The Tripartite Tractate's Psychology — Three Wills
The Tripartite Tractate's analysis of the three 'wills' — the arrogance of the Logos that causes the fall, the will of the Father that permits it, and the will of the Pleroma that redeems it — offers a sophisticated theology of freedom and grace.
The Tripartite Tractate (NHC I, 5) presents one of the most sophisticated Gnostic analyses of freedom, error, and grace. The Logos falls through excessive desire for the Father — but this excessive desire is itself permitted by the Father's will, since the Father wishes to reveal his greatness through the subsequent redemption. Three wills operate in the Logos's fall: the Logos's own arrogance (hubris — overreach, the desire to comprehend the incomprehensible); the Father's permissive will (which allows the fall to occur because it will ultimately serve the revelation of divine grace); and the Pleroma's redemptive will (which resolves to restore the Logos through the mission of the Savior). This analysis avoids both the determinism of a fall that was purely inevitable and the rationalism of a fall that was purely accidental — it operates within a theology of freedom and grace that is as sophisticated as anything in Augustine or Calvin.
The Logos fell not because the Father willed it but because he had received authority to know what he wished — this authority he used wrongly, and fell.
Theologian John Hick's 'Irenaean theodicy' — which proposes that the world's suffering is a necessary condition for genuine human moral and spiritual development, permitted by a God who could create a perfect world but instead creates a challenging one — parallels the Tripartite Tractate's theology of the permitted fall that enables the greater revelation of divine grace.
Nag Hammadi Library