The library · Edition and sources
The Gospel of Truth
Mark M. Mattison, public-domain web translation · Translated text
Reading appearance
Accessibility options
Saved in this browser and shared between texts. Labels and line patterns remain in every theme.
About this reading layout
Source wording, punctuation, paragraph boundaries and supplied line breaks are retained. Long prose also has editorial reading breaks at sentence boundaries. Substantial passages already enclosed in double quotation marks are set apart; this does not identify their source or establish a connection.
These added breaks are reading aids, not claims about the original manuscript’s layout. Poetry is lineated only where the downloaded text supplies line breaks. References and edition notes remain with their text.
Coming into Being
Every realm emanates from him. They know they’ve come out from him like children who are from someone who’s completely mature. They knew they hadn’t yet received form or a name. The Father gives birth to each one. Then, when they receive form from his knowledge, although they’re really within him, they don’t know him. But the Father is complete, knowing every realm that’s within him. If he wants to, he reveals whomever he wants, giving them a form and a name. He gives a name to them, and causes those to come into being who, before they come into being, are ignorant of the one who made them.
I’m not saying, then, that those who haven’t yet come into being are nothing, but they exist 28 in the one who will want them to come into being when he wants, like a later time. Before everything is revealed, he knows what he’ll produce. But the fruit which he hasn’t yet revealed doesn’t yet know anything, nor does it do anything. In addition, every realm which is itself in the Father is from the one who exists, who establishes them from what doesn’t exist. For those who have no root have no fruit either. They think to themselves, “I’ve come into being,” but they’ll dissolve by themselves. Because of this, those who didn’t exist at all won’t exist.