English

Alternative forms

• Demiurgos (Grecian)
• Demiurgus (Latinate)

Proper noun

Demiurge

1. (Platonism) The subordinate being that fashions the perceptible world in the light of eternal ideas.
2. (Gnosticism) A prideful, inferior being that creates the material world; frequently identified with the creator God of the Hebrew Bible.
   • 2001, Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The message of the alien God, page 191

     For the rest, we meet in the Demiurge of the Valentinians all the traits of the world-god with which we have by now become familiar and can therefore deal here very briefly

Translations

English

Noun

demiurge ‎(plural demiurges)

1. Any being that made the universe out of primal matter (capitalised as Demiurge when used as a name; however this is subjective and in practice capitalisation is highly inconsistent)
   1. (Plato, Platonic philosophy) The (usually benevolent) being that made the universe out of primal matter using the eternal unchanging ideas

      A demiurge or craftsman god (with-a-lower-case-g) takes pre-existing matter and fashions it in light of the eternal Forms.

      The universe, he proposes, is the product of rational, purposive, and beneficent agency. It is the handiwork of a divine Craftsman (“Demiurge,” dêmiourgos, 28a6), who, imitating an unchanging and eternal model, imposes mathematical order on a preexistent chaos to generate the ordered universe (kosmos).

   2. (Gnosticism) The (usually jealous or outright malevolent) creator god, often identified with Yahweh or Satan, as opposed to the true, good god

      This was the earnest attempt of a Christian to explain in some detail how God might act using natural law, although his critics noted that such a Creator had more in common with a gnostic demiurge than the transcendent God of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

      The Gnostic Demiurge then assumes a surprising likeness to Ahriman, the evil counter-creator of Ormuzd in Mazdean philosophy. The character of the Gnostic Demiurge became still more complicated when in some systems he was identified with Jehovah, the God of the Jews or of the Old Testament, and was brought in opposition to Christ of the New Testament, the Only-Begotten Son of the Supreme and Good God.

2. (Figurative) Something (as an institution, idea, or individual) conceived as an autonomous creative force or decisive power.

   that too was a gain in spiritual balance, provided the machine was not conceived as a demiurge that ruled all other human needs — Lewis Mumford

Translations

Latin

Noun

dēmiūrge

1. vocative singular of dēmiūrgus