an opposition of twin brothers, of whom one is the demiurge-creator of good things and the other of death; both, however, are the sons of a mother goddess of heavenly origin. This pattern is exemplified in the Iroquoian myth of Yoskeha and Tawiskaron—a myth curiously reminiscent of certain aspects of the Iranian Zurvanite mythology.
Other ethnological polarities, or pairs of opposites (eastern-western, celestial-terrestrial, solar-lunar divinities, right-left, full moon–dark moon, and so on) are dualistic in the sense of contrasting principles or creating agencies.
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