Gnosticism

Gnosticism

Gnosticism (Gr. , knowledge) is the name of a syncretistic religion and philosophy which flourished more or less for four centuries alongside Christianity, by which it was considerably influenced, under which it sheltered, by which at last it was overcome. Gnosis is first used in the relevant specific sense in 1Ti 6:20; -science falsely so-called. By Christian writers the word Gnostics was at first applied mainly to one branch: the Ophites or Naasenes (Hippol. Philos. v. 2: Naasenes who call themselves Gnostics; cf. Iren. i. xi. 1; Epiphan. Haer. xxvi.). But already in Irenaeus the term has a wider application to the whole movement. Gnosticism rose to prominence early in the 2nd cent. though it is much older than that, and reached its height before the 3rd century. By the end of the latter century it was waning.

The above description will require justification. What may be termed the popular view of Gnosticism has been to regard it as a growth out of Christianity, an overdone theologizing on the part of Christians, who under foreign influences simply carried to extreme lengths what had been begun by apostles. Meantime it may be said that, in the view of the present writer, such a theory is an entire misconception, and historically untenable. Gnosticism and Christianity are two movements originally quite independent, so much so that it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that, had there been no Christianity, there could still have been Gnosticism, in all essentials the Gnosticism we know.

1. Authorities.-Of the vast literature produced by Gnostics little has survived, and what has survived is almost entirely from the last stages of the movement. We may mention as survivals Pistis Sophia, the Coptic-Gnostic texts of the Codex Brucianus, the two Books of Jeu, and an unnamed third book described by C. Schmidt, Gnost. Schriften in kopt. Sprache aus dem Codex Brucianus (Texte and Untersuchungen viii. [1892]). Then we know something of works deeply tinged with Gnosticism, such as the Acts of Thomas. But our chief sources of knowledge are the writings of those Fathers who oppose Gnosticism, and who often give lengthy quotations from Gnostic works. These fragments have been carefully collected by Hilgenfeld in his Ketzer-geschichte. Most important of the Fathers for our purpose are Irenaeus (adv. Haer. i. 4), Hippolytus (Philosophoumena), Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis, Excerpta ex Theodoto), Tertullian (adv. Marcionem, adv. Hermogenem, adv. Valentinianos), Epiphanius (Panarion).

2. Main features of Gnosticism.-Gnosticism has often been described as a hopelessly tangled mass of unintelligible fantastic speculations, the product of imagination in unrestrained riot, irreducible to order. In its various, and especially its later forms, it shows a wealth of details which are fantastic, but, if we do not lose ourselves in too keen a search for minutiae, we shall find in it an imposing and quite intelligible system. Probably Gnostics themselves regarded as unessential those details which to us seem so fantastic (cf. Rainy, Ancient Catholic Church, p. 119). Gnostic schools generally were at one in holding a system the main features of which were as follows.

(1) A special revelation.-The word has misled many into thinking that Gnostics are essentially those who prize intellectual knowledge as superior to faith. By gnosis, however, we have to understand not knowledge gained by the use of the intellect, but knowledge given in a special revelation. Not greater intellectual power than the Christians possessed, but a fuller and better revelation, was what the Gnostics claimed to have. They took no personal credit for it; it had been handed down to them. Its author was Christ or one of His apostles, or at least one of their friends. In several cases they professed to be able to give the history of its transmission. Thus Basilides claims Glaukias, an interpreter of St. Peter (Strom. vii. 17 [766], 106f.), or Matthias (Hipp. vii. 20). Valentinus claims Theodas, an acquaintance of St. Pauls (Strom. loc. cit.). The Ophites claim Mariamne and James (Hipp. v. 7). Or they appealed to a secret tradition imparted to a few by Jesus Himself (so Irenaeus frequently).

(2) Dualism.-This is the foundation principle of all Gnostic systems, and from it all else follows. In the ancient world we meet two kinds of dualism, one in Greek philosophy, the other in Eastern religion. Greek dualism was between and , between the world of sense-appearance and the realm of real being. The lower was but a shadow of the higher; still it was a copy of it. The contrast was not, to any great extent at least, between the good and the evil, but between the real and the empty, formless, unreal. Eastern dualism, on the other hand, drew a sharp distinction between the world of light and the world of darkness, two eternal antagonistic principles in unceasing conflict. In Gnosticism we have a primarily Eastern dualism combined with the Greek form. The world of goodness and light is the Pleroma (fullness), i.e. the realm of reality in the Greek sense; the kingdom of evil and darkness is the Kenoma (emptiness), the phenomenal world of Greek philosophy. Hence the Gnostic dualism comes to be between God and matter, two eternal entities, and the (matter) is essentially evil.

(3) Demiurge.-As the Gnostic surveyed the world of matter, he found patent traces of law and order ruling it. How did matter, in itself evil and lawless, come to be so orderly? The Gnostic took the view of Nature which J. S. Mill took, and argued that either the Creator was not all-good or He was not all-powerful. The Gnostic reasoned that the world which with all its order is yet so imperfect cannot be the work of God who is wholly good and all-wise; it must be the production of some far inferior being. The world, then, it was taught, was the work of a Demiurge-a being distinct from God. The character of this Demiurge was variously conceived by different schools; some, e.g. Cerinthus, made him a being simply ignorant of the highest God. The tendency became strong, however, to make him hostile to God, an enemy of Light and Truth (the blasphemia Creatoris). The God of the Jews was identified with this Demiurge. As to the origin of the Demiurge, some held him to belong ab initio to the realm of evil. But the characteristic view was that he was a much-removed emanation from the Pleroma. This theory of emanations is a prominent feature of most of the systems, and it is here that Gnosticism ran into those wild fancies that to some make the whole system so phantasmagoric. The view was that from God there emanated a series of beings called aeons, each step in the genealogy meaning a diminution of purity; and the Demiurge was the creation of an aeon far down, indeed the very lowest in the scale. Nature and human nature, then, are productions of a Demiurge either ignorant of, or positively hostile to, the true God. While in a few schools there was only one Demiurge, most spoke of seven as concerned in cosmogony. The origin of this is clear. The seven are the seven astronomical deities of Perso-Babylonian religion. The fusion of Persian and Babylonian views resulted in those deities, originally beneficent, being conceived of as evil (Orig. c. Cels. vi. 22; Zimmern, KAT [Note: AT Zimmern-Wincklers ed. of the preceding (a totally distinct work), 1902-03.] 3 [Note: Zimmern-Wincklers ed. of the preceding (a totally distinct work), 1902-03.] ii. 620ff.).

(4) Redemption.-Christian and Gnostic agree in finding in this world goodness fettered and thwarted by evil. They differ entirely in their conception of the conflict. The familiar Christian view is that into a world of perfect order and goodness a fallen angel brought confusion and evil. The common Gnostic view is that into a world of evil a fallen aeon brought a spark of life and goodness. The fall of this aeon is variously explained in different systems, as due to weakness (the aeon furthest from God was unable to maintain itself in the Pleroma), or to a sinful passion which induced the aeon to plunge into the Kenoma. Howsoever the aeon fell, it is imprisoned in the Kenoma, and longs for emancipation and return to the Pleroma. With this longing the world of aeons sympathizes, and the most perfect aeon becomes a Redeemer. The Saviour descends, and after innumerable sufferings is able to lead back the fallen aeon to the Pleroma, where He unites with her in a spiritual marriage. Redemption is thus primarily a cosmical thing. But in redeeming the fallen aeon from darkness, the Saviour has made possible a redemption of individual souls. To the Gnostic, the initiated, the Saviour imparts clear knowledge of the ideal world to be striven after, and prompts him so to strive. The soul at all points, before and after death, was opposed by hostile spirits, and a great part of Gnostic teaching consisted in instructing the soul as to how those enemies could be over-come. Here comes in the tangle of magico-mystical teaching, so large an element of the later schools. All sorts of rites, baptisms, stigmatizings, sealing, piercing the ears, holy foods and drinks, etc., were enjoined. It was important also to know the names of the spirits, and the words by which they could be mastered. Some systems taught a multitude of such words of power; in other systems one master word was given, e.g. caulacau (Iren. i. xxiv. 5).

(5) Christology.-Gnosticism in union with Christianity identified its Saviour, of course, with Jesus. As to the connexion see below. All Christianized Gnostics held a peculiar Christology. Jesus was a pure Spirit, and it was abhorrent to thought that He should come into close contact with matter, the root of all evil. He had no true body, then, but an appearance which He assumed only to reveal Himself to the sensuous nature of man. Some, like Cerinthus, held that the Saviour united Himself with the man Jesus at the Baptism, and left him again before the Death. Others held that the body was a pure phantom. All agreed that the Divine Saviour was neither born nor capable of death. Such a view of Christs Person is Docetism, the antithesis of Ebionism.

(6) Anthropology.-Man is regarded as a microcosm. His tripartite nature (some had only a bipartism)-spirit, soul, body-reflects God, Demiurge, matter. There are also three classes of mankind-carnal (), psychic (), spiritual (). Heathen are hylic, Jews psychic, and Christians spiritual. But within the Christian religion itself the same three classes are found; the majority are only psychic, the truly spiritual are the Gnostics. They alone are the true Church.

(7) Eschatology.-while Gnostics alone were certain of return to the Kingdom of Light, some at least were disposed to think charitably of the destiny of the psychics, who might attain a measure of felicity. Gnostics denied a resurrection of the body, as we should expect. The whole world of matter was to be at last destroyed by fires springing from its own bosom.

(8) Old Testament.-While there existed a Judaistic Gnosticism, represented by Essenes, Gnostic Ebionites, and Cerinthus (qq.v. [Note: v. qu vide, which see.] ), who with various modifications accepted the OT, the great mass of Gnostics were anti-Judaistic, and rejected the OT. This followed logically from their identification of the God of the Jews with the Demiurge, an ignorant, and in some cases an evil, Being. No doubt they found also some plausible support in Pauline anti-legalism. We can see here what ground some schools could have for making heroes of the characters represented as wicked in the OT. If it was inspired by an ignorant or wicked Being, truth would be found by inverting its estimates.

Such in outline is Gnosticism as a system, though schools varied in detail under every heading (cf. Harnack, Dogmengeschichte; P. Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, Eng. translation , London, 1903-04; Schaff, Church History, Ante-Nicene Christianity).

(9) Gnostic cultus and ethic.-The full development of these (as of the whole system), of course, lies outside our period, but of the latter we see the tendencies in the NT itself; and it is desirable to say something of the former, to make our sketch of the main features of Gnosticism complete.

(a) As to cultus, Gnosticism produced two opposite movements which are comparable with puritanism and ritualism respectively. The abhorrence of matter led some consistently to the utmost simplicity of worship. Some rejected all sacraments and other outward means of grace, and the Prodicians rejected even prayer (Epiphan. Haer. xxvi.; Clem. Alex. Strom. i. 15 [304], vii. 7 [722]). On the other hand, many groups, especially the Marcosians, went to the opposite extreme with a symbolic and mystic pomp in worship. This, while inconsistent with the Gnostic views of matter, is in line with the ideas of magico-mystical salvation indicated above. Sacraments were numerous, rites many and varied. It seems clear that they led the way in introducing features which became characteristic of the Catholic Church. They were distinguished as hymn-writers (Bardesanes, Ophites, Valentinians). The Basilideans seem to have been the first to celebrate the festival of Epiphany. The Simonians and Carpocratians first used images of Christ and others (see Church Histories of Schaff, Kurtz, etc.).

(b) The ethic also took two directions-one towards an unbridled antinomianism, the other towards a gloomy asceticism. Antinomian Gnostics (e.g. Nicolaitans, Ophites) held that sensuality is to be overcome by indulging it to exhaustion, and they practised the foulest debaucheries. The Ascetics (e.g. Saturninus, Tatian) abhorred matter, and strove to avoid all contact with flesh as far as possible. This led them to forbid marriage and indulgence in certain kinds of food. This ethic in both branches is the unfailing outcome of the primary dualism characteristic of Gnosticism. Wherever dualistic notions are influential, we find this twin development of antinomianism and asceticism. In the NT we find both kinds of error referred to (see below). It is to be remembered that neither by itself is sufficient to indicate Gnosticism. There are many sources conceivable, for asceticism especially.

3. Origins.-The older view was that Gnostics are Christian heretics, i.e. errorists within the Church who gradually diverged from normal Christianity, under an impulse to make a philosophy of their religion. To fill up the blanks of the Christian revelation, they adopted heathen (mainly Greek) speculations. Mosheim was among the first to perceive that the roots of what is peculiar in Gnosticism are to be sought in Eastern rather than in Greek speculation. In recent times there has taken place a thorough examination of all Gnostic remains, and knowledge of Eastern speculation has advanced. The result of the two-fold investigation has been to show that Gnosticism is far more closely in affinity with Eastern thought than had been imagined, not only in its deviations from Christianity, but as a whole.

It is well known that the age with which we deal was marked by nothing more strongly than by its syncretism. All the faiths and philosophies of the world met, and became fluid, so to say. Strange combinations resulted, and were dissolved again for lack of something round which they might crystallize. Alike in philosophy and religion, attempts were made to establish by syncretism a universal system out of the confusion. Gnosticism owes its being to that syncretism. In view of the lack of definite information, any attempt to trace or reconstruct its actual history must be made with diffidence. Probably we should regard its primary impulse as philosophical rather than religious. It was an answer to problem, Whence comes evil? (Tert. de Praesc. Haer. vii.; Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius, etc.)v. 27; Epiphan. Haer. xxiv. 6). This led to the other question, What is the origin of the world? Oriental thought identified the two questions. In the origin of the world was involved the existence of evil. A full explanation of the one included an explanation of the other.

In Perso-Babylonian syncretism, we take it, Gnosticism has its primary root, and from that alone many of its features may be plausibly derived. To this is to be added some influence of Judaism. There was a syncretistic Judaism of varied character. We know definitely of three forms: (l) Essenic (see article Essenes); (2) Samaritan, which had been going on for centuries b.c., and from which sprang the system of Simon Magus (with his predecessor Dositheus, and his successor Menander), who is distinguished by the Fathers as the parent of Gnosticism; (3) Alexandrian, represented mainly by Philo, who produced an amalgam of Judaism with Greek philosophy. Probably it would be justifiable to add as a fourth example the Jewish Kabbl. It is a body of writings unfolding a traditional and, partly at least, esoteric doctrine. Its most characteristic doctrines are found also in the two Gnostic leaders, Basilides and Valentinus (A. Franck, La Kabbale, Paris, 1843, p. 350 ff.). It is difficult, however, to prove that the Kabbl is not later than Gnosticism, though there is practical certainty that its history was a long one before it took final shape.

A third and very important element manifest in the fully developed Gnostic systems is Greek philosophy. Genetically, then, Gnosticism may be defined as largely a syncretistic system rising from Perso-Babylonian religion, modified to some extent, difficult to estimate, by Judaism, and in some particulars borrowing from, and as a whole clarified ay contact with, Greek philosophy. These elements might be effective in very varied degrees, and produced varied systems as this or that element predominated. But from those three sources, apart altogether from Christianity, Gnosticism in all essentials may be derived. And all three were in active interaction before the appearance of Christianity. An important consideration follows, viz. that it is absolutely no proof of a late date for any NT writing that it contains allusions to even a comparatively well-developed Gnosticism.

4. Connexion with Christianity.-How is this connexion to be conceived or explained? What did Gnosticism owe to Christianity? Before Christianity we picture Gnosticism as vague, fluid, unstable. When Christianity was thrown into the mass of floating opinions in the ancient world, it afforded the vague Gnostic movements a point round which they could crystallize and attain a measure of permanence and definiteness, so that out of more or less loose speculations systems could be built. Men imbued with Gnostic views (the loose elements of the system described) would easily find points of resemblance between themselves and Christianity. It dealt in a way with the very problems that interested the Gnostic. And in apostolic teaching, especially in St. Paul, there were many points which it took little ingenuity to transform into Gnostic views. The world was to be overcome; it lay in wickedness; the flesh was to be mortified; there was a law in the members warring against the spirit. Divorced from the general teaching of the apostles, this could be claimed as just the Gnostic position. It is, we take it, a misconception to regard such apostolic teaching as the starting-point of Gnosticism. In our view Gnosticism had already a considerable history, and had attained a considerable development as a system, before Christianity appeared. But in such teaching Gnosticism found points of attachment to Christianity, and other points might be adduced. Gnosticism then came to shelter within the Church, never learning her essential spirit, but going on its own evolution. Growing at first from distinct roots of its own, it twined itself about the Church and became a parasite.

It is not easy to answer the question, Is the soteriology of Gnosticism borrowed from Christianity, or is it too an independent thing? Some points are quite plain which may justify our accepting the latter alternative. It is clear that between the Gnostic (Saviour) and the historical Jesus there is no discernible likeness. The redemption of the fallen aeon by the Soter has nothing to do with a historical appearance on earth and in time. The Gnostic redemption-story is a myth, an allegory, not a historical narrative. But under the influence of Christianity, laborious attempts were made to bring this soteriology into union with the Christian account of the historical Jesus. The attempt was not a success. In this patchwork the joins are everywhere still clearly to be recognized (Encyclopaedia Britannica 11 xii. [1910] 157a). Indeed some Gnostics made no secret of the difference between their Soter and the Christ of ordinary Christians-the Soter was for Gnostics alone, Jesus Christ for Psychics (Iren. i. vi. 1). The fact that one school required its members to curse Jesus is not without significance in the same direction. The most probable view is that Gnosticism in all its elements was independent of Christianity, but strove to put over itself a Christian guise, and represent itself as a fuller Christianity. But even the master minds which formulated the great systems of the 2nd cent. were baffled to conceal effectively what could not be hidden, the essentially alien nature and origin of their speculative flights.

5. Allusions in the NT.-In the NT there are several clear indications that the invasion of Christianity by Gnosticism is already in progress.

(1) We note regarding Simon Magus (Act 8:9 f.) only this, that in the narrative we have an allegory of what we conceive the relation of Gnosticism to Christianity to have been. He was attracted to the apostles, was baptized, and still remained in the bond of iniquity. For this alone he may well be named the father of the Gnostics (see article Simon Magus).

(2) There are some passages which seem not only to be designed to state the Christian position, but to be directed against errors characteristic of Gnosticism: (a) against Docetism; most striking is Heb 2:14-18; (b) against the demiurgic idea (Joh 1:3, Heb 1:2, Col 1:16 ff.).

(3) A definite polemic against errorists who are almost certainly Gnostics is found in the following passages:

(a) Colossians.-The errorists in question claim a superior knowledge (Col 2:8; Col 2:18), pay great regard to angels-beings intermediate between God and man (Col 2:18)-teach asceticism (Col 2:21; Col 2:23); and probably their demiurgic notion is refuted in Col 1:16. These are the elements of Gnosticism, and most likely the Colossian errorists are Judaistic Gnostics of the same type as Cerinthus.

(b) Pastoral Epistles.-The references to Gnosticism are so clear here that some find in them a main ground for assigning a late date to the Epistles. Gnosticism has already appropriated the name (1Ti 5:20). The errorists profess a superior knowledge (Tit 1:16, 2Ti 3:7). Their profane and vain babblings (2Ti 2:16), old wives fables (1Ti 4:7), foolish questions and genealogies (Tit 3:9), denial of the resurrection of the body (2Ti 2:18), asceticism and depreciation of creatures (1Ti 4:3-4), and in other cases their antinomianism (2Ti 3:6, Tit 1:16)-all are tokens of Gnosticism.

(c) Peter and Jude.-The gross errorists denounced in 2 Peter 2 and Jude show close affinity with the Ophite sect, the Cainites (q.v. [Note: quod vide, which see.] ) (Hippol. viii. 20; Strom. vii. 17 [767]; Epiph. Haer. xxxviii.). They made Cain their first hero; and, regarding the God of the Jews as an evil being, and the Scriptures as, in consequence, a perversion of truth, honoured all infamous characters from Cain to Iscariot, who alone of the apostles had the secret of true knowledge. Naturally, they practised the wildest antinomianism, holding it necessary for perfect knowledge to have practical experience of all sins. The filthy dreamers, who speak evil of dignities and go in the way of Cain, are certainly closely allied to this position.

(d) 1 John.-There is throughout a contrast between true knowledge and false. Beyond reasonable doubt the Epistle has mainly, if not exclusively, Cerinthus in view. He is interesting in the history of heresy for his combination of Ebionite Christology with a Gnostic idea of the Creator (see article Cerinthus). It is mainly the former that is in view in 1 John (1Jn 2:22; 1Jn 4:3 ff.), but 1Jn 2:4; 1Jn 2:9 are directed against Gnostic antinomianism.

(e) Revelation.-Here we have definite mention of a Gnostic sect, by name the Nicolaitans (Rev 2:6; Rev 2:15). They derived their name from Nicolas of Act 6:5. They lead lives of unrestrained indulgence, teaching that it is a matter of indifference to practise adultery, and to eat things sacrificed to idols (Iren. Haer. i. xxvi. 3). Clem. Alex. (Strom. iii. 4 [436f.]) says that the followers of Nicolas misunderstood his saying that we must fight against the flesh and abuse it. What Nicolas meant to be an ascetic principle, they took to be an antinomian one.

We have notice of another branch of antinomian Gnosticism in Rev 2:20, where the prophetess Jezebel in Thyatira is teaching and seducing the faithful.

Gnosticism thus plays no inconsiderable part in the NT itself. It is, however, to exaggerate that, to find references to Gnosticism in verses where terms occur that afterwards became technical terms in Gnostic systems, viz. pleroma (e.g. Eph 1:23), aeon (e.g. Eph 2:2), gnosis (frequently). These had meaning before Gnostic systems made them peculiarly their own, and the passages in question may be understood without any reference to Gnosticism.

6. Concluding remarks.-If it be difficult to indicate accurately what Gnosticism owed to Christianity, it is no less difficult to determine to what extent Christianity was permanently influenced by Gnosticism. Theological prejudice will always affect the answer, and some will find in the Christological and other definitions of cumenical Councils a fruit of what Gnostics began. It is easy to see what indirect service Gnosticism rendered Christianity. In opposition to Gnosticism the Church was compelled (a) to develop into clear system her own creed; the true had to be opposed to the false; (b) to determine what writings were to be regarded as authoritative; against the Gnostic schools, each with its own pretended special revelation, the Church formed a canon of what were generally regarded as authentic apostolic writings; (c) to seek for a just view of the relation of Judaism to Christianity, and of the permanent value of the OT which Gnostics rejected. This is, it may be said, an unsolved problem still. In opposition to Gnosticism the Church was perhaps betrayed into the other extreme, as, to secure permanent authority for every part of the OT, a fanciful system of allegorizing was adopted.

As to direct influence, we have indicated above that Gnostics led the way in some developments of worship which found a permanent place in the Catholic Church. Probably also they led the way to the magical conception of Sacraments which became so prominent. The clearness with which the false character of Gnosticism was perceived, and the successful struggle against it, are among the most remarkable and praiseworthy things in the history of the early Church. It remains to be said that the various phenomena which constitute Gnosticism have appeared again and again in the history of the Church since then. Its speculative flights into regions where revelation does not guide and reason cannot follow; its special new revelations; its view of the world as essentially evil in itself; its stern asceticism or antinomian excess-all have appeared repeatedly.

Literature.-J. A. W. Neander, Die genetische Entwickelung der vornehmsten gnostischen Systeme, Berlin, 1818; F. C. Baur, Die christliche Gnosis, Tbingen, 1835; R. A. Lipsius, Gnosticismus, Leipzig, 1860; H. L. Mansel, Gnostic Heresies of the 1st and 2nd Centuries, London,1875; A. Hilgenfeld, Die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums, Leipzig, 1884; W. Anz, Ursprung des Gnostizismus, do. 1897; R. Liechtenhahn, Die Offenbarung im Gnosticismus, Gttingen, 1901; E. de Faye, Introduction ltude du gnosticisme au iie et au iiie sicle, Paris, 1903; W. Bousset. Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, Gttingen, 1907; A. Harnack, History of Dogma, Eng. translation , London, 1894-99; F. Loofs, Leitf. zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte3, Halle, 1893; R. Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, Leipzig, 1895-98: Church Histories of P. Schaff (Edinburgh, 1883-93), W. Moeller (Eng. translation , London, 1892-1900), G. P. Fisher (do. 1894), R. Rainy (Ancient Catholic Church, Edinburgh, 1902).

W. D. Niven.

Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church

Gnosticism

(Greek: gnosis, knowledge)

Salvation by knowledge. Gnostics were people who claimed to know mysteries of the universe; various pantheistic sects, antedating the Christian era and lasting to the 5th century and borrowing the formulas of various religious, particularly of Christianity , to express their view of matter as inimical to spirit, and of the universe as a depravation of the Deity. It is an extinct force, so far as religion is concerned today, but there are survivals of it in Swedenborgianism, New Thought, and in some of the sects of Occultism.

Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary

Gnosticism

The doctrine of salvation by knowledge. This definition, based on the etymology of the word (gnosis “knowledge”, gnostikos, “good at knowing”), is correct as far as it goes, but it gives only one, though perhaps the predominant, characteristic of Gnostic systems of thought. Whereas Judaism and Christianity, and almost all pagan systems, hold that the soul attains its proper end by obedience of mind and will to the Supreme Power, i.e. by faith and works, it is markedly peculiar to Gnosticism that it places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge. Gnostics were “people who knew”, and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know. A more complete and historical definition of Gnosticism would be:

A collective name for a large number of greatly-varying and pantheistic-idealistic sects, which flourished from some time before the Christian Era down to the fifth century, and which, while borrowing the phraseology and some of the tenets of the chief religions of the day, and especially of Christianity, held matter to be a deterioration of spirit, and the whole universe a depravation of the Deity, and taught the ultimate end of all being to be the overcoming of the grossness of matter and the return to the Parent-Spirit, which return they held to be inaugurated and facilitated by the appearance of some God-sent Saviour.

However unsatisfactory this definition may be, the obscurity, multiplicity, and wild confusion of Gnostic systems will hardly allow of another. Many scholars, moreover, would hold that every attempt to give a generic description of Gnostic sects is labour lost.

ORIGIN

The beginnings of Gnosticism have long been a matter of controversy and are still largely a subject of research. The more these origins are studied, the farther they seem to recede in the past. Whereas formerly Gnosticism was considered mostly a corruption of Christianity, it now seems clear that the first traces of Gnostic systems can be discerned some centuries before the Christian Era. Its Eastern origin was already maintained by Gieseler and Neander; F. Ch. Bauer (1831) and Lassen (1858) sought to prove its relation to the religions of India; Lipsius (1860) pointed to Syria and Phoenicia as its home, and Hilgenfeld (1884) thought it was connected with later Mazdeism. Joel (1880), Weingarten (1881), Koffmane (1881), Anrich (1894), and Wobbermin (1896) sought to account for the rise of Gnosticism by the influence of Greek Platonic philosophy and the Greek mysteries, while Harnack described it as “acute Hellenization of Christianity”. For the past twenty-five years, however, the trend of scholarship has steadily moved towards proving the pre-Christian Oriental origins of Gnosticism. At the Fifth Congress of Orientalists (Berlin, 1882) Kessler brought out the connection between Gnosis and the Babylonian religion. By this latter name, however, he meant not the original religion of Babylonia, but the syncretistic religion which arose after the conquest of Cyrus. The same idea is brought out in his “Mani” seven years later. In the same year F.W. Brandt published his “Mandiäische Religion”. This Mandaean religion is so unmistakably a form of Gnosticism that it seems beyond doubt that Gnosticism existed independent of, and anterior to, Christianity. In more recent years (1897) Wilhelm Anz pointed out the close similarity between Babylonian astrology and the Gnostic theories of the Hebdomad and Ogdoad. Though in many instances speculations on the Babylonian Astrallehre have gone beyond all sober scholarship, yet in this particular instance the inferences made by Anz seem sound and reliable. Researches in the same direction were continued and instituted on a wider scale by W. Bousset, in 1907, and led to carefully ascertained results. In 1898 the attempt was made by M. Friedländer to trace Gnosticism in pre-Christian Judaism. His opinion that the Rabbinic term Minnim designated not Christians, as was commonly believed, but Antinomian Gostics, has not found universal acceptance. In fact, E. Schürer brought sufficient proof to show that Minnim is the exact Armaean dialectic equivalent for ethne. Nevertheless Friedländer’s essay retains its value in tracing strong antinomian tendencies with Gnostic colouring on Jewish soil. Not a few scholars have laboured to find the source of Gnostic theories on Hellenistic and, specifically, Alexandrian soil. In 1880 Joel sought to prove that the germ of all Gnostic theories was to be found in Plato. Though this may be dismissed as an exaggeration, some Greek influence on the birth, but especially on the growth, of Gnosticism cannot be denied. In Trismegistic literature, as pointed out by Reitzenstein (Poimandres, 1904), we find much that is strangely akin to Gnosticism. Its Egyptian origin was defended by E. Amélineau, in 1887, and illustrated by A. Dietrich, in 1891 (Abraxas Studien) and 1903 (Mithrasliturgie). The relation of Plotinus’s philosophy to Gnosticsm was brought out by C. Schmidt in 1901. That Alexandrian thought had some share at least in the development of Christian Gnosticism is clear from the fact that the bulk of Gnostic literature which we possess comes to us from Egyptian (Coptic) sources. That this share was not a predominant one is, however, acknowledged by O. Gruppe in his “Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte” (1902). It is true that the Greek mysteries, as G. Anrich pointed out in 1894, had much in common with esoteric Gnosticism; but there remains the further question, in how far these Greek mysteries, as they are known to us, were the genuine product of Greek thought, and not much rather due to the overpowering influence of Orientalism.

Although the origins of Gnosticism are still largely enveloped in obscurity, so much light has been shed on the problem by the combined labours of many scholars that it is possible to give the following tentative solution: Although Gnosticism may at first sight appear a mere thoughtless syncretism of well nigh all religious systems in antiquity, it has in reality one deep root-principle, which assimilated in every soil what is needed for its life and growth; this principle is philosophical and religious pessimism. The Gnostics, it is true, borrowed their terminology almost entirely from existing religions, but they only used it to illustrate their great idea of the essential evil of this present existence and the duty to escape it by the help of magic spells and a superhuman Saviour. Whatever they borrowed, this pessimism they did not borrow — not from Greek thought, which was a joyous acknowledgment of and homage to the beautiful and noble in this world, with a studied disregard of the element of sorrow; not from Egyptian thought, which did not allow its elaborate speculations on retribution and judgment in the netherworld to cast a gloom on this present existence, but considered the universe created or evolved under the presiding wisdom of Thoth; not from Iranian thought, which held to the absolute supremacy of Ahura Mazda and only allowed Ahriman a subordinate share in the creation, or rather counter-creation, of the world; not from Indian Brahminic thought, which was Pantheism pure and simple, or God dwelling in, nay identified with, the universe, rather than the Universe existing as the contradictory of God; not, lastly, from Semitic thought, for Semitic religions were strangely reticent as to the fate of the soul after death, and saw all practical wisdom in the worship of Baal, or Marduk, or Assur, or Hadad, that they might live long on this earth. This utter pessimism, bemoaning the existence of the whole universe as a corruption and a calamity, with a feverish craving to be freed from the body of this death and a mad hope that, if we only knew, we could by some mystic words undo the cursed spell of this existence — this is the foundation of all Gnostic thought. It has the same parent-soil as Buddhism; but Buddhism is ethical, it endeavours to obtain its end by the extinction of all desire; Gnosticism is pseudo-intellectual, and trusts exclusively to magical knowledge. Moreover, Gnosticism, placed in other historical surroundings, developed from the first on other lines than Buddhism.

When Cyrus entered Babylon in 539 B.C., two great worlds of thought met, and syncretism in religion, as far as we know it, began. Iranian thought began to mix with the ancient civilization of Babylon. The idea of the great struggle between evil and good, ever continuing in this universe, is the parent idea of Mazdeism, or Iranian dualism. This, and the imagined existence of numberless intermediate spirits, angels and devas, as the conviction which overcame the contentedness of Semitism. On the other hand, the unshakable trust, in astrology, the persuasion that the planetary system had a fatalistic influence on this world’s affairs, stood its ground on the soil of Chaldea. The greatness of the Seven — the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, the Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn — the sacred Hebdomad, symbolized for millenniums by the staged towers of Babylonia, remained undiminished. They ceased, indeed, to be worshipped as deities, but they remained archontes and dynameis, rules and powers whose almost irresistible force was dreaded by man. Practically, they were changed from gods to devas, or evil spirits. The religions of the invaders and of the invaded effected a compromise: the astral faith of Babylon was true, but beyond the Hebodomad was the infinite light in the Ogdoad, and every human soul had to pass the adverse influence of the god or gods of the Hebdomad before it could ascend to the only good God beyond. This ascent of the soul through the planetary spheres to the heaven beyond (an idea not unknown even to ancient Babylonian speculations) began to be conceived as a struggle with adverse powers, and became the first and predominant idea in Gnosticism. The second great component of Gnostic thought is magic, properly so called, i.e. the power ex opere operato of weird names, sounds, gestures, and actions, as also the mixture of elements to produce effects totally disproportionate to the cause. These magic formulae, which caused laughter and disgust to outsiders, are not a later and accidental corruption, but an essential part of Gnosticism, for they are found in all forms of Christian Gnosticism and likewise in Mandaeism. No Gnosis was essentially complete without the knowledge of the formulae, which, once pronounced, were the undoing of the higher hostile powers. Magic is the original sin of Gnosticism, nor is it difficult to guess whence it is inherited. To a certain extent it formed part of every pagan religion, especially the ancient mysteries, yet the thousands of magic tablets unearthed is Assyria and Babylonia show us where the rankest growth of magic was to be found. Moreover, the terms and names of earliest of Gnosticism bear an unmistakable similarity to Semitic sounds and words. Gnosticism came early into contact with Judaism, and it betrays a knowledge of the Old Testament, if only to reject it or borrow a few names from it. Considering the strong, well-organized, and highly-cultured Jewish colonies in the Euphrates valley, this early contact with Judaism is perfectly natural. Perhaps the Gnostic idea of a Redeemer is not unconnected with Jewish Messianic hopes. But from the first the Gnostic conception of a Saviour is more superhuman than that of popular Judaism; their Manda d’Haye, or Soter, is some immediate manifestation of the Deity, a Light-King, an Æon (Aion), and an emanation of the good God. When Gnosticism came in touch with Christianity, which must have happened almost immediately on its appearance, Gnosticism threw herself with strange rapidity into Christian forms of thought, borrowed its nomenclature, acknowledged Jesus as Saviour of the world, simulated its sacraments, pretended to be an esoteric revelation of Christ and His Apostles, flooded the world with aprocryphal Gospels, and Acts, and Apocalypses, to substantiate its claim. As Christianity grew within and without the Roman Empire, Gnosticism spread as a fungus at its root, and claimed to be the only true form of Christianity, unfit, indeed, for the vulgar crowd, but set apart for the gifted and the elect. So rank was its poisonous growth that there seemed danger of its stifling Christianity altogether, and the earliest Fathers devoted their energies to uprooting it. Though in reality the spirit of Gnosticism is utterly alien to that of Christianity, it then seemed to the unwary merely a modification or refinement thereof. When domiciled on Greek soil, Gnosticism, slightly changing its barbarous and Seminitic terminology and giving its “emanatons” and”syzygies” Greek names, sounded somewhat like neo-Platonism, thought it was strongly repudiated by Plotinus. In Egypt the national worship left its mark more on Gnostic practice than on its theories.

In dealing with the origins of Gnosticism, one might be tempted to mention Manichaeism, as a number of Gnostic ideas seem to be borrowed from Manichaeism, where they are obviously at home. This, however, would hardly be correct. Manichaeism, as historically connected with Mani, its founder, could not have arisen much earlier than A.D. 250, when Gnosticism was already in rapid decline. Manichaeism, however, in many of its elements dates back far beyond its commonly accepted founder; but then it is a parallel development with the Gnosis, rather than one of its sources. Sometimes Manichaeism is even classed as a form of Gnosticism and styled Parsee Gnosis, as distinguished from Syrian and Egyptian Gnosis. This classification, however, ignores the fact that the two systems, though they have the doctrine of the evil of matter in common, start from different principles, Manichaeism from dualism, while Gnosticism, as an idealistic Pantheism, proceeds from the conception of matter as a gradual deterioration of the Godhead.

DOCTRINES

Owing to the multiplicity and divergence of Gnostic theories, a detailed exposition in this article would be unsatisfactory and confusing and to acertain extent even misleading, since Gnosticism never possessed a nucleus of stable doctrine, or any sort of depositum fidei round which a number of varied developments and heresies or sects might be grouped; at most it had some leading ideas, which are more or less clearly traceable in different schools. Moreover, a fair idea of Gnostic doctrines can be obtained from the articles on leaders and phases of Gnostic thought (e.g. BASILIDES; VALENTINUS; MARCION; DOCETAE; DEMIURGE). We shall here only indicate some main phases of thought, which can be regarded as keys and which, though not fitting all systems, will unlock most of the mysteries of the Gnosis.

(a) Cosmogony

Gnosticism is thinly disguised Pantheism. In the beginning was the Depth; the Fulness of Being; the Not-Being God; the First Father, the Monad, the Man; the First Source, the unknown God (Bythos pleroma, ouk on theos, propator, monas, anthropos, proarche, hagnostos theos), or by whatever other name it might be called. This undefined infinite Something, though it might be addressed by the title of the Good God, was not a personal Being, but, like Tad of Brahma of the Hindus, the “Great Unknown” of modern thought. The Unknown God, however, was in the beginning pure spirituality; matter as yet was not. This source of all being causes to emanate (proballei) from itself a number of pure spirit forces. In the different systems these emanations are differently named, classified, and described, but the emanation theory itself is common too all forms of Gnosticism. In the Basilidian Gnosis they are called sonships (uiotetes), in Valentinianism they form antithetic pairs or “syzygies” (syzygoi); Depth and Silence produce Mind and Truth; these produce Reason and Life, these again Man and State (ekklesia). According to Marcus, they are numbers and sounds. These are the primary roots of the Æons. With bewildering fertility hierarchies of Æons are thus produced, sometimes to the number of thirty. These Æons belong to the purely ideal, noumenal, intelligible, or supersensible world; they are immaterial, they are hypostatic ideas. Together with the source from which they emanate they form the pleroma. The transition fromthe immaterial to the material, from the noumenal to the sensible, is brought about by a flaw, or a passion, or a sin, in one of the Æons. According to Basilides, it is a flaw in the last sonship; according to others it is the passion of the female Æon Sophia; according to others the sin ofthe Great Archon, or Æon-Creator, of the Universe. The ultimate end of all Gnosis is metanoia, or repentance, the undoing of the sin of material existence and the return to the Pleroma.

(b) Sophia-Myth

In the greater number of Gnostic systems an important role is played by the Æon Wisdom — Sophia or Achamoth. In some sense she seems to represent the supreme female principle, as for instance in the Ptolemaic system, in which the mother of the seven heavens is called Achamoth, in the Valentinian system, in which he ano Sophia, the Wisdom above, is distinguished from he kato Sophia, or Achamoth, the former being the female principle of the noumenal world, and in the Archotian system, where we find a “Lightsome Mother” (he meter he photeine), and in which beyond the heavens of the Archons is he meter ton panton and likewise in the Barbelognosis, where the female Barbelos is but the counterpart of the Unknown Father, which also occurs amongst the Ophites described by Irenaeus (Adv. Haeres., III, vii, 4). Moreover, the Eucharistic prayer in the Acts of Thomas (ch. 1) seems addressed to this supreme female principle. W. Bousset’s suggestion, that the Gnostic Sophia is nothing else than a disguise for the Dea Syra, the great goddess Istar, or Astarte, seems worthy of consideration. On the other hand, the Æon Sophia usually plays another role; she is he Prouneikos or “the Lustful One”, once a virginal goddess, who by her fall from original purity is the cause of this sinful material world. One of the earliest forms of this myth is found in Simonian Gnosis, in which Simon, the Great Power, finds Helena, who during ten years had been a prostitute in Tyre, but who is Simon’s ennoia, or understanding, and whom his followers worshipped under the form of Athena, the goddess of wisdom. According to Valentinus’s system, as described by Hippolytus (Book VI, xxv-xxvi), Sophia is the youngest of the twenty-eight æons. Observing the multitude of æons and the power of begetting them, she hurries back into the depth of the Father, and seeks to emulate him by producing offspring without conjugal intercourse, but only projects an abortion, a formless substance. Upon this she is cast out of Pleroma. According to the Valentinian system as described by Irenaeus (op. cit., I) and Tertullian (Adv. Valent., ix), Sophia conceives a passion for the First Father himself, or rather, under pretext of love she seeks to know him, the Unknowable, and to comprehend his greatness. She should have suffered the consequence of her audacity by ultimate dissolution into the immensity of the Father, but for the Boundary Spirit. According to the Pistis Sophia (ch. xxix) Sophia, daughter of Barbelos, originally dwelt in the highest, or thirteenth heaven, but she is seduced by the demon Authades by means of a ray of light, which she mistook as an emanation from the First Father. Authades thus enticed her into Chaos below the twelve Æons, where she was imprisoned by evil powers. According to these ideas, matter is the fruit of the sin of Sophia; this, however, was but a Valentinian development; in the older speculations the existence of matter is tacitly presupposed as eternal with the Pleroma, and through her sin Sophia falls from the realm of light into Chaos or realm of darkness. This original dualism, however, was overcome by the predominant spirit of Gnosticism, pantheistic emanationism. The Sophia myth is completely absent from the Basilidian and kindred systems. It is suggested, with great verisimilitude, that the Egyptian myth of Isis was the original source of the Gnostic “lower wisdom”. In many systems this Kato Sophia is sharply distinguished from the Higher Wisdom mentioned above; as, for instance, in the magic formula for the dead mentioned by Irenaeus (op. cit., I, xxi, 5), in which the departed has to address the hostile archons thus: “I am a vessel more precious than the female who made you. If your mother ignores the source whence she is, I know myself, and I known whence I am and invoke the incorruptible Sophia, whois in the Father, the mother of your mother, who has neither father nor husband. A man-woman, born from a woman, has made you, not knowing her mother, but thinking herself alone. But I invoke her mother.” This agrees with the system minutely described by Irenaeus (op. cit., I, iv-v), where Sophia Achamoth, or Lower Wisdom, the daughter of Higher Wisdom, becomes the mother of the Demiurge; she being the Ogdoad, her son the Hebdomad, they form a counterpart of the heavenly Ogdoad in the Pleromata. This is evidently a clumsy attempt to fuse into one two systems radically different, the Basilidian and the Valentinian; the ignorance of the Great Archon, which is the central idea of Basilides, is here transferred to Sophia, and the hybrid system ends in bewildering confusion.

(c) Soteriology

Gnostic salvation is not merely individual redemption of each human soul; it is a cosmic process. It is the return of all things to what they were before the flaw in the sphere of the Æons brought matter into existence and imprisoned some part of the Divine Light into the evil Hyle (Hyle). This setting free of the light sparks is the process of salvation; when all light shall have left Hyle, it will be burnt up, destroyed, or be a sort of everlasting hell for the Hylicoi. In Basilidianism it is the Third Filiation that is captive in matter, and is gradually being saved, now that the knowledge of its existence has been brought to the first Archon and then to the Second Archon, to each by his respective Son; and the news has been spread through the Hebdomad by Jesus the son of Mary, who died to redeem the Third Filiation. In Valentinianism the process is extraordinarily elaborate. When this world has been born from Sophia in consequence of her sin, Nous and Aletheia, two Æons, by command of the Father, produce two new Æons, Christ and the Holy Ghost; these restore order in the Pleroma, and in consequence all Æons together produce a new Æon, Jesus Logos, Soter, or Christ, whom they offer to the Father. Christ, the Son of Nous and Aletheia, has pity on the abortive substance born of Sophia and gives it essence and form. Whereupon Sophia tries to rise again to the Father, but in vain. Now the Æon Jesus-Soter is sent as second Saviour, he unites himself to the man Jesus, the son of Mary, at his baptism, and becomes the Saviour of men. Man is a creature of the Demiurge, a compound of soul, body, and spirit. His salvation consists in the return of his pneuma or spirit to the Pleroma; or if he be only a Psychicist, not a full Gnostic, his soul (psyche) shall return to Achamoth. There is no resurrection of the body. (For further details and differences see VALENTINUS.)

In Marcionism, the most dualistic phase of Gnosticism, salvation consisted in the possession of the knowledge of the Good God and the rejection ofthe Demiurge. The Good God revealed himself in Jesus and appeared as man in Judea; to know him, and to become entirely free from the yoke of the World-Creator or God of the Old Testament, is the end of all salvation. The Gnostic Saviour, therefore, is entirely different from the Christian one. For the Gnostic Saviour does not save. Gnosticism lacks the idea of atonement. There is no sin to be atoned for, except ignorance be that sin. Nor does the Saviour in any sense benefit the human race by vicarious sufferings. Nor, finally, does he immediately and actively affect any individual human soul by the power of grace or draw it to God. He was a teacher, he once brought into the world the truth, which alone can save. As a flame sets naphtha on fire, so the Saviour’s light ignites predisposed souls moving down the stream of time. Of a real Saviour who with love human and Divine seeks out sinners to save them, Gnosticism knows nothing. The Gnostic Saviour has no human nature, he is an æon, not a man; he only seemed a man, as the three Angels who visited Abraham seemed to be men. (For a detailed exposition see DOCETAE.) The Æon Soter is brought into the strangest relation to Sophia: in some systems he is her brother, in others her son, in other again her spouse. He is sometimes identified with Christ, sometimes with Jesus; sometimes Christ and Jesus are the same æon, sometimes they are different; sometimes Christ and the Holy Ghost are identified. Gnosticism did its best to utilize the Christian concept of the Holy Ghost, but never quite succeeded. She made him the Horos, or Methorion Pneuma (Horos, Metherion Pneuma), the Boundary-Spirit, the Sweet Odour of the Second Filiation, a companion æon with Christos, etc., etc. In some systems he is entirely left out.

(d) Eschatology

It is the merit of recent scholarship to have proved that Gnostic eschatology, consisting in the soul’s struggle with hostile archons in its attempt to reach the Pleroma, is simply the soul’s ascent, in Babylonian astrology, through the realms of the seven planets to Anu. Origen (Contra Celsum, VI, xxxi), referring to the Ophitic system, gives us the names of the seven archons as Jaldabaoth, Jao, Sabaoth, Adonaios, Astaphaios, Ailoaios, and Oraios, and tells us that Jaldabaoth is the planet Saturn. Astraphaios is beyond doubt the planet Venus, as there are gnostic gems with a female figure and the legend ASTAPHE, which name is also used in magic spells as the name of a goddess. In the Mandaean system Adonaios represents the Sun. Moreover, St. Irenaeus tells us: “Sanctam Hebdomadem VII stellas, quas dictunt planetas, esse volunt.” It is safe, therefore, to take the above seven Gnostic names as designating the seven stars, then considered planets, Jaldabaoth (Child of Chaos? — Saturn, called “the Lion-faced”, leontoeides) is the outermost, and therefore the chief ruler, and later on the Demiurge par excellence. Jao (Iao, perhaps from Jahu, Jahveh, but possibly also from the magic cry iao in the mysteries) is Jupiter. Sabaoth (the Old-Testament title — God of Hosts) was misunderstood; “of hosts” was thought a proper name, hence Jupiter Sabbas (Jahve Sabaoth) was Mars. Astaphaios (taken from magic tablets) was Venus. Adonaios (from the Hebrew term for “the Lord”, used of God; Adonis of the Syrians representing the Winter sun in the cosmic tragedy of Tammuz) was the Sun; Ailoaios, or sometimes Ailoein (Elohim, God), Mercury; Oraios (Jaroah? or light?), the Moon. In the hellenized form of Gnosticism either all or some of these names are replaced by personified vices. Authadia (Authades), or Audacity, is the obvious description of Jaldabaoth, the presumptuous Demiurge, who is lion-faced as the Archon Authadia. Of the Archons Kakia, Zelos, Phthonos, Errinnys, Epithymia, the last obviously represents Venus. The number seven is obtained by placing a proarchon or chief archon at the head. That these names areonly a disguise for the Sancta Hebdomas is clear, for Sophia, the mother of them, retains the name of Ogdoas, Octonatio. Occasionally one meets with the Archon Esaldaios, which is evidently the El Shaddai of the Bible, and he is described as the Archon “number four” (harithmo tetartos) and must represent the Sun. In the system of the Gnostics mentioned by Epiphanius we find, as the Seven Archons, Iao, Saklas, Seth, David, Eloiein, Elilaios, and Jaldabaoth (or no. 6 Jaldaboath, no. 7 Sabaoth). Of these, Saklas is the chief demon of Manichaeism; Elilaios is probably connected with En-lil, the Bel of Nippur, the ancient god of Babylonia. In this, as in several other systems, the traces of the planetary seven have been obscured, but hardly in any have they become totally effaced. What tended most to obliterate the sevenfold distinction was the identification of the God of the Jews, the Lawgiver, with Jaldabaoth and his designation as World-creator, whereas formerly the seven planets together ruled the world. This confusion, however, was suggested by the very fact that at least five of the seven archons bore Old-Testament names for God — El Shaddai, Adonai, Elohim, Jehovah, Sabaoth.

(e) Doctrine of the Primeval Man

The speculations on Primeval Man (Protanthropos, Adam) occupy a prominent place in several Gnostic systems. According to Irenaeus (I, xxix, 3) the Æon Autogenes emits the true and perfect Anthrôpos, also called Adamas; he has a helpmate, “Perfect Knowledge”, and receives an irresistible force, so that all things rest in him. Others say (Irenaeus, I, xxx) there is a blessed and incorruptible and endless light in the power of Bythos; this is the Father of all things who is invoked as the First Man, who, with his Ennœa, emits “the Son of Man”, or Euteranthrôpos. According to Valentinus, Adam was created in the name of Anthrôpos and overawes the demons by the fear of the pre-existent man (tou proontos anthropou). In the Valentinian syzygies and in the Marcosian system we meet in the fourth (originally the third) place Anthrôpos and Ecclesia. In the Pistis Sophia the Æon Jeu is called the First Man, he is the overseer of the Light, messenger of the First Precept, and constitutes the forces of the Heimarmene. In the Books of the Jeu this “great Man” is the King of the Light-treasure, he is enthroned above all things and is the goal of all souls. According to the Naassenes, the Protanthropos is the first element; the fundamental being before its differentiation into individuals. “The Son of Man” is the same being after it has been individualized into existing things and thus sunk into matter. The Gnostic Anthrôpos, therefore, or Adamas, as it is sometimes called, is a cosmogonic element, pure mind as distinct from matter, mind conceived hypostatically as emanating from God and not yet darkened by contact with matter. This mind is considered as the reason of humanity, or humanity itself, as a personified idea, a category without corporeality, the human reason conceived as the World-Soul. This speculation about the Anthrôpos is completely developed in Manichaeism, where, in fact, it is the basis of the whole system. God, in danger of the power of darkness, creates with the help of the Spirit, the five worlds, the twelve elements, and the Eternal Man, and makes him combat the darkness. But this Man is somehow overcome by evil and swallowed up by darkness. The present universe is in throes to deliver the captive Man from the powers of darkness. In the Clementine Homilies the cosmogonic Anthrôpos is strangely mixed up with the historical figure of the first man, Adam. Adam “was the true prophet, running through all ages, and hastening to rest”; “the Christ, who was from the beginning and is always, who was ever present to every generation in a hidden manner indeed, yet ever present”. In fact Adam was, to use Modernist language, the Godhead immanent in the world and ever manifesting itself to the inner consciousness of the elect. The same idea, somewhat modified, occurs in Hermetic literature, especially the “Poimandres”. It is elaborated by Philo, makes an ingenious distinction between the human being created first “after God’s image and likeness” and the historic figures of Adam and Eve created afterwards. Adam kat eikona is: “Idea, Genus, Character, belonging to the world, of Understanding, without body, neither male nor female; he is the Beginning, the Name of God, the Logos, immortal, incorruptible” (De opif. mund., 134-148; De conf. ling.,146). These ideas in Talmudism, Philonism, Gnosticism, and Trismegistic literature, all come from once source, the late Mazdea development of the Gayomarthians, or worshipper of the Super-Man.

(f) The Barbelo

This Gnostic figure, appearing in a number of systems, the Nicolaites, the “Gnostics” of Epiphanius, the Sethians, the system of the “Evangelium Mariae” and that in Iren., I, xxix, 2 sq., remains to a certain extent an enigma. The name barbelo, barbeloth, barthenos has not been explained with certainty. In any case she represents the supreme female principle, is in fact the highest Godhead in its female aspect. Barbelo has most of the functions of the ano Sophia as described above. So prominent was her place amongst some Gnostics that some schools were designated as Barbeliotae, Barbelo worshippers of Barbelognostics. She is probably none other than the Light-Maiden of the Pistis Sophia, the thygater tou photos or simply the Maiden, parthenos. In Epiphanius (Haer., xxvi, 1) and Philastrius (Haer., xxxiii) Parthenos (Barbelos) seems identical with Noria, whoplays a great role as wife either of Noe or of Seth. The suggestion, that Noria is “Maiden”, parthenos, Istar, Athena, Wisdom, Sophia, or Archamoth, seems worthy of consideration.

RITES We are not so well informed about the practical and ritual side of Gnosticism as we are about its doctrinal and theoretical side. However, St. Irenaeus’s account of the Marcosians, Hippolytus’s account of the Elcesaites,the liturgical portions of the “Acta Thomae”, some passages in the Pseudo-Clementines, and above all Coptic Gnostic and Mandaean literature gives us at least some insight into their liturgical practices.

(a) Baptism

All Gnostic sects possessed this rite in some way; in Mandaeism daily baptism is one of the great practices of the system. The formulae used by Christian Gnostics seem to have varied widely from that enjoyed by Christ. The Marcosians said: “In [eis] the name of the unknown Father of all, in [eis] the Truth, the Mother of all, in him, who came down on Jesus [eis ton katelthonta eis Iesoun]”. The Elcesaites said: “In [en] the name of the great and highest God and in the name of his Son, the great King”. In Iren. (I, xxi, 3) we find the formula: “In the name that was hidden from every divinity and lordship and truth, which [name] Jesus the Nazarene has put on in the regions of light” and several other formulae, which were sometimes pronounced in Hebrew or Aramaid. The Mandaeans said: “The name of the Life and the name of the Manda d’Haye is named over thee”. In connection with Baptism the Sphragis was of great importance; in what the seal or sign consisted wherewith they were marked is not easy to say. There was also the tradition of a name either by utterance or by handing a tablet with some mystic word on it.

(b) Confirmation

The anointing of the candidate with chrism, or odoriferous ointment, is a Gnostic rite which overshadows the importance of baptism. In the “Acta Thomae”, so some scholars maintain, it had completely replaced baptism, and was the sole sacrament of initiation. This however is not yet proven. The Marcosians went so far as to reject Christian baptism and to substitute a mixture of oil and water which they poured over the head of the candidate. By confirmation the Gnostics intended not so much to give the Holy Ghost as to seal the candidates against the attacks of the archons, or to drive them away by the sweet odour which is above all things (tes uter ta hola euodias). The balsam was somehow supposed to have flowed from the Tree of Life, and this tree was again mystically connected with the Cross; for the chrism is in the “Acta Thomae” called “the hidden mystery in which the Cross is shown to us”.

(c) The Eucharist

It is remarkable that so little is known of the Gnostic substitute for the Eucharist. In a number of passages we read of the breaking of the bread, but in what this consisted is not easy to determine. The use of salt in this rite seems to have been important (Clem., Hom. xiv), for we read distinctly how St. Peter broke the bread of the Eucharist and “putting salt thereon, he gave first to the mother and then to us”. There is furthermore a great likelihood, though no certainty, that the Eucharist referred to in the “Acta “Thomae” was merely a breaking of bread without the use of the cup. This point is strongly controverted, but the contrary can hardly be proven. It is beyond doubt that the Gnostics often substituted water for the wine (Acta Thomae, Baptism of Mygdonia, ch. cxxi). What formula of consecration was used we do not know, but the bread was certainly signed with the Cross. It is to be noted that the Gnostics called the Eucharist by Christian sacrificial terms — prosphora, “oblation”, Thysia (II bk. of Jeû, 45). In the Coptic Books (Pistis Sophia, 142; II Jeû, 45-47) we find a long description of some apparently Eucharistic ceremonies carried out by Jesus Himself. In these fire and incense, two flasks, and also two cups, one with water, the other with wine, and branches of the vine are used. Christ crows the Apostles with olive wreaths, begs Melchisedech to come and change wine into water for baptism, puts herbs in the Apostles’ mouths and hands. Whether these actions in some sense reflect the ritual of Gnosticism, or are only imaginations of the author, cannot be decided. The Gnostics seem also to have used oil sacramentally for the healing of the sick, and even the dead were anointed by them to be rendered safe and invisible in their transit through the realms of the archons.

(d) The Nymphôn

They possessed a special Gnostic sacrament of the bridechamber (nymphon) in which, through some symbolical actions, their souls were wedded to their angels in the Pleroma. Details of its rites are not as yet known. Tertullian no doubt alluded to them in the words “Eleusinia fecerunt lenocinia”.

(e) The Magic Vowels

An extraordinary prominence is given to the utterance of the vowels: alpha, epsilon, eta, iota, omicron, upsilon, omega. The Saviour and His disciples are supposed in the midst of their sentences to have broken out in an interminable gibberish of only vowels; magic spells have come down to us consisting of vowels by the fourscore; on amulets the seven vowels, repeated according to all sorts of artifices, form a very common inscription. Within the last few years these Gnostic vowels, so long a mystery, have been the object of careful study by Ruelle, Poirée, and Leclercq, and it may be considered proven that each vowel represents one of the seven planets, or archons; that the seven together represent the Universe, but without consonants they represent the Ideal and Infinite not yet imprisoned and limited by matter; that they represent a musical scale, probably like the Gregorian 1 tone re-re, or d, e, f, g, a, b, c, and many a Gnostic sheet of vowels is in fact a sheet of music. But research on this subject has only just begun. Among the Gnostics the Ophites were particularly fond of representing their cosmogonic speculations by diagrams, circles within circles, squares, and parallel lines, and other mathematical figures combined, with names written within them. How far these sacred diagrams were used as symbols in their liturgy, we do not know.

SCHOOLS OF GNOSTICISM

Gnosticism possessed no central authority for either doctrine or discipline; considered as a whole it had no organization similar to the vast organization of the Catholic Church. It was but a large conglomeration of sects, of which Marcionism alone attempted in some way to rival the constitution of the Church, and even Marcionism had no unity. No other classification of these sects is possible than that according to their main trend of thought. We can therefore distinguish: (a) Syrian or Semitic; (b) Hellenistic or Alexandrian; (c) dualistic; (d) antinomian Gnostics.

(a) The Syrian School

This school represents the oldest phase of Gnosticism, as Western Asia was the birthplace of the movement. Dositheus, Simon Magus, Menander, Cerinthus, Cerdo, Saturninus Justin, the Bardesanites, Sevrians, Ebionites, Encratites, Ophites, Naassenes, the Gnostics of the “Acts of Thomas”, the Sethians, the Peratae, the Cainites may be said to belong to this school. The more fantastic elements and elaborate genealogies and syzygies of æons of the later Gnosis are still absent in these systems. The terminology is some barbarous form of Semitic; Egypt is the symbolic name for the soul’s land of bondage. The opposition between the good God and the World-Creator is not eternal or cosmogonic, though there is strong ethical opposition to Jehovah the God of the Jews. He is the last of the seven angels who fashioned this world out of eternally pre-existent matter. The demiurgic angels, attempting to create man, created but a miserable worm, to which the Good God, however, gave the spark of divine life. The rule of the god of the Jews must pass away, for the good God calls us to his own immediate service through Christ his Son. We obey the Supreme Deity by abstaining from flesh meat and marriage, and by leading an ascetic life. Such was the system of Saturninus of Antioch, who taught during the reign of Hadrian (c. A.D. 120). The Naassenes (from Nahas, the Hebrew for serpent) were worshippers of the serpent as a symbol of wisdom, which the God of the Jews tried to hide from men. The Ophites (ophianoi, from ophis, serpent), who, when transplanted on Alexandrian soil, supplied the main ideas of Valentinianism, become one of the most widely spread sects of Gnosticism. Though not strictly serpent-worshippers, they recognized the serpent as symbol of the supreme emanation, Achamoth or Divine Wisdom. They were styled Gnostics par excellence. The Sethians saw in Seth the father of all spiritual (pneumatikoi) men; in Cain and Abel the father of the psychic (psychikoi) and hylic (hylikoi) men. According to the Peratae there exists a trinity of Father, Son, and Hyle (Matter). The Son is the Cosmic Serpent, who freed Eve from the power of the rule of Hyle. The universe they symbolized by a triangle enclosed in a circle. The number three is the key to all mysteries. There are three supreme principles: the not-generated, the self-generated, the generated. There are three logoi, of gods; the Saviour has a threefold nature, threefold body, threefold power, etc. They are called Peretae (peran) because they have “crossed over” out of Egypt, through the Red Sea of generation. They are the true Hebrews, in fact (the word comes from the Hebrew meaning “to cross over”). The Peratae were founded by Euphrates and Celbes (Acembes?) and Ademes. This Euphrates, whose name is perhaps connected with the name Peratae itself, is said to be the founder of the Ophites mentioned by Celsus about A.D. 175. The Cainites were so called because they venerated Cain, and Esau, and the Sodomites, and Core, and Judas, because they had all resisted the god of the Jews.

(b) The Hellenistic or Alexandrian School

These systems were more abstract, and philosophical, and self-consistent than the Syrian. The Semitic nomenclature was almost entirely replaced by Greek names. The cosmogonic problem had outgrown all proportions, the ethical side was less prominent, asceticism less strictly enforced. The two great thinkers of this school were Basilides and Valentinus. Though born at Antioch, in Syria, Basilides founded his school in Alexandria (c. A.D. 130), and was followed by his son Isidorus. His system was the most consistent and sober emanationism that Gnosticism ever produced. His school never spread so widely as the next to be mentioned, but in Spain it survived for several centuries. Valentinus, who taught first at Alexandria and then at Rome (c. A.D. 160), elaborated a system of sexual duality in the process of emanation; a long series of male and female pairs of personified ideas is employed to bridge over the distance from the unknown God to this present world. His system is more confused than Basilidianism, especially as it is disturbed bythe intrusion of the figure or figures of Sophia in the cosmogonic process. Being Syrian Ophitism in Egyptian guise, it can claim to be the true representative of the Gnostic spirit. The reductio ad absurdum of these unbridled speculations can be seen in the Pitis Sophia, which is light-maidens, paralemptores, spheres, Heimarmene, thirteen æons, light-treasures, realms of the midst, realms of the right and of the left, Jaldabaoth, Adamas, Michael, Gabriel, Christ, the Saviour, and mysteries without number whirl past and return like witches in a dance. The impression created on the same reader can only be fitly described in the words of “Jabberwocky”: “gyre and gimble on the wabe”. We learn from Hippolytus (Adv. Haer., IV, xxxv), Tertullian (Adv. Valent., iv) and Clemens Alex. (Exc. ex Theod., title) that there were two main schools of Valentinianism, the Italian and the Anatolian or Asiatic. In the Italian school were teachers of note: Secundus, who divided the Ogdoad within the Pleroma into two tetrads, Right and Left; Epiphanes, who described this Tetras as Monotes, Henotes, Monas, and To Hen; and possibly Colorbasus, unless his name be a misreading of Kol Arba “All Four”. But the most important were Ptolemy and Heracleon. Ptolemy is especially known to fame by his letter to Flora, a noble lady who had written to him as Prom Presbyter (Texte u. Unters., N.S., XIII, Anal. z. alt. Gesch. d. Chr.) to explain the meaning of the Old Testament. This Ptolemy split up the names and numbers of the æons into personified substances outside the deity, as Tertullian relates. He was given to Biblical studies, and was a man of unbridled imagination. Clemens Alex. (Strom., IV, ix, 73) calls Heracleon the most eminent teacher of the Valentinian school. Origen devotes a large part of his commentary on St. John to combating Heracleon’s commentary on the same Evangelist. Heracleon called the source of all being Anthropos, instead of Bythos, and rejected the immortality of the soul — meaning, probably, the merely psychic element. He apparently stood nearer to the Catholic Church than Ptolemy and was a man of better judgment. Tertullian mentions two other names (Valent., iv), Theotimus and (De Carne Christ, xvii) Alexander. The Anatolian school had as a prominent teacher Axionicus (Tertullian, Adv. Valent., iv; Hipp., Adv. Haer., VI, 30) who had his collegium at Antioch about A.D. 220, “the master’s most faithful disciple”. Theodotus is only known to us from the fragment of his writings preserved by Clement of Alexandria. Marcus the Conjuror’s system, an elaborate speculation with ciphers and numbers, is given by Irenaeus (I, 11-12) and also by Hippolytus (VI, 42). Irenaeus’s account of Marcus was repudiated by the Marcosians, but Hippolytus asserts that they did so without reason. Marcus was probably an Egyptian and a contemporary of Irenaeus. A system not unlike that of the Marcosians was worked out by Monoimus the Arabian, to whom Hippolytus devotes chapters 5 to 8 of Book VIII, and who is mentioned only by Theodoret besides him. Hippolytus is right in calling these two Gnostics imitations of Pythagoras rather than Christians. According to the Epistles of Julian the Apostate, Valentinan collegia existed in Asia Minor up to his own times (d. 363).

(c) The Dualistic School

Some dualism was indeed congenital with Gnosticism, yet but rarely did it overcome the main tendency of Gnosticism, i.e. Pantheism. This, however, was certainly the case in the system of Marcion, who distinguished between the God of the New Testament and the God of the Old Testament, as between two eternal principles, the first being Good, agathos; the second merely dikaios, or just; yet even Marcion did not carry this system to its ultimate consequences. He may be considered rather as a forerunner of Mani than a pure Gnostic. Three of his disciples, Potitus, Basilicus, and Lucanus, are mentioned by Eusebius as being true to their master’s dualism (H.E., V, xiii), but Apelles, his chief disciple, though he went farther than his master in rejecting the Old-Testament Scriptures, returned to monotheism by considering the Inspirer of Old-Testament prophecies to be not a god, but an evil angel. On the other hand, Syneros and Prepon, also his disciples, postulated three different principles. A somewhat different dualism was taught by Hermogenes in the beginning of the second century at Carthage. The opponent of the good God was not the God of the Jews, but Eternal Matter, the source of all evil. This Gnostic was combatted by Theophilus of Antioch and Tertullian.

(d) The Antinomian School

As a moral law was given by the God of the Jews, and opposition to the God of the Jews was a duty, the breaking of the moral law to spite its give was considered a solemn obligation. Such a sect, called the Nicolaites, existed in Apostolic times, their principle, according to Origen, was parachresthai te sarki. Carpocrates, whom Tertullian (De animâ, xxxv) calls a magician and a fornicator, was a contemporary of Basilides. One could only escape the cosmic powers through discharging one’s obligations to them by infamous conduct. To disregard all law and sink oneself into the Monad by remembering one’s pre-existence in the Cosmic Unit — such was the Gnosis of Carpocrates. His son Epiphanes followed his father’s doctrine so closely that he died in consequence of his sins at the age of seventeen. Antinomian views were further maintained by the Prodicians and Antitactae. No more ghastly instance of insane immorality can be found than the one mentioned Pistis Sophia itself as practised by some Gnostics. St. Justin (Apol., I, xxvi), Irenaeus (I, xxv, 3) and Eusebius (H.E., IV, vii) make it clear that “the reputation of these men brought infamy upon the whole race of Christians”.

LITERATURE

The Gnostics developed an astounding literary activity, which produced a quantity of writings far surpassing contemporary output of Catholic literature. They were most prolific in the sphere of fiction, as it is safe to say that three-fourths of the early Christians romances about Christ and His disciples emanated from Gnostic circles. Besides these — often crude and clumsy — romances they possessed what may be called “theosophic” treatises and revelations of a highly mystical character. These are best described as a stupefying roar of bombast occasionally interrupted by a few words of real sublimity. Traine remarks with justice: “Anyone who reads the teachings of the Gnostics breathes in an atmosphere of fever and fancies himself in a hospital, amongst delirious patients, who are lost in gazing at their own teeming thought and who fix their lustrous eyes on empty space” (Essais de crit. et d’histoire, Paris, 1904). Gnostic literature, therefore, possesses little or no intrinsic value, however great its value for history and psychology. It is of unparalleled importance in the study of the surroundings in which Christianity first arose. The bulk of it is unfortunately no longer extant. With the exception of some Coptic translations and some expurgated or Catholicized Syriac versions, we possess only a number of fragments of what once must have formed a large library. Most of this literature will be found catalogued under the names of Gnostic authors in the articles BASILIDES; BARDESANES; CERINTHUS; MARCION; SIMON MAGUS; PTOLEMY; VALENTINUS. We shall enumerate in the following paragraphs only anonymous Gnostic works and such writings as are not attributed to any of the above authors.

The Nicolaites possessed “some books under the name of Jaldabaoth”, a book called “Nôria” (the mythical wife of Noe), prophecy of Barcabbas, who was a soothsayer among the Basilidians, a “Gospel of the Consummation”, and a kind of apocalypse called “the Gospel of Eva” (Epiph., Adv. Haer., xxv, xxvi; Philastr., 33). The Ophites possessed “thousands” of apocrypha, as Epiphanius tells us; among these he specially mentions: “Questions of Mary, great and small” (some of these questions are perhaps extant in the Pistis Sophia); also many books under the name of “Seth”, “Revelations of Adam”, Apocryphal Gospels attributed to Apostles; an Apocalypse of Elias, and a book called “Genna Marias”. Of these writings some revelations of Adam and Seth, eight in number, are probably extant in an Armenian translation, published in the Mechitarist collection of the Old-Testament apocrypha (Venice, 1896). See Preuschen “Die apocryph. Gnost. Adamschr.” (Giessen, 1900). The Cainites possessed a “Gospel of Judas”, an “Ascension of Paul” (anabatikon Paulou) and some other book, of which we do not know the title, but which, according to Epiphanius, was full of wickedness. The Prodicians, according to Clem. Alex., possessed apocrypha under the name of Zoroaster (Strom., I, xv, 69). The Antinomians had an apocryphon “full of audacity and wickedness” (Strom., III, iv, 29; Origen, “In Matth,”, xxviii). The Naassenes had a book out of which Hippolytus largely quotes, but of which we do not know the title. It contained a commentary on Bible texts, hymns, and psalms. The Peratae possessed a similar book. The Sethians possessed a “Paraphrasis Seth”, consisting of seven books, explanatory of their system, a book called Allogeneis, or “Foreigners”, an “Apocalypse of Adam”, a book attributed to Moses, and others. The Archontians possessed a large and small book entitled “Symphonia”; this possibly extant in Pitra’s “Analecta Sacra” (Paris, 1888). The Gnostics attacked by Plotinus possessed apocrypha attributed to Zoroaster, Zostrian, Nichotheus, Allogenes (the Sethian Book “Allogeneis”?), and others.

In addition to these writings the following apocrypha are evidently of Gnostic authorship: “The Gospel of the Twelve” — This is first referred to by Origen (Hom. I, in Luc.), is identical with the Gospel of the Ebionites, and is also called the “Gospel according to Matthew”, because in it Christ refers to St. Matthew in the second person, and the author speaks of the other Apostles and himself as “we”. This Gospel was written before A.D. 200, and has no connection with the so-called Hebrew St. Matthew or the Gospel according to the Hebrews. “The Gospel according to the Egyptians”, i.e. Christian countryfolk of Egypt, not Alexandrians. It was written about A.D. 150 and referred to by Clem. Alex. (Strom., III, ix, 63; xiii, 93) and Origen (Hom. I, in Luc), and was largely used in non-Catholic circles. Only small fragments are extant in Clem. Alex. (Strom. and Excerp. ex Theod.). Some people have referred the Oxyrhynchus “Logia” and the Strasburg Coptic papyri to this Gospel, but this is a mere guess. “The Gospel of Peter”, written about A.D. 140 in Antioch (see DOCETAE).Another Petrine Gospel, see description of the Ahmin Codex. A “Gospel of Matthias” written about A.D. 125, used in Basilidian circles (see BASILIDES). A “Gospel of Philip” and a “Gospel of Thomas”. According to the Pistis Sophia, the three Apostles Matthew [read Matthias], Thomas, and Philip received a Divine commission to report all Christ’s revelations after His Resurrection. The Gospel of Thomas must have been of considerable length (1300 lines); part of it, in an expurgated recension, is possibly extant in the once popular, but vulgar and foolish, “Stories of the Infancy of Our Lord by Thomas, an Israelite philosopher”, of which two Greek, as Latin, a Syriac, and a Slavonic version exist. “Acts of Peter” (Praxis Petrou), written about A.D. 165. Large fragments of this Gnostic production have been preserved to us in the original Greek and also in a Latin translation under the title of “Martyrdom of the Holy Apostle Peter”, to which the Latin adds, “a Lino episcopo conscriptum”. Greater portions of this apocryphon are translated in the so-called “Actus Petri cum Simone”, and likewise in Sahidic and Slavonic, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions. These fragments have been gathered by Lipsius and Bonnet in “Acta apostolorum apocr.” (Leipzig, 1891), I. Though these recensions of the “Acts of Peter” have been somewhat Catholicized, their Gnostic character is unmistakable, and they are of value for Gnostic symbolism. Closely connected with the “Acts of Peter” are the “Acts of Andrew” and the “Acts of John”, which three have perhaps one and the same author, a certain Leucius Charinus, and were written before A.D. 200. They have come down to us in a number of Catholic recensions and in different versions. For the Acts of Andrew see Bonnet, “Acta”, as above (1898), II, 1, pp. 1-127; for “Acts of John”, ibid., pp. 151-216. To find the primitive Gnostic form in the bewildering variety and multiplicity of fragments and modifications is still a task for scholars. Of paramount importance for the understanding of Gnosticism are the “Acts of Thomas”, as they have been preserved in their entirety and contain the earliest Gnostic ritual, poetry, and speculation. They exist in two recensions, the Greek and the Syriac. It seems most likely, though not certain, that the original was Syriac; it is suggested that they were written about A.D. 232, when the relics of St. Thomas were translated to Edessa. Of the greatest value are the two prayers of Consecration, the “Ode to Wisdom” and the “Hymn of the Soul”, which are inserted in the Syriac narrative, and which are wanting in the Greek Acts, though independent Greek texts of these passages are extant (Syriac with English translation by W. Wright, “Apocr. Acts of the Apost.”, London, 1871). The “Hymn to the Soul” has been translated many times into English, especially, by A. Bevan, “Texts and Studies”, Cambridge 1897; cf. F. Burkitt in “Journal of Theological Studies” (Oxford, 1900). The most complete edition of the Greek Acts is by M. Bonnet in “Acta”, as above, II, 2 (Leipzig, 1903; see BARDESANES). The Acts, though written in the service of Gnosticism, and full of the weirdest adventures, are not entirely without an historical background. There are a number of other apocrypha in which scholars have claimed to find traces of Gnostic authorship, but these traces are mostly vague and unsatisfactory. In connection with these undoubtedly Gnostic apocrypha mention must be made of the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies. It is true that these are more often classed under Judaistic than under strictly Gnostic literature, but their affinity to Gnostic speculations is at least a first sight so close and their connection with the Book of Elxai (cf. ELCESAITES) so generally recognized that they cannot be omitted in a list of Gnostic writings. If the theory maintained by Dom Chapman in “The Date of the Clementines” (Zeitschrift f. N. Test. Wiss., 1908) and in the article CLEMENTINES in the Catholic Encyclopedia be correct, and consequently Pseudo-Clemens be a crypto-Arian who wrote A.D. 330, the “Homilies” might still have at least some value in the study of Gnosticism. But Dom Chapman’s theory, though ingenious, is too daring and as yet too unsupported, to justify the omission of the “Homilies” in this place.

A great, if not the greatest, part of Gnostic literature, which has been saved from the general wreck of Gnostic writings, is preserved to us in three Coptic codices, commonly called the Askew, the Bruce, and the Akhmim Codex. The Askew Codex, of the fifth of sixth century, contains the lengthy treatise “Pistis Sophia”, i.e. Faith-Wisdom. This is a work in four books, written between A.D. 250 and 300; the fourth book, however, is an adaptation of an earlier work. The first two books describe the fall of the Æon Sophia and her salvation by the Æon Soter; the last two books describe the origin of sin and evil and the need of Gnostic repentance. In fact the whole is a treatise on repentance, as the last two books only applyin practice the example of penance set by Sophia. The work consists of anumber of questions and answers between Christ and His male and female disciples in which five “Ode of Solomon”, followed by mystical adaptationsof the same, are inserted. As the questioning is mostly don by Mary, the Pistis Sophia is probably identical with the “Questions of Mary” mentioned above. The codex also contains extracts from the “Book of the Saviour”. The dreary monotony of these writings can only be realized by those who have read them. An English translation of the Latin translation of the Coptic, which itself is a translation of the Greek, was made by G.R.S. Mead (London, 1896). The Bruce papyrus is of about the same date as the Askew vellum codex and contains two treatises: the two books of Jeû, the first speculative and cosmogonic, the second practical, viz., the overcoming of the hostile world powers and the securing of salvation by the practice of certain rites: this latter book is styled “Of the Great Logos according to the mystery”. A treatise with unknown title, as the firstand last pages are lost. This work is of a purely speculative character and of great antiquity, written between A.D. 150 and 200 in Sethian or Archontian circles, and containing a reference to the prophets Marsanes, Nikotheus, and Phosilampes. No complete English translations of these treatises exist; some passages, however, are translated in the aforesaid G.R.S. Mead’s “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten”. Both the Bruce and Askew Codices have been translated into German by C. Schmidt (1892) in “Texte u. Unters” and (1901) in the Berlin “Greek Fathers”. A Latin translation exists of the “Pistis Sophia” by Schwartze and Petermann (Berlin, 1851) and a French one of the Bruce Codex by Amélineau (Paris, 1890). The Akhmim Codex of the fifth century, found in 1896, and now in the Egyptian Museum at Berlin, contains a “Gospel of Mary”, called in the subscriptions “An Apocryphon of John”: this Gospel must be of the highest antiquity, as St. Irenaeus, about A.D. 170, made use of it in his description of the Barbelo-Gnostics; a “Sophia Jesu Christi”, containing revelations of Christ after His Resurrection; a “Praxis Petri”, containing a fantastic relation of the miracle worked on Peter’s daughter. The study of Gnosticism is seriously retarded by the entirely unaccountable delay in the publication of these treatises; for these thirteen years past we possess only the brief account of this codex published in the “Sitzungsber. d. k. preus. Acad.” (Berlin, 1896), pp. 839-847.

This account of Gnostic literature would be incomplete without reference to a treatise commonly published amongst the works of Clement of Alexandria and called “Excerpta ex Theodoto”. It consists of a number of Gnostic extracts made by Clement for his own use with the idea of future refutation; and, with Clement’s notes and remarks on the same, form a very confusing anthology. See O. Bibelius, “Studien zur Gesch. der Valent.” in “Zeitschr. f. N. Nest. Wiss.” (Giessen, 1908).

Oriental non-Christian Gnosticism has left us the sacred books of the Mandaeans, viz., the “Genzâ rabâ” or “Great Treasure”, a large collectionof miscellaneous treatises of different date, some as late, probably, asthe ninth, some as early, perhaps, as the third century. The Genzâ was translated into Latin, by Norberg (Copenhagen, 1817), and the most important treatises into German, by W. Brandt (Leipzig, 1892). Kolasta, Hymns and Instructions on baptism and the journey of the soul, published in Mandaean by J. Euting (Stuttgart, 1867). Drâshê d’Jahya, a biography of John the Baptist “ab utero useque ad tumulum” — as Abraham Echellensis puts it — not published. Alexandrian non-Christian Gnosticism is perceptible in Trismegistic literature, published in English translation by G.R.S. Mead (London and Benares, 1902, three volumes). Specifically Jewish Gnosticism left no literature, but Gnostic speculations have an echo in several Jewish works, such as the Book of Enoch, the Zohar the Talmudic treatise Chagiga XV. See Gförer, “Philo”, Vol. I, and Karppe, “Etudes sur. ore. nat. d. Zohar” (Paris, 1901).

REFUTATION OF GNOSTICISM

From the first Gnosticism met with the most determined opposition from the Catholic Church. The last words of the aged St. Paul in his First Epistle to Timothy are usually taken as referring to Gnosticism, which is described as “Profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called [antitheseis tes pseudonomou gnoseos — the antitheses of so-called Gnosis] which some professing have erred concerning the faith”. Most probably St. Paul’s use of the terms pleroma, the æon of this world, the archon of the power of the air, in Ephesians and Colossians, was suggested by the abuse of these terms by the Gnostics. Other allusions to Gnosticism in the New Testament are possible, but cannot be proven, such as Tit., iii, 9; I Tim., iv, 3; I John, iv, 1-3. The first anti-Gnostic writer was St. Justin Martyr (d. c. 165). His “Syntagma” (Syntagma kata pason ton gegenemenon aireseon), long thought lost, is substantially contained in the “Libellus adv. omn. haeres.”, usually attached to Tertullian’s “De Praescriptione”; such at least is the thesis of J. Kunze (1894) which is largely accepted. Of St. Justin’s anti-Gnostic treatise on the Resurrection (Peri anastaseos) considerable fragments are extant in Methodius’ “Dialogue on the Resurrection” and in St. John Damascene’s “Sacra Parellela”. St. Justin’s “Comendium against Marcion”, quoted by St. Irenaeus (IV, vi, 2; V, xxvi, 2), is possibly identical with his Syntagma”. Immediately after St. Justin, Miltiades, a Christian philosopher of Asia Minor, is mentioned by Tertullian and Hippolytus (Adv. Valent., v, and Eus., H.E., V., xxviii, 4) as having combated the Gnostics and especially the Valentinians. His writings are lost. Theophilus of Antioch (d. c. 185) wrote against the heresy of Hermogenes, and also an excellent treatise against Marcion (kata Markionos Logos). The book against Marcion is probably extant in the “Dialogus de rectâ in Deum fide” of Pseudo-Origen. For Agrippa Castor see BASILIDES. Hegesippus, a Palestinian, traveled by way of Corinth to Rome, where he arrived under Anicetus (155-166), to ascertain the sound and orthodox faith from Apostolic tradition. He met many bishops on his way, who all taught the same faith and in Rome he made a list of the popes from Peter to Anicetus. In consequence he wrote five books of Memoirs (Upomnemata) “in a most simple style, giving the true tradition of Apostolic doctrine”, becoming “a champion of the truth against the godless heresies” (Eus., H.E., IV, vii sqq., xxi sqq.). Of this work only a few fragments remain, and these are historical rather than theological. Rhodon, a disciple of Tatian, Philip, Bishop of Gortyna in Crete, and a certain Modestus wrote against Marcion, but their writings are lost. Irenaeus (Adv., Haer., I, xv, 6) and Epiphanius (xxxiv, 11) quote a short poem against the Oriental Valentinians and the conjuror Marcus by “an aged” but unknown author; and Zachaeus, Bishop of Caesarea, is said to have written against the Valentinians and especially Ptolemy.

Beyond all comparison most important is the great anti-Gnostic work of St. Irenaeus, Elegchos kai anatrope tes psudonymou gnoseos, usually called “Adversus Haereses”. It consists of five books, evidently not written at one time; the first three books about A.D. 180; the last two about a dozen years later. The greater part of the first book has come down to us in the original Greek, the rest in a very ancient and anxiously close Latin translation, and some fragments in Syriac. St. Irenaeus knew the Gnostics from personal intercourse and from their own writings and gives minute descriptions of their systems, especially of the Valentinians and Barbelo-Gnostics. A good test of how St. Irenaeus employed his Gnostic sources can be made by comparing the newly found “Evangelium Mariae” with Adv. Haer., I, xxiv. Numerous attempts to discredit Irenaeus as a witness have proved failures (see SAINT IRENAEUS). Besides his great work, Irenaeus wrote an open letter to the Roman priest Florinus, who thought of joining the Valentinians; and when the unfortunate priest had apostatized, and had become a Gnostic, Irenaeus wrote on his account a treatise “On the Ogdoad”, and also a letter to Pope Victor, begging him to use his authority against him. Only a few passages of these writings are extant. Eusebius (H.E., IV, xxiii, 4) mentions a letter of Dionysius of Corinth (c. 170) to the Nicomedians, in which he attacks the heresy of Marcion. The letter is not extant. Clement of Alexandria (d. c. 215) only indirectly combated Gnosticism by defending the true Christian Gnosis, especially in “Paedagogos”, Bk. I, “Stromateis”, Bk. II, III, V, and in the so-called eighth book or “Excerpta ex Theodoto”. Origen devoted no work exclusively to the refutation of Gnosticism but his four books “On First Principles” (Peri archon), written about the year 230, and preserved to us only in some Greek fragments and a free Latin translation by Rufinus, is practically a refutation of Gnostic dualism, Doectism, and Emanationism. About the year 300 an unknown Syrian author, sometimes erroneously identified with Origen, and often called by the literary pseudonym Adamantius, or “The Man of Steel”, wrote a long dialogue of which the title is lost, but which is usually designated by the words, “De rectâ in Deum fide”. This dialogue, usually divided into five books, contains discussions with representatives of two sects of Marcionism, of Valentinianism, and of Bardesanism. The writer plagiarizes extensively from Theophilus of Antioch and Methodius of Olympus, especially the latter’s anti-Gnostic dialogue “On Free Will” (Peri tou autexousiou).

The greatest anti-Gnostic controversialist of the early Christian Church is Tertullian (b. 169), who practically devoted his life to combating this dreadful sum of all heresies. We need but mention the titles of his anti-Gnostic works: “De Praescriptione haereticorum”; “Adversus Marcionem”; a book “Adversus Valentinianos”; “Scorpiace”; “De Carne Christi”; “De Resurrectione Carnis”; and finally “Adversus Praxeam”. A storehouse of information rather than a refutation is the great work of Hippolytus, written some time after A.D. 234, once called “Philosophoumena” and ascribed to Origen, but since the discovery of Books IV-X, in 1842, known by the name if its true author and its true title, “Refutation of All Heresies” (katapason aireseon elegchos) The publication of the Athos Codex by E. Miller (Oxford, 1851) revolutionized the study of Gnosticism and rendered works published previous to that date antiquated and almost worthless. To students of Gnosticism this work is as indispensable as that of St. Irenaeus. There is an English translation by J. MacMahon in “The Ante-Nicene Library” (Edinburgh, 1868). Hippolytus tried to prove that all Gnosticism was derived from heathen philosophy; his speculations may be disregarded, but, as he was in possession of a great number of Gnostic writings from which he quotes, his information is priceless. As he wrote nearly fifty years after St. Irenaeus, whose disciple he had been, he describes a later development of Gnosis than the Bishop of Lyons. Besides his greater work, Hippolytus wrote, many years previously (before 217), a small compendium against all heresies, giving a list of the same, thirty-two in number, from Dositheus to Noetus; also a treatise against Marcion.

As, from the beginning of the fourth century, Gnosticism was in rapid decline, there was less need of champions of orthodoxy, hence there is a long interval between Adamantius’s dialogue and St. Epiphanius’s “Panarion”, begun in the year 374. St. Epiphanius, who is his youth was brought into closest contact with Gnostic sects in Egypt, and especially the Phibionists, and perhaps even, as some hold, belonged to this sect himself, is still a first-class authority. With marvelous industry he gathered information on all sides, but his injudicious and too credulous acceptance of many details can hardly be excused. Philastrius of Brescia, a few years later (383), gave to the Latin Church what St. Epiphanius had given to the Greek. He counted and described no fewer than one hundred and twenty-eight heresies, but took the word in a somewhat wide and vague sense. Though dependent on the “Syntagma” of Hippolytus, his account is entirely independent of that of Epiphanius. Another Latin writer, who probably lived in the middle of the fifth century in Southern Gaul, and who is probably identical with Arnobius the Younger, left a work, commonly called “Praedestinatus”, consisting of three books, in the first of which he describes ninety heresies from Simon Magus to the Praedestinationists. This work unfortunately contains many doubtful and fabulous statements. Some time after the Council of Chalcedon (451) Theodoret wrote a “Compendium of Heretical Fables” which is of considerable value for the history of Gnosticism, because it gives in a very concise and objective way the history of the heresies since the time of Simon Magus. St. Augustine’s book “De Haeresibus” (written about 428) is too dependent on Philastrius and Ephiphanius to be of much value. Amongst anti-Gnostic writers we must finally mention the neo-Platonist Plotinus (d. A.D. 270), who wrote a treatise “Against the Gnostics”. These were evidently scholars who frequented his collegia, but whose Oriental and fantastic pessimism was irreconcilable with Plotinus’s views.

CONCLUSION The attempt to picture Gnosticism as a mighty movement of the human mind towards the noblest and highest truth, a movement in some way parallel to that of Christianity, has completely failed. It has been abandoned by recent unprejudiced scholars such as W. Bousset and O. Gruppe, and it is to be regretted that it should have been renewed by an English writer, G.R.S. Mead, in “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten”, an unscholarly and misleading work, which in English-speaking countries may retard the sober and true appreciation of Gnosticism as it was in historical fact. Gnosticism was not an advance, it was a retrogression. It was born amidst the last throes of expiring cults and civilizations in Western Asia and Egypt. Though hellenized, these countries remained Oriental and Semitic to the core. This Oriental spirit — Attis of Asia Minor, Istar of Babylonia, Isis of Egypt, with the astrological and cosmogonic lore of the Asiatic world — first sore beset by Ahuramazda in the East, and then overwhelmed by the Divine greatness of Jesus Christ in the West, called a truce by the fusion of both Parseeism and Christianity with itself. It tried to do for the East what Neo-Platonism tried to do for the West. During at least two centuries it was a real danger to Christianity, though not so great as some modern writers would make us believe, as if the merest breath might have changed the fortunes of Gnostic, as against orthodox, Christianity. Similar things are said of Mithraism and neo-Platonism as against the religion of Jesus Christ. But these sayings have more piquancy than objective truth. Christianity survived, and not Gnosticism, because the former was the fittest — immeasurably, nay infinitely, so. Gnosticism died not by chance, but because it lacked vital power within itself; and no amount of theosophistic literature, flooding English and German markets, can give life to that which perished from intrinsic and essential defects. It is striking that the two earliest champions of Christianity against Gnosticism — Hegesippus and Irenaeus — brought out so clearly the method of warfare which alone was possible, but which also alone sufficed to secure the victory in the conflict, a method which Tertullian some years later scientifically explained in his “De Praescriptione”. Both Hegesippus and Irenaeus proved that Gnostic doctrines did not belong to that deposit of faith which was taught by the true succession of bishops in the primary sees of Christendom; both in triumphant conclusion drew up a list of the Bishops of Rome, from Peter to the Roman bishop of their day; as Gnosticism was not taught by that Church with which the Christians everywhere must agree, it stood self-condemned. A just verdict on the Gnostics is that of O. Gruppe (Ausführungen, p. 162): the circumstances of the period gave them a certain importance. But a living force they never were, either in general history or in the history of Christendom. Gnosticism deserves attention as showing what mention dispositions Christianity found in existence, what obstacles it had to overcome to maintain its own life; but “means of mental progress it never was”.

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J.P. ARENDZEN Transcribed by Christine J. Murray

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VICopyright © 1909 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, September 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia

Gnosticism

A. Gnosis. The New-Testament writers were occasionally determined in their choice of prominent words by the expressions which were current among the people they addressed. Such words as logos and gnosis, having acquired a peculiar signification in the schools, were recognized by them, and appropriated to a sacred use. We concede, indeed, that the latter word () usually denotes in their writings simply what its etymology implies, the mere act of knowing, or the objective knowledge thus acquired. In those primitive times it was seldom that any systematic or scientific exposition of Christian truth was demanded. The contest was with reference to the simple facts of the Gospel, and Christianity was fain to secure an existence in the world before it had leisure to speculate upon abstract points. Not only was it unwise to divert men’s minds from, practical religion, but many true believers were too carnal to be intrusted with a higher wisdom. Paul, therefore, and his fellow-laborers determined to confine their apostolic ministrations to such a historical presentation of Jesus Christ and him crucified as might be called the simplest milk of the word. He declares, however (1Co 2:6), that he sometimes made known a higher wisdom among such as were perfect, though a wisdom, he is careful to say, very different from that which some heathen and Jewish philosophers had claimed. In other passages he applies the word gnosis to this kind of wisdom. He specifies “the word of knowledge” among those peculiar gifts of the Spirit which were possessed by the more eminent teachers (1Co 12:8), and commends a knowledge through which the more discerning believers rose above the fear of the heathen gods, and ate of the things offered to idols as of things in themselves indifferent (1Co 8:7). He speaks also of a gnosis falsely so called, and thus implies that there was another which truly deserved the name (1Ti 6:20). In subsequent times this use of the word became common, and great pains were taken to make obvious the distinction between the true ( ) and the false gnosis ( ). A lately (1715) discovered treatise of Irenaeus (entitled . . ), and an extended description of the true Gnostic at the close of the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria, have preserved to us the views of the Church on this subject near the close of the 2d century.

It was admitted on all sides that there was a knowledge of divine things superior to that of the multitude, not in its importance to the salvation of the soul, but in its intellectual power. It belonged not so much to the pulpit as to the schools, and was important not so much to the personal salvation as to the comfort and growth of believers, and to the acceptance of the Gospel among the more educated classes. It took up those facts which were objects of the common faith, and made them subjects of speculation and profound thought. It arranged them, drew from them logical conclusions, reconciled their apparent discrepancies with each other and with the conclusions of science, and applied them to long-agitated questions which were only hinted at, but not solved, in the Christian Scriptures. At this point, however, the true and the false gnosis separated, and took different directions. The former submitted itself without reserve to the authority of the Scriptures, and professed never to venture beyond what was written. It presented itself to all men without discrimination of natural talents or social condition. The latter claimed to be above the reach of the vulgar, and to be derived from sources superior to the written word. Clement describes the true Gnostic as one who grows gray in the study of the Scriptures. I A scientific culture may be indispensable to the higher departments of that study, and a true spiritual discernment can be acquired only by divine grace, but the natural talents which must be used in its acquisition have been given to all, and each one’s success will be proportioned to his prayerful diligence. The sources of knowledge, too, were the same for the humblest believer and the most eminent Gnostic, for all had access to the Scriptures and the common tradition () which had been transmitted in 11 the churches. The gnosis was. simply a faith made perfect, an expansion. of what faith had received, a building constructed wholly of materials supplied by faith. Its advocates made much use of a passage in Isa 7:9 (Sept.): “If ye believe not, neither shall ye understand;” from which they inferred not only that faith is indispensable to knowledge, but that knowledge should spring from faith. And yet it cannot be denied that many, especially of the Alexandrian school, gave an undue prominence to this higher knowledge, as if it were indispensable to all religion, and disparaged the great body of believers () as incapable of a true spiritual life, as in communion only with the Christ of an earthly and sensuous life, and as actuated only by a fear of punishment and a desire of personal benefits. The true Gnostic, on the other hand, they believed to be favored with such an intuitional faculty for the discernment of truth, and such a perpetual tuition under the divine Logos, that he could dispense, in a great degree, with outward demonstrations; and they claimed that his love of knowledge was so intense and disinterested, that if it could even be separated from his eternal salvation he would not hesitate still to choose it. The subjects on which they delighted to expatiate were chiefly: God, as he must be conceived of in his absolute being, the incarnation and redeeming work of Christ, the influence of these upon our race and upon other beings, the vast chain of existence between man and God, the fall of some links in this chain and their probable recovery, the origin of this world, the source of moral evil and its elimination from the universe, and the future history and destiny of all things. In the discussion of such themes, we need not be surprised to find that they not unfrequently transcended the province both of reason and of faith, and that some of their speculations were condemned by their more temperate brethren (Neander, Hist. 1:544-52; Hase, Hist. 85; Schaff, Hist. Christ. Church, volume 1, chapter 4).

B. Heretical Gnosticism.

I. General Character. The name Gnosticism has been applied to a variety of schools which had sometimes little in common except the assumption of a knowledge higher than that of ordinary believers. Most of them claimed a place in the Church, and complained bitterly when this was denied them; and yet they generally spoke of Christianity as insufficient to afford absolute truth, and not unfrequently they assumed a hostile attitude towards it. They seldom pretended to demonstrate the principles on which their systems were founded by historical evidence or logical reasonings, since they rather boasted that these were discovered by the intuitional powers of more highly endowed minds, and that the materials thus obtained, whether through faith or divine revelation, were then worked up into a scientific form according to each one’s natural power and culture. Their aim was to construct not merely a theory of redemption, but of the universe a cosmogony. No subject was beyond their investigations. Whatever God could reveal to the finite intellect, they looked upon as within their range. What to others seemed only speculative ideas, were by them hypostatized or personified into real beings or historical facts. It was in this way that they constructed systems of speculation on subjects entirely beyond the range of human knowledge, which startle us by their boldness and their apparent consciousness of reality.

II. External Origin. And yet we have reason to believe that Gnosticism originated no speculations which were essentially new. It only recognized and selected what seemed to it true in earlier systems, and then combined these fragments in new relations not in the way of a crude syncretism, but with mutual affinities and living power. No question, however, has more perplexed historians than that which refers to the direct origin of Gnosticism. We are in possession of scarcely any authenticated documents which have come down to us from persons living at the time and in countries in which it had its birth. We are dependent for our information respecting it almost entirely upon the representations of opponents, who knew almost nothing of Oriental systems, and were acquainted with it only in its maturity. Unfortunately, too, the question of the origin of Gnosticism has recently become complicated with others on which violent party feelings have been exercised. Those who have denied the apostolic origin of the epistles in which traces of Gnosticism have been discovered, have felt an interest in removing both the epistles and Gnosticism to as late a period as possible. From the discussion of this subject, however, there are some facts which may now be regarded as incontrovertible.

1. Ever since the conquests of Alexander the Great, an intense interest had been felt throughout Asia Minor and Egypt in Hellenistic philosophy and Oriental theosophy; and while the old mythologic fables and professed systems of positive revelation had lost their authority, many thoughtful persons had discovered under these what they looked upon as a uniting bond of truth and the elements of a universal religion.

2. The result was that, near the time of the first promulgation of Christianity, a number of new systems of religious philosophy sprung up independently in different countries, and exhibited similar characteristics. They were usually formed by incorporating with the national religion what seemed attractive elements in foreign systems, and softening down what was harsh and incredible in the popular faith and worship. In this way we discover a nearly simultaneous origin of the Judaistic philosophy at Alexandria, of Essenism and Therapeutism in Egypt and southern Palestine, of the Cabbalistic literature in Syria and the East, and of New Platonism among the Hellenistic nations. These were all offshoots from the same general root, and not necessarily deriving anything original, but unquestionably drawing much assistance from one another. Similar circumstances everywhere called forth similar phenomena with no conscious interdependence.

3. We thus account for the origin of Gnosticism, and easily reconcile the conflicting views of different writers respecting it. As the early ecclesiastical writers were themselves acquainted almost exclusively with Occidental literature, they ware in the habit of ascribing the rise of Gnosticism to the study of Grecian philosophy, and especially of Platonism, and they appeal to the cosmogonies of Hesiod and others for the exemplars of the Gnostic speculations. Modern historians, however, have found in most of the Gnostic systems such a predominance of Oriental elements, that- they have been led to infer a direct influence not merely from Alexandrian Judaism, but dualistic Parsism, and even from pantheistic Buddhism. There can, in fact, be no question regarding the influence of all these systems. The Platonic doctrines of a God, without distinctions in his nature, withdrawn entirely within himself, intelligible only to the initiated, and that only through the mediation of the Nous, a higher ideal sphere reflecting itself in a lower phenomenal world, a hyle () and an undefined dualism between it and God, a fall of spiritual beings from the divine to the sensuous sphere, the derivation of sin from a contact with the material element; the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers; the Brahminic doctrine of emanation eshypostatizing of the divine attributes; the Parsic representation of the divine essence as light. of a dualism in which God is subject to the continual aggression of a world of matter, and of a good principle in eternal conflict with the prince of darkness; and the Buddhist notions of a God in process of development, of souls longing to be freed from the bonds of matter, and to be raised above all sensible things, and reunited with the divine source of life, are all unmistakable, and indicative of their respective sources. We need not, however, suppose that these elements were derived directly from their original sources. The Alexandrian literature, in which most of these elements had found a place, was diffused among the educated classes in all those countries in which Gnosticism flourished, and might have been the mediating agency through which the mind of the East was brought into communication with that of the West. From the heterogeneous commingling of such diverse systems, and especially from their contact with the young energies of Christianity, the Gnostic spirit might easily draw forth such materials as suited its purpose. The sources of Gnosticism, however, like those of the Nile, are to a great extent concealed, and those who imagine they have discovered its principal head not unfrequently learn that another remains far beyond. As its friends boasted, there were secret agencies by which truth was conveyed to the elect race under symbols and an outward letter which only they could understand. (See Baxmann, in the Ames. Theol. Review for 1862, page 666-76).

III. Classification. It has been found very difficult to arrange the several Gnostic sects according to any principle of classification. They have been grouped together by different writers according to their origin, their geographical position, and their speculative views. Neander (Hist. Christ. Religion, 1:379-86) divides them into Judaizing and anti-Judaizing Gnostics, according to their agreement or opposition to ancient Judaism. Gieseler (Eccl. Hist. volume 1, 44) arranges them according to their geographical order, as Alexandrian, Syriac, and miscellaneous. Hase (Hist. Chr. Ch. 76) makes four classes, Syrian, Hellenistic, Judaizing, and specially Christian. Similar to this is Matter’s division into those of Svria, Asia Minor, Egypt, and the rest of the Roman world (Hist. crit. du Gnost.). Baur (Chr. Gnosis, 1835) arranges the several sects into three principal classes according to their relation to the three earlier religions with which they came in contact:

1. Those who combined Christianity with Judaism and heathenism;

2. Those who entirely separated it from them, and opposed it to them; and,

3. Those who identified it with Judaism, but opposed it to heathenism. This ingenious, and, in many respects, satisfactory division, fails to bring out the historical progress and internal development of the Gnostic systems, and offers no suitable place for Manichaeism. It has, however, found much favor on account of its simplicity, and has been adopted with some modificationss by Niedner, Marheineke (Weltalter, th. 2, page 246), Tennemann (Manual of the Hist. of Philippians 200), and others. Dr. Schaff proposes a classification, according to an ethical point of view, into the speculative and theosophic, the practical and ascetic; and the Antinomian and libertine (Hist. of the Chr. Ch. 1:234). It is evident that no classification can combine together a chronological local, and logical distribution, and hence we shall probably gain something by presenting these separately. IV. History. In attempting to give a historical outline of the course of Gnosticism, our object is not so much to present particular details of the several schools, since these will be found, as far as possible, under their several heads in this work, but to indicate in general the order and position of each. Lipsius, in a recent work (Gnosticism, its Essence, Origin, and Development, 1860), endeavors to show that this course of development was a curve which commenced with only a slight departure from orthodoxy, and, after diverging more and more from it, finally comes back again gradually to the true path. Another writer (Hilgenfeld) has attempted a distinct definition of the three stadia of this development. It is difficult to discover in the actual history the regularity of departure and return implied in such a figure, and yet we may derive from it a correct notion of the general direction. In the first stadium we have the Judaizing Gnostics, and then the several classes who, in their opposition to Judaism, deify nearly all the godless characters of the Old Testament. In the second we have not merely Old-Testament history, but Greek philosophy, a contempt of the common faith, the opposition of the psychic and pneumatic natures, and mythical personifications of speculative ideas. In the third and last stadium this opposition between the pneumatic and psychic natures begins to be modified, and finally, under the Marcionites, the Gnostic speculation approximates very nearly that of the more liberal Catholic teachers. It is in this last stadium that we find the greatest difficulty in seeing how the curve approximates with much uniformity the orthodox highway for some classes of the later Marcionaites, and, above all, the Manichees, seem rather to have been the extreme consummation of Gnosticism.

As there were strong tendencies towards Gnosticism both in Judaism and heathenism, we might reasonably infer that the Gnostics must have been powerfully attracted by Christianity. It was, however, more consistentwithethe essential spirit ofthat movement to attempt to mold the new system to its fancy than to submit with docility to the exclusive authority of the Gospel. Among the remnants of Oriental tribes in Samaria we are not surprised to find such a man as Simon, who succeeded in making the multitude believe that he was the great power of God. It is said that he called himself the creative world-spirit, and his female companion the receptive world-soul. We have here a likeness of the Gnostic doctrine of aeons and syzigies. In the tradition of the subsequent Church, this half- mythical personage became the patriarch of all heretics, but especially of heathen Gnostics (Irenaeus, Adv. haer. lib. 1, c. 27, 4; Hippol. 1:62 sq.). During the twenty years which intervened between the first Christian Pentecost and the later epistles of Paul, we know that theosophic speculations were everywhere prevalent in Syria and Asia Minor, and that these were strangely min-led with Christian doctrines. Great freedom was allowed to religious thought, even among the early Christians, as long as the moral and religious life of the people was not perverted. But Paul very soon discovered dangerous tendencies in the churches which he had recently established in Asia Minor. Josephus tells us that Alexander the Great had sent into the provinces of Lydiae and Phrygia 2000 Mesopotamian and Babylonian Jewes to garrison the disaffected towns there, and. we are informed that the inhabitants of that region have always since been prone to mystical and Oriental superstitions (Alford, How to use the Epistles, Epistle to the Colossians, Sunday Mag. 1867, page 829). The errors which he reproved at Colossae were doubtless a curious commixture of Jewish and heathen speculations. The ancient historian Hegesippus informs us (Euseb. Eccl. Hist. 3:32) that the heretical gnosis did not make its appearance with an uncovered head until after the death of the apostles, but that it previously worked in secret. After all the contentions of various writers on the question how far this error prevailed in apostolic times, there is a general agreement that, while most of the heresies of that period were Judaistic, there was an obvious difference between those reproved in the Galatian churches and those noticed in the epistles to the Colossians and Timothy. The latter are treated much more mildly, and we readily perceive that they must have been much less developed and less subversive of the Christian system. They are expressly called (1Ti 6:20) a false gnosis, and were characterized by empty sounds without sense and subtle oppositions to the truth, a depreciation of the body, sand a worship of angels (Col 2:18; Col 2:23), and interminable genealogies and myths (1Ti 1:4).

These seem more akin to Jewish than to heathen speculations, and imply not the completed Gnosticism of the second century, but the manifest germs of Docetic emanations and Gnostic dualism. Irenseus, on the authority of Polycarp, relates (Adv. haer. 1:26) that John was acquainted with Cerinthus, and wrote the fourth gospel to refute his errors. Both he and Epiphanius (Haer. page 28) say that Cerinthu’s taught that the world was not made by the Most High God, but by a lower power, or by angels, and that Jesus was an ordinary man, whom the supreme Logos became united with at his baptism, but forsook during his last sufferings, to reunite with him in the future kingdom of Messianic glory. SEE CERINTHUS.

Here the Gnosticism becomes plainly perceptible, and we can certainly understand a number of passages in John’s Gospel and Epistles better if we suppose a reference in them to these and similar errors. The Nicohaitans of the Apocalypse and the false teachers of the Epistle of Jude despised Judaism as the work of evil angels, ridiculed and trampled upon the law that they might insult these limited powers, and thus fell into a strange complication of gross licentiousness and bodily mortifications (Burton, Heresies of the Apost. Age; Potter in the old and W.L. Alexander in the new edition of Kitto’s Cycop.; Conybeare, in Conybeare and Howson’s Life of St. Paul, note at the end of volume 1. Comp. C.C. Tittmanns, De vestigiis Gnosticor. in N.T. frustra quaesitis, Leips. 1773; transl. and publ. in Contributions to Foreign Literature, New York, 1827). No sooner bad the direct influence of the apostles and their immediate successors ceased than the speculative interest and numbers of the Gnostics began to increase mightily. Near the commencement of the 2d century, flourished about the same time Basilides in Alexandria and his son Isidore SEE BASILIDES, the dualistic and ascetic Saturninus in Antioch, Carpocratesaof Alexandria, and his son Epiphanes. The last two maintained that every one who could soar to the same height of contemplation might attain the same powers with Christ, and that Christ differed in no respect from the wise and good of all nations. About the same time we first become acquainted with the party commonly called Ophites, though Origen says that it was founded by a certain Euphrates, who must have lived as early as the time of Christ. Their common appellation (Ophites, Heb. Naasenes) was given them by their opponents (for they always called themselves simply Gnostics), because they were said to pay great honor to the serpent as the instrument of the temptation in Eden. As the prohibition then transgressed was designed to keep man back from knowledge, what is commonly called the Fall was, in fact, a transition to a higher state. When first known they resided principally in Egypt and in Phrygia. They afterwards became numerous, sand branched off into various subdivisions. SEE OPHITES.

Great differences however, are discoverable between those who bear the same name. In the next generation (A.D. 140-160) belongs Valentinus, who flourished first in Egypt and then in Rome, and finally died in the island of Cyprus (about A.D. 160). The school named after him was the most influential of all the Gnostic parties, and contained a large number of talented and eminent teachers. It was divided into an Oriental and an Italian branch, in both of which was inculcated a highly exalted style of religion. Among its most esteemed writers may be mentioned Heracleon of Alexandria, who wrote a commentary on John’s Gospel, some extracts from which, preserved in Origen, admirably bring out the profound spirit of this evangelist; Ptolemy, whose epistle to Flora has come down to us in Epiphanius, and’ endeavors to show that his system was not inconsistent with the Catholic faith; Marcus, probably a Jew of Palestine, in whose poetic and symbolical work divine sons discourse in liturgical forms; and Bardesanes, an Armenian of Edessa (about 170), who, with his son Harmonius, was immensely popsular as a writer of hymns and imitations of David’s Psalms. (See the articles under these names.) Contemporary with Valentinus lived Cerdon, a Syrian, and his pupil Marcion of Sinope, in Pontus, who carried their zeal for Pauline and primitive Christiatnity to such an extreme that they rejected not only as secret traditions, but large portions of the New Testament. They opposed heathen religions as the work of the devil, and Judaism as the product of an inferior and wrathful deity, who was to be put down by Christ and the revelation through him of the supreme God. Kindred with him were Apelles of Alexandria, and his pupils Lucas and Marcus, who approximated still nearer a Christian orthodoxy, though with singular inconsistencies. Tatian, a Syrian, a rhetorician in Rome, during the latter part of his life is said to have fallen into Gnostic errors, and to have prescribed a system of extreme abstinence as the only means of disengaging ourselves from the world. A party of Encratites, calling themselves by his name or by that of his pupil Severus, continued as late as the 4th century. A class of persons represented by the Clementine Homilies at Rome, and sometimes reckoned among the Gnostics, ought rather to be classed with the Ebionites. SEE CLEMENTINES.

We now come in contact with several classes of the Ophites, many of whom, according to Origen, went so far in their opposition to ordinary views that they admitted none to their assemblies who did not curse Christ (Neander, 1:446 sq.). The whole system of the God of the Jews was looked upon by this sect as oppressive to man, and whoever is represented in the scriptural history as rebelling against it were regarded as saints. Hence some of the worst characters of the Old and New Testament were held in the highest honor. Even Jesus was reckoned among agents of the Jewish Jehovah, and his betrayal by Judas Iscariot was extolled as done with the best of motives and results. Those who maintained this position were called Cainites, while such as dissented from such extravagances were distinguished as Sethites. The Perates, who have recently become known to us through the Philosophoumena, appear to have approximated much nearer the Catholic doctrine. During the 3d century Gnosticism appears to have lost its power, for the orthodox party had now attained more scientific precision of thought, and their formulas of faith presented scriptural doctrine in a style consistent with the highest culture of the age. Towards the close of that century, however, arose in the distant East one more attempt to combine Christianity with Oriental theosophy. Manicheeism sprang up in a region where neither Hellenism nor Judaism was familiar; and its object appears to have been to reform the corrupted Parsism of that day by incorporating with the original system of Zoroaster numerous elements taken from a gnosticized Christianity and Buddhism. To Christianity, however, it seems to have been indebted more for its names and symbols than for its essential history or characters. Personages and facts taken from scriptural records find in that system an entirely new significance. Its founder (Mani or Manes, a Magian banished from Persia) discovered many points of agreement between the doctrines of Parsism, Buddhism and Gnostic Christianity, and endeavored to combine these three systems into one universal religion. He accounted for all things on dualistic principles. His followers were soon driven by persecution from their earliest seats, but were numerous during the fourth century in every part of the East, and in Africa, Sicily, and Italy. Many persons of noble spirit were attracted by it, but it soon fell into gross licentiousness by its professed exaltation above outward things, and of course lost its place in common esteem, and fell into contempt. Some vestiges, however, both of Marcionism and Manichaeism, remained even into the Middle Ages, and by means of the Priscillianists, the Paulicians, the Bogomiles, and the Cathari, transmitted the leading features of Gnosticism to distant ages and countries.

Many of these sects can hardly be recognized as within the pale of Christianity. While some of them claimed a place within the Church, and refused to leave it when they were disowned by its authorities, others openly abjured the Christian name. Certainly such complete subverters of the essentials of the Gospel as the Carpocratians, Perates, Sethites, Cainites, and Manichaeans deserve to be called rather gnosticized heathen than Christian Gnostics. In the history of the Church they deserve a place only because they, like other heathen, influenced it from without. In a history of Gnosticism even these must have no unimportant position. Indeed, no history of this system is quite complete without embracing some still more remote systems Cabbalistic Judaism, Neo-Platonism, etc., which had their origin under Gnostic influences. V. General Principles. The ultimate aim of Gnosticism was to present a perfect solution of the great problem of the origin and destiny of the universe, and especially of the origin of evil, , . The three ideas which were fundamental to all its speculations were:

1. A supreme being, unconnected with matter, and incapable of being affected by it;

2. Matter, , eternal,, the source of evil, and opposed to God; and,

3. A series of beings intermediate between these two

The primary source of all spiritual existence was an eternal abyss (), so utterly beyond human representation that no one should venture to name him, or even to conceive of him. He was the absolute one, and virtually and logically non-existent ( ). In his nature, however, there was some inconceivable ground of self-evolution (), in consequence of which his infinite powers became revealed in a series of aeons, or hypostatized divine attributes. It is only through these that he can have communication with finite natures. They are called aeons () because they are eternal ones, representing the eternal Source of all (). According to Valentinus, they emanated in pairs (syzigies) of different sexes. Basilides and Marcion ascribed their existence to an act of love and to a creative word, but the more pantheistic sects to a necessary process of emanation which is usually spoken of as by generation. Their number varies in different systems; sometimes it is determined by planetary relations (12), sometimes by the days of the year (365), sometimes by the years in the life of Christ (32), but not unfrequently it is left indefinite. The first eons were Nous, Logos, Sophia, Dunamis, Aletheia, Zoe, etc., generated either by the original being or by one another in ever-increasing imperfection as they recede from their source. Together they constitute the Pleroma, the world of light and divine fullness, but far removed from the infinite abyss with which none can directly communicate.

2. Over against this Pleroma and this eternal abyss stands the world of matter (), sometimes contradistinguished as the Kenoma, or the world of emptiness or darkness. This was usually spoken of as eternal, but chaotic, and disordered by internal strifes. It was generally described as far removed from the kingdom of light, but sometimes as very near, and even on the confines of that kingdom. Some conceived of it as dead and powerless until it became animated by influences from the Pleroma, but others, and especially Manes and his followers, represented it as active and aggressive. According to the former, one of the lowest and feeblest of the divine sons (called by Valentinus Sophia, the lower wisdom or Achamoth, the in distinction from the ) fell from the abode of light and came under the power of matter. Though Valentinus makes this, to some extent, a free act of apostasy on the part of the divine eon, as she was wandering beyond the bounds of the Pleroma, and agitated by her intense desire to get out of her proper sphere and enter into more direct communication with the infinite Source, it was usually described as the result of an incapacity to retain a hold upon the superior world, and a consequent precipitation into the darkness of the Kenoma.

3. At this point we meet with the idea of the Demiurge. The name signifies a public worker (), and le esi the same with the Avelion of Basilides and the Jaldabaoth (, the chaosborn) of the Ophites. He came into being from the commingling of the light-nature in the Sophia (the ) with matter. As the fruit of such a parentage, he was possessed of a nature neither pneumatic nor material, but psychical, and he occupies an intermediate position between the supreme God and the material world. He is not, of course, an evil, but only a limited and imperfect being, and yet evil springs from the defects of his work and of his plans. He acts in general with sincerity according to his power and light. By him the chaos of matter was transformed into an organized universe. The planetary heavens, and the sidereal spirits who are over them, and the whole course of the world, are under his control. In all this, however, he is the unconscious instrument of higher powers in the world of light, who secretly influence all his movements. Of this control he finally and gradually became aware, and by some teachers he is said to have become vexed and goaded into opposition by the discovery, and by others to have gladly welcomed and submitted to it. He was the author of Judaism, and to some extent of Christianity; and hence by many Gnostics the former system was looked upon as defective, if not false, and even the latter, especially in its mere letter, as incapable of imparting the highest wisdom. Only by Marcion was he regarded as entirely independent of the supreme God in the work of creation and providence, since he was here in a department which belonged wholly to him. He remained the God of this world until the coming of Christ, who vanquished him at the crucifixion.

4. With respect to anthropology, the Gnostics held that the whole kingdom of the Demiurge was fallen. He was himself the creature of a fallen eon, and the world he created and rules is subject to imperfection. From his connection with matter there was produced a human race, which in its totality is a microcosm, representing within itself the three principles of the great universe, the supreme God, the Demiurge, and matter. This was inconsequence of the creation of three classes of men, higher or lower in proportion to their freedom from matter. Marcion alone made this distinction dependent upon the will of man himself; the other Gnostics made it a result of creation, or of a divine communication of the spark of light and life from the upper world. The highest of these, i.e., the spiritual (), share largely in the nature of the lowest aeon (), who originally fell from the Pleroma, and hence they are the only ones who can attain perfection. They alone are capable of recognizing and receiving the light which is communicated from above. The second class, the psychical (), have the nature of the Demiurge himself, who has power to raise them to some extent above the debasement of matter, and, by giving them legal forms, to impart to them a legal righteousness, but not to afford them a recognition of those divine mysteries which are beyond his own reach. The third class are the fleshly or hylic (, ) natures, in whom matter has usurped human form and passion (), has entire control, and who are therefore destined to share the fortunes of matter alone. Historically, the spiritual predominated under the Christian dispensation, the psychical under the Jewish, and the fleshly among the heathen of all ages. Individuals, however, of each class are numerous under all these dispensations. In the aristocratic spirit of ancient Platonism, many Gnostics allowed of no transition from the one to the other of these classes, while others looked upon it as possible for the lower to rise to the higher in consequence of a divine communication of special powers.

5. The Gnostic idea of redemption was simply that of a liberation of the light-spirit from its connection with matter. Of course it is confined to the two higher classes of our race in whom that spirit is found. In every condition of humanity, some favored individuals are represented as sighing for deliverance. In this way were explained some glimpses of a higher knowledge, which break forth at intervals in the prophecies and psalms of the Jewish Scriptures, and in the writings of pagan philosophers. Some sparks of light were supposed to have been thrown into the breasts of nobler persons, and the rational creation, as a whole (), is represented as sighing for redemption (Rom 8:22). A recently discovered work (Pistis Sophia) contains the penitential sighings and longings of the neon () when she had herself fallen from her original condition of divine intuition to that of mere faith. In pity for this sighing spirit, Christ, one of the highest of all the aeons, descends, and brings her, after innumerable sufferings, back to the Pleroma, and undertakes the deliverance of all pneumatic natures. To accomplish this, he assumes, not a material form, since he can have no contact with matter, but only the appearance of one. In answer to the longings of the Jews, the Demiurge had promised and actually sent among them a Messiah with only psychical powers. Most of the Gnostics suppose that the heavenly Christ (Soter) took possession of this Messiah, who had proved himself unable to accomplish what had been promised in his behalf, and that from the baptism by John until the crucifixion this true Redeemer acted through this personage. Some, however, held that the man Jesus, with whom the aeon Christ then became connected, combined in his own nature all human elements with the powers of an aetherial spirit. As this Christ cannot suffer, everything in him which seemed like it, or like any imperfection, was either a docetic illusion, or wholly in the human personage with which he was united: This work of Christ, however, commenced not wholly with the life of Jesus, but, to some extent, with creation itself, in which the Redeemer inspired the unconscious Demiurge with many divine ideas, and during the whole process of the world’s government he is drawing congenial spirits to himself, and correcting many errors of the world-ruler. His redeeming work, however, is effected entirely by the communication of the Gnosis, and especially the revelation of the true God. In the end, all pneumatic and psychical natures capable of redemption will be gathered and raised to the Pleroma. Valentinus supposes that all psychical natures are exalted only to a lower degree of blessedness in a peculiar kingdom of the Demiurge. Matter with all fleshly natures will either be consumed by its own powers, or sink back into its original condition of utter deadness and absolute separation from the light, or of internal confusion.

6. The sources from which the Gnostics professed to derive their knowledge were,

(a.) Tradition, not so much that of the Church, which they generally looked upon as unphilosophical, and fit only for the multitude, but that which was said to have been communicated by Christ to a narrow circle of congenial spirits, and by them transmitted to others. Marcion alone made this tradition accessible to all.

(b.) The ordinary Christian Scriptures were only partially received among them. Marcion and the more strenuous Judaistic Gnostics entirely rejected the Old Testament, and the more moderate recognized a distinction between its pneumatic, psychic, and hylic elements. Many of them disparaged portions of the New Testament also, while others accepted only of Paul’s writings and an expurgated gospel of Luke.

(c.) Other writings of highly enlightened persons belonging to particular sects. Thus Manes’s writings were much venerated among his followers, and the prophecies of Cain and of a pretended seer named Parchor among the followers of Basilides, and the apocryphal books of Adam, Enoch, Moses, Elias, Isaiah, Baruch, and others.

(d.) Even the writings of the heathen poets and philosophers were much used by some, who, by a course of allegorical explanations, like those which they applied to the Scriptures, discovered ineffable mysteries under the most unpromising outward letter.

7. With the exception of the followers of Manes, we have no evidence that the Gnostics ever attempted a distinct ecclesiastical organization. Many of them were never excluded from the orthodox churches, within which they only sought to form schools and social circles. They practiced baptism, and believed that in this rite, as in the baptism of Christ, the higher spirit was more abundantly imparted, and the human spirit was emancipated from the power of the Demiurge. Most of them were inclined by their poetic fancies and their love of symbols to a gorgeous style of worship, but the more common ordinances and observances of the Church were neglected as useful only to such as were on the ground of mere faith.

8. Their ethics and practical morality were usually dependent upon dualistic principles. Among the Hellenistic Gnostics it took the form of a struggle against matter, which so unfrequently ran into asceticism, and sometimes into the use of charms and astrological practices. The Oriental Gnostics, on the other hand, are said in many instances to have plunged into immoralities, sometimes with the view of showing their contempt for the Demiurge and his laws, or because they regarded the body as an indifferent thing to a spirit united with the supreme God, and subject to no inferior law. Saturninus, Marcion, and Manes rejected marriage; but many Gnostics not only submitted to it, but looked upon it as the highest law of pneumatic natures. We have no evidence that the standard of morality was lower among the Gnostics generally than among orthodox Christians in general.

One is amazed at the boldness, the fanciful nature, and the high pretensions of Gnosticism. In the course of a century and a half it comes and goes before us like a splendid vision.. And yet its influence upon Christianity was profound and permanent. It gave occasion to a great expansion of Christian thought, to a clearer idea of the historical relation of Christianity to earlier and surrounding religions, and to a better definition of the basis of true faith. It deserves a more careful study than it has usually received.

VI. Literature. The original authorities are the ecclesiastical writers of the period generally, but especially Irenaeus and Epiphanius, Adv. haereses; Tertullian, De praescript. Haer., contra Gnost. scosp., adv. Valentinanos, adt. Marcianum; Hippolytus, . . , and the Philosophoumena usually ascribed to him; Theodoret, Haer. Fabb. Also Clemens, Alex. and Origen in many passages; Gnostic fragments in Grabe’s Spicilegium; Munter’s Odae Gnosticae (Kopenh. 1812); Pistis Sophia (a Gnostic work translated from a Copt. Codex by Schwartz and edited by Petermanns Berlin, 1851); Cerdus Nazaraeus (ed. by Norberg, and sometimes called the Bible of Gnosticism); Bardesanes Gnosticus Syrorum primus Hymnologus, and Antitheses Marcionis Gnosiici (two Gnostic works published by Aug. Hahn, Leips. 1819, 1823); also the Neo- Platonist work of Plotinus, . (Emend. 2, lib. 9). The English reader can gain access to many of these ecclesiastical writers by means of the Ante-Nicene Chr. Lib., edited, by Drs. Roberts and Donaldson, now in course of publication at Edinburgh.

The modern literature of Gnosticism is very abundant. Besides the general ecclesiastical histories of Gieseler, Neander, Hase, and Schaff, the doctrinal histories of Hagenabach, F.K. Meier, F.C. Baur, A. Neander, L. Noack, and Shedd, and the histories of philosophy by H. Ritter, Tennemann, F.D. Maurice, and the French history translated by C.S. Henry, the more important special works on the subject are, A. Neander, Genet. Entwickl. d. vorn. gnost. Syst. (Berl. 1818); J. Matter, Histoire crit. et Gnosticisme (Par. 1828 [1843], 2 volumes); Dr. Edward Burton, Bampton Lectures on the Heresies on the Apost. Age (1829; Oxford, 1830); F.C. Baur, Die christ. Gnosis (Tub. 1835), and Das Christenthum (Tub. 1853), pages 159-213; J.A. Moehler, Versuch u. d. Urspr. d. Gnost. (Tub. 1831); Mller, Gesch. der Kosmologie d. Griech. Kirche (1862); R.A. Lipsius, Gnosticismus, etc. (Leips. 1860); Norton’s Hist. of the Gnostics (1845); C.A. Lewald, De doctrina Gnost. (1818); H. Rossel, Gesch. d. Untersuch. it. d. Gnost. in Theol. Nachl. (Berl. 1847). Articles on Gnosticism have been published by F.R. Licke in Berl. theol. Zeitschr. (1819); J.C.L. Gieseler, in Hal. lit. Zeit. (1823) and Stud. u. Krit. (1830); F.C. Baur, Stud. u. Krit. (1837); H. . Cheever, in Asser. Bibl. Repository, October 1840; R. Baxmann, in Deutsche Zeitschr. (1861), and transl. in Amer. Theol. Rev. October 1862; and on the later history of the Nazoreans, or Mandai Jahia, in the Christian Review January 1855: an excellent article by J.L. Jacobi may be found in Herzog’s Real-Encyklop. fur prot. Theol. See also Appleton’s, Brande’s, and Chambers’s Cyclopaedias. (C.P.W.)

Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

Gnosticism

GNOSTICISM

1. Gnosticism proper.The term, which comes from the Gr. gnsis, knowledge, is now technically used to describe an eclectic philosophy of the 2nd cent. a.d. which was represented by a number of sects or divisions of people. The philosophy was constructed out of Jewish, Pagan, and Christian elements, and was due mainly to the inevitable contact and conflict between these various modes of thought. It was an attempt to Incorporate Christian with Jewish and Pagan ideas in solving the problems of life. The more important of these problems were(1) How to reconcile the creation of the world by a perfectly good God with the presence of evil; (2) how the human spirit came to be imprisoned in matter, and how it was to be emancipated. The first problem was solved by predicating a series of emanations starting from a perfectly good and supreme God, and coming down step by step to an imperfect being who created the world with its evils. Thus there was an essential dualism of good and evil. The second problem was solved by advocating either an ascetic life, wherein everything material was as far as possible avoided, or else a licentious life, in which everything that was material was used without discrimination. Associated with these speculations was a view of Christ which resolved Him into a phantom, denied the reality of His earthly manifestation, and made Him only a temporary non-material emanation of Deity. Gnosticism culminated, as the name suggests, in the glorification of knowledge and in a tendency to set knowledge against faith, regarding the former as superior and as the special possession of a select spiritual few, and associating the latter with the great mass of average people who could not rise to the higher level. Salvation was therefore by knowledge, not by faith. The will was subordinated to the intellect, and everything was made to consist of an esoteric knowledge which was the privilege of an intellectual aristocracy.

2. Gnosticism in relation to the NT.It is obvious that it is only in the slightest and most partial way that we can associate Gnosticism of a fully developed kind with the NT.

There is a constant danger, which has not always been avoided, of reading back into isolated NT expressions the Gnostic ideas of the 2nd century. While we may see in the NT certain germs which afterwards came to maturity in Gnosticism, we must be on our guard lest we read too much into NT phraseology, and there by draw wrong conclusions. One example of this danger may be given. Simon Magus occupies a prominent place in the thoughts of many 2nd and 3rd cent. writers, and by some he is regarded as one of the founders of Gnosticism. This may or may not have been true, but at any rate there is absolutely nothing in Act 8:1-40 to suggest even the germ of the idea.

It is necessary to consider carefully the main idea of gnosis, knowledge, in the NT. (a) It is an essential element of true Christianity, and is associated with the knowledge of God in Christ (2Co 2:14; 2Co 4:6), with the knowledge of Christ Himself (Php 3:8, 2Pe 3:18), and with the personal experience of what is involved in the Christian life (Rom 2:20; Rom 15:14, 1Co 1:5; 1Co 3:19, Col 2:3). In the term epignosis we have the further idea of full knowledge which marks the ripe, mature Christian. This word is particularly characteristic of the Pauline Epistles of the First Captivity (Phil., Col., Eph.), and indicates the Apostles view of the spiritually-advanced believer. But gnosis and epignosis always imply something more and deeper than intellectual understanding. They refer to a personal experience at once intellectual and spiritual, and include intellectual apprehension and moral perception. As distinct from wisdom, knowledge is spiritual experience considered in itself, while wisdom is knowledge in its practical application and use. In Colossians it is generally thought that the errors combated were associated with certain forms of Gnosticism. Lightfoot, on the one hand, sees in the references in ch. 2 Jewish elements of scrupulousness in the observance of days, and of asceticism in the distinction of meats, together with Greek or other purely Gnostic elements in theosophic speculation, shadowy mysticism, and the interposition of angels between God and man. He thinks the references are to one heresy in which these two separate elements are used, and that St. Paul deals with both aspects at once in Col 2:8-23. With Gnostic intellectual exclusiveness he deals in Col 1:18 and Col 2:11, with speculative tendencies in Col 1:15-20, Col 2:9-15, with practical tendencies to asceticism or licence in Col 2:16-23. Hort (Judaistic Christianity), on the other hand, sees nothing but Judaistic elements in the Epistle, and will not allow that there are two independent sets of ideas blended. He considers that, apart from the phrase philosophy and vain deceit (Col 2:8), there is nothing of speculative doctrine in the Epistle. He says that angel-worship was already prevalent quite apart from philosophy, and that there is no need to look beyond Judaism for what is found here. This difference between these two great scholars shows the extreme difficulty of attempting to find anything technically called Gnosticism in Colossians. (b) The Pastoral Epistles are usually next put under review. In 1Ti 1:4; 1Ti 4:8, we are hidden by Lightfoot to see further developments of what had been rife in Coloss. Hort again differs from this view, and concludes that there is no clear evidence of speculative or Gnosticizing tendencies, but only of a dangerous fondness for Jewish trifling, both of the legendary and casuistical kind. (c) In the First Epistle of John (1Jn 4:1; 1Jn 4:3) we are reminded of later Gnostic tendencies as represented by Cerinthus and others, who regarded our Lord as not really man, but only a phantom and a temporary emanation from the Godhead. The prominence given to knowledge as an essential element of true Christian life is very striking in this Epistle, part of whose purpose is that those who possess eternal life in Christ may know it (1Jn 5:13). The verb to know occurs in the Epistle no less than thirty-five times. (d) In Revelation (Rev 2:6; Rev 2:15; Rev 2:20; Rev 2:24; Rev 3:14; Rev 3:21) it is thought that further tendencies of a Gnostic kind are observable, and Lightfoot sees in the latter passage proof that the heresy of Coloss was continuing in that district of Asia Minor. The precariousness of this position is, however, evident, when it is realized that the errors referred to are clearly antinomian, and may well have arisen apart from any Gnostic speculations.

From the above review, together with the differences between great scholars, it is evident that the attempt to connect the NT with the later Gnosticism of the 2nd cent. must remain at best but partially successful. All that we can properly say is that in the NT there are signs of certain tendencies which were afterwards seen in the 2nd cent. Gnosticism, but whether there was any real connexion between the 1st cent. germs and the 2nd cent. developments is another question. In the clash of Judaistic, Hellenic, and Christian thought, it would not be surprising if already there were attempts at eclecticism, but the precise links of connexion between the germs of the NT and the developments of the 2nd cent. are yet to seek.

One thing we must keep clearly before us: gnosis in the NT is a truly honourable and important term, and stands for an essential part of the Christian life. Of course there is always the liability to the danger of mere speculation, and the consequent need of emphasizing love as contrasted with mere knowledge (1Co 8:1; 1Co 13:2), but when gnosis is regarded as both intellectual and moral, we see at once how necessary it is to a true, growing Christian life. The stress laid upon epignosis in later books of the NT, Pauline and Petrine, and the marked prominence given to the cognate terms in 1 John, clearly indicate the importance placed on the idea by Apostolic writers as a safeguard of the Christian life. While it is the essential feature of the young Christian to have (forgiveness); and of the growing Christian to be (strong); it is that of the ripe Christian to know (1Jn 2:12-14). Knowledge and faith are never contrasted in the NT. It is a false and impossible antithesis. Through faith we understand (Heb 11:3). Faith and sight, not faith and reason, are antithetical. We know in order to believe, credence leading to confidence; and then we believe in order to know more. Knowledge and trust act and react on each other. Truth and trust are correlatives, not contradictories. It is only mere speculative knowledge that is falsely so called (1Ti 6:20), because it does not take its rise and find its life and sustenance in Gods revelation in Christ; but Christian gnosis received into the heart, mind, conscience and will, is that by which we are enabled to see the true as opposed to the false to distinguish things that differ (Php 1:10), and to adhere closely to the way of truth and life. The Apostle describes the natural earth-bound man as lacking this spiritual discernment; he has no such faculty (1Co 2:14-15). The spiritual man (1Co 2:15; 1Co 3:1), or the perfect or ripe man (1Co 2:8), is the man who knows; and this knowledge which is at once intellectual, moral and spiritual, is one of the greatest safeguards against every form of error, and one of the choicest secrets of the enjoyment of the revelation of God in Christ.

W. H. Griffith Thomas.

Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible

Gnosticism

nosti-siz’m:

I.General Definition

II.Sources of Gnosticism

1.Alexandrian Philosophy

2.Zoroastrianism

III.Nature of Gnosticism

Chief Points in Gnosticism

IV.Gnosticism in the Christian Church

1.Colossians

2.1 Corinthians: Knowledge at Corinth

3.Pastoral Epistles

4.1 John

(1)Gnostic Claims

(2)Its Loveless Nature

(3)Docetism

(4)The Antichrist

(5)Its Antinomian Side

5.To Know the Depths, Revelation

V.The Christian Antithesis

1.God and the World

How Did the World Originate?

2.Evil

(1)Christian Doctrine of Sin

(2)Sin and the Moral Law

3.Christ and Redemption

4.Asceticism and Antinomianism

VI.Harnack’s View of Gnosticism

VII.Influence and Development of Gnosticism

1.Not a Heresy of the Humbler Classes

2.Cerinthus: His Teaching

3.The Gospel of John

4.Various Sects

(1)The Ophites

(2)Valentinus

(3)Basilides

(4)Saturninus

(5)Marcion

5.Relation to the Old Testament

6.The Christian Verities

7.Influence on Theology

8.Truth Underlying Docetism

VIII.Modern Gnosticism

Literature

Gnosticism – except perhaps in 1Ti 6:20, where Paul warns Timothy against the gnosis, which is falsely so called – is not directly alluded to in the New Testament. Nevertheless its leaven was actually working, as will immediately be seen, and constituted a most serious peril in the apostolic church. That strange, obscure movement, partly intellectual, partly fanatical … in the 2nd century spread with the swiftness of an epidemic over the church from Syria to Gaul (Law, The Tests of Life, 26). It is therefore of high importance to gain a right conception of the nature of this potent anti-Christian influence. This is not easy. The difficulty in dealing with Gnosticism is that it was not a homogeneous system of either religion or philosophy, but embraced many widely diversified sects holding opinions drawn from a great variety of sources. The infinitely varied shapes assumed by the systems render it almost impossible to classify them, or even to give an account of their leading ideas, which shall not be open to objection. We might as well try to classify the products of a tropical jungle, or the shapes and hues of the sunset clouds, which change under our view as we look at them (Orr, The Progress of Dogma, 58).

I. General Definition

On the general definition of Gnosticism a few authorities may be cited. Gnosticism, says Dr. Gwatkin, may be provisionally described as a number of schools of philosophy, oriental in general character, but taking in the idea of a redemption through Christ, and further modified in different sects by a third element, which may be Judaism, Hellenism, or Christianity … the Gnostics took over only the idea of a redemption through Christ, not the full Christian doctrine, for they made it rather a redemption of the philosophers from matter, than a redemption of mankind from sin (Early Church History to ad 313, II, 20).

Dr. Orr writes, Gnosticism may be described generally as the fantastic product of the blending of certain Christian ideas – particularly that of redemption through Christ – with speculation and imaginings derived from a medley of sources (Greek, Jewish, Parsic; philosophies; religions, theosophies, mysteries) in a period when the human mind was in a kind of ferment, and when opinions of every sort were jumbled together in an unimaginable welter. It involves, as the name denotes, a claim to ‘knowledge,’ knowledge of a kind of which the ordinary believer was incapable, and in the possession of which ‘salvation’ in the full sense consisted. This knowledge of which the Gnostic boasted, related to the subjects ordinarily treated of in religious philosophy; Gnosticism was a species of religious philosophy (The Early Church, 71).

Neander has described Gnosticism as the first notable attempt to introduce into Christianity the existing elements of mental culture, and to render it more complete on the hitherto rather neglected side of theoretical knowledge; it was an attempt of the mind of the ancient world in its yearning after knowledge, and in its dissatisfaction with the present, to bring within its grasp and to appropriate the treasures of this kind which christianity presented (Antignostikus, Intro, 199).

Gnosticism accordingly comprehends in itself many previously existing tendencies; it is an amalgam into which quite a number of different elements have been fused. A heretical system of thought, at once subtle, speculative and elaborate, it endeavored to introduce into Christianity a so-called higher knowledge, which was grounded partly on the philosophic creed in which Greeks and Romans had taken refuge consequent on the gradual decay and breaking-up of their own religions, partly, as will be shown, on the philosophies of Plato and of Philo, and still more on the philosophies and theosophies and religions of the East, especially those of Persia and of India.

For a long time the pagan beliefs had ceased to be taken seriously by thoughtful men and had been displaced by various creeds derived from philosophical speculation. These in themselves were abstract and unsatisfying, but had been partly vitalized by union with theosophies of the East. An attempt was made on the part of this philosophical religion to effect an alliance with Christianity. A section of the church was dissatisfied with the simplicity of the gospel, and sought to advance to something higher by adopting the current speculations ….. The late books of the New Testament are all occupied, more or less, with this movement, which was the more dangerous as it threatened the church from within (Professor E. Scott, The Apologetic of the New Testament, 14).

Gnosticism, though usually regarded as a heresy, was not really such: it was not the perverting of Christian truth; it came, rather, from outside. Having worked its way into the Christian church, it was then heretical. Although it became a corrupting influence within the church, it was an alien by birth. While the church yet sojourned within the pale of Judaism, it enjoyed immunity from this plague; but as soon as it broke through these narrow bounds, it found itself in a world where the decaying religions and philosophies of the West were in acute fermentation under the influence of a new and powerful leaven from the East; while the infusion of Christianity itself into this fermenting mass only added to the bewildering multiplicity of Gnostic sects and systems it brought forth (Law, The Tests of Life, 26).

II. Sources of Gnosticism

Mansel (in his work on The Gnostic Heresies, 32) sums up the principal sources of Gnosticism in these three, Platonism, the Persian religion, and the Buddhism of India. To Platonism it owed much of its philosophical form and tendencies. From the Dualism of the Per religion it derived its speculations regarding the origin of evil, and much of what it taught about emanations. To Buddhism, he thinks, it owed the doctrine of the antagonism between matter and spirit, and the unreality of derived existence – the germ of Docetism. Mansel also holds that there is the possibility that Gnosticism derived certain of its features from the Kabbala (kabbalah), or secret teaching of the Jews in the two books, the Sepher yecrah, or Book of Creation, and the Zohar, or Book of Light. An influence of Buddhism on Gnosticism, however, may safely be doubted, as there is no reason to believe that the knowledge of Buddhist doctrine had so early penetrated into the West. The Jewish works named by Mansel are really products of the Middle Ages (Westcott, Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, 144-45). The other sources named were really influential. We notice two – the Alexandrian philosophy and the Parsic dualism.

1. Alexandrian Philosophy

Alexandrian philosophy endeavored to unite Greek philosophy and Hebrew religion. Philo, the great Jewish commentator of Alexandria, had tried to interpret the ancient Jewish Scriptures by the aid of the Greek philosophy, to expound the Old Testament in terms of Plato’s thought and to discover allegorical meanings where none were intended. In Philo’s teaching there is a sharp line drawn between God and the material world: with him God cannot exert any action upon the world of matter, except through intermediate agency, the Jewish angels and the heathen demons. Philo has much to say in regard to the Logos. His utterances on this subject may be compared with what is said of the attributes of Wisdom in chapter 8 of the Book of Prov, and also with the Logos or Word of the Gospel of John. With Philo, the Logos is the power of God, or the Divine reason endowed with energy, and embracing within itself all subordinate powers. The Logos is impersonal in its relations to God; and herein is one huge difference between Philo’s conception and that in the gospel. Philo teaches that the Logos is the only firstborn of God, the chief of the angels, the viceroy of God, and representative of man. See LOGOS.

According to Philo the creation of the universe was a gradual molding out of matter; hence, arises evil. He also teaches the preexistence of the soul, which is now imprisoned in the flesh. The wise man, therefore, will break the thralldom of the flesh, and will rise by a sort of ecstasy to the immediate vision of God. It will be seen how much of this teaching was assimilated by the various Gnostic sects.

2. Zoroastrianism

The Zoroastrian or Persian system was based on the assumption that there existed two original and independent powers of good and evil, of light and darkness, Ormuzd (Ahura-Mazda), the wise Lord, and Ahriman (Angra-Mainyu), the wicked spirit. These powers were believed to be equal, and each supreme in his own domain. The earth, which was created by Ormuzd, became the battlefield of the two powers. Ahriman led away the first man and woman from their allegiance to Ormuzd, and so all evils result to mankind.

In oriental (Persian) dualism, says Professor Bousset, it is within this material world that the good and the evil powers are at war, and this world beneath the stars is by no means conceived as entirely subject to evil. Gnosticism has combined the two, the Greek opposition between spirit and matter, and the sharp Zoroastrian dualism, which, where the Greek mind conceived of a higher and a lower world, saw instead two hostile worlds standing in contrast to each other like light and darkness. And out of the combination of these two dualisms arose the teaching of Gnosticism with its thoroughgoing pessimism and its fundamental asceticism (Gnosticism, in Encyclopedia Brit, 11th edition, XII, 154).

III. Nature of Gnosticism

Gnosticism, says Dr. Gwatkin, is Christianity perverted by learning and speculation (Early Church History 73). The intellectual pride of the Gnostics refined away the gospel into a philosophy. The clue to the understanding of Gnosticism is given in the word from which it is derived – gnosis, knowledge. Gnosticism puts knowledge in the place which can only rightly be occupied by Christian faith. To the Gnostic the great question was not the intensely practical one, What must I do to be saved from sin? but What is the origin of evil? How is the primitive order of the universe to be restored? In the knowledge of these and of similar questions, and in the answers given to these questions, there was redemption, as the Gnostic understood it.

These little Gnostic sects and groups all lived in the conviction that they possessed a secret and mysterious knowledge, in no way accessible to those outside, which was not to be proved or propagated, but believed in by the initiated, and anxiously guarded as a secret. This knowledge of theirs was not based on reflection or scientific inquiry and proof, but on revelation. It was derived directly from the times of primitive Christianity, from the Saviour Himself and His disciples and friends, with whom they claimed to be connected by a secret tradition, or else from later prophets, of whom many sects boasted. It was laid down in wonderful mystic writings, which were in the possession of the various circles.

In short, Gnosticism in all its various sections, its form and its character, falls under the category of mystic religions, which were so characteristic of the religious life of decadent antiquity. In Gnosticism, as in the other mystic religions, we find the same contrast of the initiated and the uninitiated, the same loose organization, the same kind of petty sectarianism and mystery-mongering. All alike boast a mystic revelation and a deeply veiled wisdom (Bousset, op. cit., 153).

Chief Points in Gnosticism

The questions, therefore, with which Gnosticism concerned itself were those of the relation of the finite and the infinite, the origin of the world and of evil, the cause, meaning, purpose and destiny of all things, the reason of the difference in the capacities and in the lot in life of individual men, the method of salvation. The following may be regarded as the chief points in the characteristics of the Gnostic systems: (1). A claim on the part of the initiated to a special knowledge of the truth, a tendency to regard knowledge as superior to faith, and as the special possession of the more enlightened, for ordinary Christians did not possess this secret and higher doctrine. (2) The essential separation of matter and spirit, the former of these being essentially evil, and the source from which all evil has arisen. (3) An attempt at the solution of the problems of creation and of the origin of evil by the conception of a Demiurge, i.e. a Creator or Artificer of the world as distinct from the Supreme Deity, and also by means of emanations extending between God and the visible universe. It should be observed that this conception merely concealed the difficulties of the problem, and did not solve them. (4) A denial of the true humanity of Christ, a docetic Christology, (which looked upon the earthly life of Christ and especially on His sufferings on the cross as unreal. (5) The denial of the personality of the Supreme God, and the denial also of the free will of man. (6) The teaching, on the one hand, of asceticism as the means of attaining to spiritual communion with God, and, on the other hand, of an indifference which led directly to licentiousness. (7) A syncretistic tendency which combined certain more or less misunderstood Christian doctrines, various elements from oriental and Jewish and other sources. (8) The Scriptures of the Old Testament were ascribed to the Demiurge or inferior Creator of the world, who was the God of the Jews, but not the true God. Some of these characteristic ideas are more obvious in one, and some of them in others of the Gnostic systems. The relation of these ideas to Christian facts and doctrines is dealt with more particularly below.

IV. Gnosticism in the Christian Church

In the New Testament and the Apostolic Age

The germ of Gnosticism in the Christian church made its appearance in the apostolic age, and is referred to by Paul in several of his epistles, notably in that to the Colossians and in the Pastoral Epistles. It is also referred to by the apostles Peter and Jude; references to it are found, besides, in the Apocalypse, the First Epistle of John and the Gospel of John.

1. Colossians

In col a great deal is said regarding a false teaching, an insidious theosophist doctrine, the teachers of which were alienating the Christians in Colosse from the gospel, and were disseminating their speculations, which led to the worship of angels in contrast to the worship of Christ, to esoteric exclusiveness wholly opposed to the universality of the gospel, and to an asceticism injurious to Christian freedom, and derogatory to the human body as indwelt by the Holy Ghost. These tenets are identical with the more fully developed Gnosticism of the generation succeeding that of the apostles; and at the root of the Colossian false teaching there lay the same error which the Gnostic mind had no way of meeting, namely, that there could be no connection between the highest spiritual agency, that is God, and gross corporeal matter.

From this theoretical basis arose another error – that as sin is inherent in the material substance of the body, therefore the only way by which perfection can be reached is to punish the body by asceticism, so that through the infliction of pain and the mortification of the flesh the region of pure spirit may be reached, and thus man may be etherealized and become like God. This ascetic tendency is wonderfully widespread; it reappears century after century, and shows itself in many forms of religion, not merely in distorted forms of Christianity, but in the Hindu religions, in Buddhism and elsewhere. In the Epistle to the Colossians, accordingly, there are definite references to ascetic practices which were inculcated by the false teachers at Colosse. The very terms which they employed have been preserved, Touch not, Taste not, Handle not. It was in this way that these teachers had at their own hand invented a worship different from that of the Christian faith, which endeavored to attain the deliverance of the soul by the neglecting of the body (Col 2:21, Col 2:23 the King James Version). These Gnostic teachers showed these tendencies still more boldly when Paul wrote his First Epistle to Timothy (see below), for he describes them as forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats (1Ti 4:3). These ascetic practices were afterward taught by various Gnostic sects, the Encratites, the followers of Saturninus, and others.

These tendencies in the Colossian church Paul set himself to correct in his epistle. The method which he adopts is not so much to demolish error, as to establish the contrary truth, setting before the Colossians the person and work of Christ, Christ the Creator, Christ in whom there dwells not merely some or even much of the fullness of God, but all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; Christ the God of providence, the Upholder of all things, in whom matter and all creatures and all events consist and have their being; Christ the Reconciler who has reconciled us unto God through the blood of the cross. In view of truths like these, Colossian error and all other forms of Gnosticism crumble into decay and vanish. See COLOSSIANS, EPISTLE TO THE.

2. 1 Corinthians: Knowledge at Corinth

The Epistle to the Colossians is the first of the Pauline Epistles in which distinctively Gnostic teaching is found in its attack upon the Christian faith. But from incidental notices in epistles of Paul written at an earlier period, it can be seen how congenial was the soil into which Gnostic teaching was about to fall. For even in Corinth when Paul wrote his First Epistle to the church there, there had been a claim on the part of some that they possessed knowledge, as if others were destitute of it, a claim which the apostle refuses to admit, and meets with stern resistance. They thought themselves wise, they were given to disputing, they professed that they all had knowledge (1Co 8:1), nay, they could know all mysteries and all knowledge (1Co 13:2); but this knowledge did not edify them, did not build them up, it only puffed them up (1Co 8:1); it did not make them sympathetic or tender-hearted toward the weak (1Co 8:7-11).

3. Pastoral Epistles

In 1Ti 6:20, 1Ti 6:21 Paul speaks of the knowledge (the gnosis) which is falsely so called; which some professing have erred concerning the faith. In other places in that epistle reference is made to tenets which are exactly those of Gnosticism. In 1Ti 1:4 the apostle speaks of fables and endless genealogies, which minister questionings, rather than a dispensation of God which is in faith. Philo had given a great impetus to an allegorizing interpretation of the Old Testament. His writings were well known and were popular in many of the Jewish schools. These fanciful interpretations would hinder the growth of the Christian church; and this allegorizing of Scripture, joined to the teaching of the genealogies of the eons, would leave no place for a Redeemer. In 1Ti 4:3, as already noted, Paul describes ascetic practices which were regarded by their votaries as most meritorious. To abstain from marriage and from various kinds of food was the teaching of the Essenes and also of the Gnostics. This ascetic teaching was unnatural, as contrary to the constitution of the world, as that has been arranged by a holy and wise Creator, and it is also subversive of Christian liberty. Nothing can be esteemed common or unclean without throwing a reproach upon the Creator.

Antinomian Development

But another and contrary result also followed from the principles of the sinfulness of matter and of redemption as deliverance from the flesh, namely, that there was an easier way of relief, by treating the soul and the body as separate entities which have nothing in common. Let the soul go its way on the wings of spiritual thought, while the body may indulge its fleshly desires. For, so it was held, as body and soul are entirely distinct in their nature, the spiritual cannot be defiled by anything, however carnal and gross, that the body can do. This was the antinomian development of Gnosticism. Many traces of this are apparent in the Pastoral Epistles and in 2 Peter and Jude. The Gnostics, against whom Paul warns Timothy, were lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, rollers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed-up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof (2Ti 3:2, 2Ti 3:3, 2Ti 3:4). Such, too, is the testimony borne regarding them by Ignatius (Law, The Tests of Life, 30):(They give no heed to love, caring not for the widow, the orphan or the afflicted, neither for those who are in bonds, nor for those who are released from bonds, neither for the hungry nor the thirsty. Such persons professed that they knew God, but by their works they denied Him; they were abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate (Tit 1:16). They enticed others into sins of impurity (2Ti 3:5, 2Ti 3:6). They allured others through the lusts of the flesh; and the means by which they succeeded in doing this was that they spoke great swelling words of vanity, and the end was that in their destroying of others they themselves also were surely destroyed (2Pe 2:12, 2Pe 2:18). They were ungodly men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness and denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ; they gave themselves up to the sins of the flesh, and ran riotously after error in hope of a gain in money; they were sensual men, not having the Spirit (Jud 1:4, Jud 1:8, Jud 1:11, Jud 1:19) The entire Epistle of Jude is directed against this antinomian and licentious development of Gnosticism, and against its terrible permission of an unholy life (see below on the Book of Revelation).

4. 1 John

In the First Epistle of John there is a distinct polemical purpose. There is no book of the New Testament which is more purposeful in its attack of error. There is the spirit of error (1Jo 4:6), opposing the Spirit of truth. Many false prophets are gone out into the world (1Jo 4:1), and this from the church itself, They went out from us, but they were not of us (1Jo 2:19); and these false prophets are distinctly named the antichrist (1Jo 2:22) and the liar (same place), and the deceiver and the antichrist (2Jo 1:7). This peril, against which the apostle writes, and from which he seeks to defend the church, was Gnosticism, as is proved by what is said again and again in the epistle of the characteristics of this insidious and deadly teaching.

(1) Gnostic Claims

The Gnostic claim to knowledge throws light upon many passages in this epistle. John refers to his opponents’ using such phrases as I know God, I abide in Christ, I am in the light. These lofty claims were made by persons who did not love their brethren on earth, who did not walk in Christ’s footsteps, and who were destitute of love. The apostle therefore describes these lofty claims as false, because those who made them possessed neither love nor obedience.

In contrast to these Gnostic claims – for those who made them were no other than the early Gnostics – John shows how the Christ of history is the Christ of experience: for those to whom he is writing know Christ, who is from the beginning, and they know the Father. We know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life (1Jo 5:20). This knowledge of God and communion with Him are attained, not by Gnostic speculation, but by the obedience of faith, the outcome of which is brotherly love and a life in which the Christian walks even as Christ did (1Jo 2:6). And thus also obedience and brotherly love are the test of the profession which any man may make that he knows God. Every one also that doeth righteousness is begotten of him, (1Jo 2:29); Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother (1Jo 3:10).

(2) Its Loveless Nature

Gnosticism was distinguished by an unethical, loveless intellectualism. This seems to be the explanation of the false teaching against which this epistle is directed. The apostle describes the dry head-knowledge which left the heart and life untouched by love, and which led men, while they professed to love God, nevertheless to remain destitute of love to their fellow-men. (They did not fold their human brethren to their hearts, they were dead to the fact that where pity dwells, the love of God dwells also. In Gnosticism knowledge was in itself the supreme end and purpose of life, the sum of highest good to which a man could attain, the crown of life. The system was loveless to the core.

(3) Docetism

Now, when the attempt was made to amalgamate these Gnostic ideas with the Christian faith, the inevitable result was Docetism. Just because God cannot have any immediate contact with matter, therefore the incarnation of Almighty God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ is inconceivable. From this position it is, of course, only a step to deny that the incarnation and the true human life of Christ ever took place at all.

(4) The Antichrist

The Antichrist of the First Epistle of John is docetic Gnosticism. The soul of the apostle rushes onward, with glowing zeal for the honor of his Master whom Gnosticism dishonored, to identify personally the historical Jesus with the Divine Being, the Son of God, the Word of Life, the Christ. Who is the liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, even he that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also (1Jo 2:22, 1Jo 2:23). It should be noted that the last clause in 1Jo 2:23, which is printed in italics in the King James Version, is restored in the Revised Version (British and American) to its rightful position in the original text. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it cometh; and now it is in the world already (1Jo 4:2, 1Jo 4:3).

(5) Its Antinomian Side

The antinomian side of Gnosticism is not so directly referred to in the First Epistle of John as Docetism is; but evidences are manifest that the apostle had it clearly before him. Little children, he writes, let no man lead you astray: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous: he that doeth sin is of the devil (1Jo 3:7, 1Jo 3:8). And these were the methods by which those deceivers endeavored to lead the members of the church astray. They alleged that sin was a thing indifferent in itself. It made no difference to the spiritual man whether he sinned with his body or not. It is for this reason that the apostle, in opposing those teachers, insists that sin is lawlessness (1Jo 3:4); All unrighteousness is sin (1Jo 5:17); Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin (1Jo 3:9); In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother (1Jo 3:10). The whole passage presupposes, as familiar to its readers, a doctrine of moral indifferentism, according to which the status of the ‘spiritual’ man is not to be tested by the commonplace facts of moral conduct (The Tests of Life, 34). See JOHN, FIRST EPISTLE OF.

5. To Know the Depths: Revelation

As time advanced, and the later books of the New Testament were written, Gnosticism assumed more of its distinctive peculiarities. Those who had knowledge regarded themselves as a superior order of believers. One of their phrases was to know the depths (Rev 2:24 the King James Version), and this was valued far more highly than love and obedience. From this language, we may, I think, infer the existence of an Ophite sect, boasting of its peculiar gnosis, before the date of the Apocalypse (Mansel, The Gnostic Heresies, 105). The claim of the Ophites was that they alone knew the depths. Yes, is the apostle’s reply to claims of this kind, yes, the depths, but not of God, the depths of Satan; for such is a just description of a teaching which ascribed the origin and the working of evil to God. It is in the light of Gnostic teaching of this sort that the meaning can be seen of the same apostle’s language in his First Epistle, And this is the message which we have heard from him and announce unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all (1Jo 1:5).

The Nicolaitans

In the Epistles to the Seven Churches in the Apocalypse there are other references to Gnosticism. Who the Nicolaitans were (Rev 2:6, Rev 2:15) is not absolutely certain; but it is not unlikely that they were so called because of their having assumed the name of Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch (Act 6:5). The first step to the reception of Gentile believers into the Christian church on an equal footing with the Jews may have been the appointment of Nicolas as one of the first deacons, for the facts that he was a native of Antioch and a proselyte, show that he had been a heathen by birth. And it is noteworthy to find such a person appointed to office in the church at so very early a period, even before the conversion of the apostle Paul. The Nicolaitans therefore may have distorted in an antinomian sense the doctrine taught by Nicolas, who in all probability proclaimed the liberty of the gospel, as his fellow-deacon, Stephen, did (Acts 7 throughout). But the liberty claimed by the Nicolaitans was liberty to sin. They are mentioned in the Epistle to Ephesus, and their deeds are characterized as deeds which Christ hates (Rev 2:6). Their name occurs again in the Epistle to Pergamum, and there also their doctrine is described as a doctrine which the Lord hates (Rev 2:15). Their teaching was one of licentiousness – eating things sacrifical to idols, and committing fornication (Rev 2:14). Again in the Epistle to Thyatira, the Gnostics are spoken of as practicing the same evil courses, and as holding a doctrine of the depths of Satan (Rev 2:20, Rev 2:21, Rev 2:24 the King James Version) – see above. The persons mentioned in the Epistle to Philadelphia were also evidently Gnostics. They are described as being of the synagogue of Satan (Rev 3:9).

In the language of Jude, as in that of Peter, which it closely imitates, we may clearly discern a reference to the Gnostic sect of the Nicolaitans mentioned by name in Revelation. The comparison in all these passages, of the error condemned with that of Balaam, is decisive as to the identity of the persons intended. The other characteristics noted by Peter are also repeated by Jude – their denial of the Lord, their profligate lives, their contempt of government, and evil speaking of dignities and of things that they know not, their pollution of the feasts of charity, their great swelling words. The antinomian, no less than the ascetic side of Gnosticism, seems by this time to have fully manifested itself (Mansel, The Gnostic Heresies, 71).

V. The Christian Antithesis

The principal points of contrast between Gnosticism and Christian teaching in regard to leading doctrines will now be apparent, and can be briefly summarized.

1. God and the World

According to the Gnostics, God is thought of as the ultimate, nameless, unknowable Being, of whom they speak as the Abyss. He is perfect, but the material world is alien to the Divine nature. How then does it come to exist at all? What is the source of its imperfections and evils?

How Did the World Originate?

The Gnostic answer is that the pleroma or fullness of the Deity (see FULLNESS) could flow out in no other way than in emanations or eons or angels, all of which are necessarily imperfect, the highest of these emanations or eons or angels being more spiritual than the grade immediately below it. Of these eons there is a gradation so numerous, that at length the lowest of them is almost wholly corporeal, the spiritual element having been gradually diminished or eliminated, until at last the world of man and of matter is reached, the abode of evil. In this way the gulf is bridged between God and the world of mankind. The highest eons approximate closely to the Divine nature, so spiritual are they and so nearly free from matter. These form the highest hierarchy of angels, and these as well as many other grades of the angelic host are to be worshipped.

In opposition to this view, Christian faith worships God as the free self-sufficient Creator, infinitely good and wise and powerful and holy, the Author of all things, and affirms creation as an incomprehensible fact revealed to faith, and which rises above the grasp of the understanding. By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear (Heb 11:3 the King James Version).

2. Evil

The doctrine of evil follows directly from the above account of the relation of God to the world. According to Gnosticism the manifestation of God is possible only through self-limitation on His part, for in His essence God is the unfathomable Abyss. Through this Divine self-limitation are evolved, first, the Divine powers or attributes, which previously were hidden in the Abyss of His being. These Divine powers (the pleroma) become the principles of all further developments of life. Life continues to be unfolded in such a way that its successive grades sink farther and farther from the purity of God, the life is feebler the nearer they come to matter, with which, at length, they blend. Such, according to Gnosticism, is the origin of evil.

Whenever men are not content with acknowledging evil to be the act of their own free will, which has chosen to forsake its absolute dependence upon God; whenever they go beyond this and seek for another origin of evil, then one of two results follows. They either limit the holiness of God, and find the cause of evil in God Himself, thus annihilating all distinction between good and evil – which is Pantheism; or they limit the power of God by granting the existence of an eternal evil power beyond the control of God – which is Dualism. In avoiding Pantheism, Gnosticism accepted the dualistic solution, ascribing to evil an eternal self-subsistent nature, which is to make it absolute as God Himself is. As absolute self-subsistence can be affirmed of none but God, the eternally self-subsistent evil of Dualism must be God, which it cannot possibly be, because it is not good. Here is the self-contradiction on which Gnosticism was wrecked.

(1) The Christian Doctrine of Sin

Directly contrary to this is the Christian doctrine, according to which evil is the refusal of the creature-will to lean absolutely and utterly on God, upon His care and love and upholding grace. Sin is that which ought not to be; it has no right to exist at all; it is defiance of God; it is moral transgression; its magnitude cannot be exaggerated. If it could, it would dethrone God. It has defied His righteousness and wisdom and holiness and even His grace. Sin therefore is dealt with by God in two ways, either by direct punishment or by redemption, in which provision is made for its removal by its being borne by the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world.

The Gnostic idea of the origin of evil follows at once from, and is inseparably involved in, their dualistic interpretation of nature. The question What is sin? is no mere academic or philosophical discussion, in which one opinion may be as good as another. Everything in Christianity is connected more or less directly with the great facts of Sin and Redemption; and the plan of Redemption, which is the essence of Christianity, cannot be rightly understood until the doctrine of Sin be adequately recognized and established. Here, certainly, if anywhere, Christian theology must fight pro aris et focis (Julius Mller, quoted in Dr. Orr’s Sin as a Problem of Today, 6).

(2) Sin and the Moral Law

The universality of sin, its persistence, its gravity, its power to destroy and to deprave – these are facts which can hardly be exaggerated. To view sin aright, it is impossible to leave out of sight its relation to moral law, to God, and to His kingdom. Sin is the transgression of moral law; it is transgression also against a holy God, of whose character and will moral law is a transcript or reflection. Sin is transgression against God, the substitution of the creature-will for the will of the Creator; revolt of the creature-will from God (Sin as a Problem of Today, 7). It is the resolve of the will to make itself independent of God and to renounce His authority. Sin is self-will, false independence, freedom which ends in bondage and misery.

But in Gnosticism sin is something quite different; it is not the act and the disposition of the human will in rebellion against God; it is only a physical fact or quality inherent in the body and in matter everywhere. Redemption therefore does not consist in the work of Christ for us on the cross, and the applying of the benefits of that work by the Holy Spirit of God in the renewal of the moral nature of man. Redemption is simply each man’s efforts to secure emancipation from the flesh – from physical evil.

3. Christ and Redemption

It is easily seen that a system of this kind had no need of Christ and leaves no place for redemption in the Christian sense of that term. Redemption in this scheme of thought is not deliverance from sin, it is not removal of guilt and renewing of the mind. It is something quite different, and consists in the restoration of the cosmic order and illumination of the mind of the select few through knowledge. Christ is not the Saviour who saves His people from their sins, and who gives them unceasingly, through union with Himself, deliverance from the power of sin. He is only one of the eons, the highest of them. He is an originated being, and not God. There is thus no place in Gnosticism either for the creation of the universe by God, or for the incarnation and work of Christ. Once grant that matter is essentially evil, and there is excluded the possibility of Christ’s having assumed a true human nature, simply for the one reason that the world and human nature are originally and necessarily evil. Thus, as already seen, we are landed in Docetism.

The Christology of the Gnostics accordingly assumed one of two types. One class of early Gnostics separated the spiritual being Christ from the man Jesus; they supposed that the Christ entered Jesus at the time of His baptism, and left Him at the moment of His crucifixion. Thus the Christ was neither born as a man nor suffered as a man. In this way they obviated the difficulty, insuperable to the Gnostic mind, of conceiving the connection between the highest spiritual agency and gross corporeal matter, which was involved in the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation and Passion, and which Gnostics of another type more effectually set aside by the doctrine of Docetism, i.e. by assuming that the human body of our Lord was only a phantom body, and not real flesh and blood. Irenaeus represents the former class as teaching that ‘Jesus was the receptacle of the Christ,’ and that the Christ ‘descended upon Him from heaven in the form of a dove, and after He had declared to mankind the nameless Father, entered again into the pleroma imperceptibly and invisibly.’ Here no names are given. But in another passage he ascribes precisely the same doctrine, without however naming the pleroma, to Cerinthus (Lightfoot, Col, 264). How strenuously this doctrine was combated in apostolic circles has already been shown in speaking of John’s First Epistle.

4. Asecticism and Antinomianism

The necessary consequence of the Gnostic theory in an ascetic morality which passed over by sure steps into antinomian license has likewise been fully illustrated in the foregoing, and need not be further enlarged on. The whole has its root in a false intellectualism, to which the gospel in its inculcation of humility, faith and dependence upon God’s Spirit for guidance into truth is, in its inmost principle, opposed.

VI. Harnack’s View of Gnosticism

Harnack’s view of Gnosticism differs from that now given in laying the chief emphasis on its Judeo-Hellenistic side. He describes well how, when Christianity appeared, an extensive spiritualizing or allegorizing of the Old Testament had already taken place. This spiritualizing was the result of a philosophic view of religion, and this philosophic view was the outcome of a lasting influence of Greek philosophy, and of the Greek spirit generally, upon Judaism. In consequence of this view, all facts and sayings of the Old Testament in which one could not find his way, were allegorized. Nothing was what it seemed, but was only the symbol of something invisible. The history of the Old Testament was here sublimated to a history of the emancipation of reason from passion (History of Dogma, I, 223). This allegorical interpretation disclosed to the mature mind a wealth of relations, of hints and of intuitions from the Old Testament, which to the uninitiated was only a dry record of fact. This view of the Old Testament gave its readers a strange interest, which proceeded to transfer their ancient Jewish hopes into the world of Greek philosophy, and transformed the result into a metaphysic. When these thinkers entered the Christian church, Christian hopes and terms were added to the already existing Judaic-Greek- Alexandrian compound, and such was Gnosticism. It represented the acute secularizing or Hellenizing of Christianity. The Gnostics are therefore those Christians, who, in a swift advance, attempted to capture Christianity for Hellenic culture, and Hellenic culture for Christianity, and who gave up the Old Testament in order to facilitate the conclusion of the covenant between the two powers and make it possible to assert the absoluteness of Christianity (p. 227).

Harnack indeed grants that there were other elements in Gnosticism, but he strongly asserts that the Greek element was the predominating one. In this he seems to us to be in error. Laying the chief emphasis on Hellenism, he fails to give the due and preponderating place to eastern dualism. As already seen, an eastern dualistic theosophy is the chief element in Gnosticism. This eastern source is also acknowledged by Harnack, but only as if it were subsidiary to Hellenism. As he regards it, Gnosticism was an acute Hellenizing of Christianity (p. 230).

In regard to the fundamental philosophic doctrines of Gnosticism, the indefinable nature of the Divine primeval Being, the sinfulness of matter, the fullness of God in eons, the Demiurge, etc., Harnack agrees generally with other writers, and adds, All these are ideas for which we find the way prepared in the philosophy of the time, anticipated by Philo, and represented in neo-Platonism as the great final result of Greek philosophy (p. 233).

VII. Influence and Development of Gnosticism

Gnosticism is peculiarly the heresy of the 2nd century, and in itself a proof of the extent to which a knowledge of the Christian faith had, at that early period, penetrated in literary and philosophical circles. Though it is true that Christianity at first influenced chiefly the humbler classes, yet it was not among these persons that the various Gnostic heresies arose.

1. Not a Heresy of the Humbler Classes

Gnosticism was a product which did not spring up spontaneously in the minds of the mechanics and slaves and women and children, whom most, like Celsus, suppose to have formed the bulk of the Christian communities, but could only have taken its rise in minds of a more cultured and speculative cast. This, indeed, was its claim – to be a religion of gnosis (knowledge), for the more highly trained or lite. It could only exist at all, therefore, as the result of a Christian ferment which had entered these speculative circles, and was there powerfully at work. Baur rightly appreciates the situation, when he says: ‘Gnosticism gives the clearest proof that Christianity had now come to be one of the most important factors in the history of the time, and it shows especially what a mighty power of attraction the new Christian principles possessed for the highest intellectual life then to be found either in the pagan or in the Jewish world.’ Above all, these systems are a striking witness to the impression produced on the heathen mind by the great Christian idea of redemption. ‘When the Gnostic systems,’ says Neander, ‘describe the movement which was produced in the kingdom of the Demiurge by the appearance of Christ as the manifestation of a new and mighty principle which had entered the precincts of this lower world, they give us to understand how powerful was the impression which the contemplation of the life of Christ and His influence on humanity, had left on the minds of the founders of these systems, making all earlier institutions seem to them as nothing in comparison with Christianity.’ We must beware, therefore, of underestimating either the extent or the intensity of this great intellectual ferment set up by the gospel in the heart of heathenism (Orr, Neglected Factors, etc., 196).

2. Cerinthus: His Teaching

The earliest of the Gnostics known to us by name is Cerinthus, the antagonist of the apostle John. It seems to be beyond reasonable doubt that these two encountered each other at Ephesus. Irenaeus relates on the authority of those who heard the story from Polycarp how the apostle and Cerinthus met in the public baths in that city. When John discovered that Cerinthus was in the same building with him, he instantly left, exclaiming that he could not remain while Cerinthus, the enemy of God and of man, was there. From the accounts which have been preserved of Cerinthus and of his teaching, it can be gathered that he taught that the world was created not by the Supreme God, but by an inferior power, and that he also taught a docetic theory of the Incarnation. Caius of Rome, a disciple of Irenaeus, records that Cerinthus held that there would be a millennium of unrestrained sensuality. Dionysius of Alexandria (circa 260 ad) more than confirms this. Thus so far as they go, the historical data harmonize with the internal evidence of the Epistle (of John) itself, in giving the impression that the different tendencies it combats are such as were naturally combined in one consistently developed Gnostic system, and that the object of its polemic is, throughout, one and the same (The Tests of Life, 37).

As regards the Gospel of John there is the testimony of Irenaeus, that it was written to oppose that form of Gnosticism which was taught by Cerinthus, and, before him, by the Nicolaitans. The nature of that heresy may be stated in the words of Irenaeus himself:

A certain Cerinthus, he says, in Asia, taught that the world was not made by the Supreme God, but by some power altogether separate and distinct from that Sovereign Power which is over the universe, and one ignorant of the God who is over all things. He taught, moreover, that Jesus was not born of a virgin (for this seemed to him to be impossible), but was the son of Joseph and Mary, born after the manner of other men; though preminent above other men in justice and prudence and wisdom; and that after His baptism the Christ, in the form of a dove, descended upon Him from that Sovereign Power which is over all things; and that He then announced the unknown Father and wrought miracles; but that, at the end, the Christ departed again from Jesus, and that Jesus suffered and was raised from the dead, while the Christ continued impassible, as a spiritual being (Mansel, The Gnostic Heresies, 74).

3. The Gospel of John

Such a passage as Joh 19:34, Joh 19:35 seems to refer to docetic Gnosticism, and to be a personal protest against it. After describing the piercing of Christ’s side by the soldier’s spear, and how straightway there came out blood and water, the apostle adds, And he that hath seen hath borne witness, and his witness is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye also may believe. There are many other passages which seem to be directed against Docetism, e.g. The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory) (Joh 1:14); Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus by the well (Joh 4:6); Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and put it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing (Joh 20:27).

Cerinthus seems to have taught that the religion of Christ was identical with undiluted Mosaism, including even circumcision and the earthly kingdom of the future. The Cerinthian theory, however, was held under various forms by its adherents, some teachers holding that the God of the Old Testament was, at the best, a subordinate angel of limited power, wisdom and goodness, and that the creation of the world was very imperfect. Others went so far as to identify the God of the Old Testament with Satan. The ethic of systems such as these was antinomian, sometimes even going the length of libertinism.

Generally, the forms under which Gnosticism appeared varied greatly in different periods. Some went farther than others from the Christian faith.

4. Various Sects

Some communities, such as the Encratites, laid the greatest stress on the necessity for asceticism; other communities were wholly docetic; the Carpocratians taught the philosophy and communism of Plato. One of these teachers, Epiphanes, was honored as a god, and this sect crowned the image of Jesus along with those of Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle. Further, there were impostors of all varieties: magicians, soothsayers, jugglers, deceivers and hypocrites, who appeared using mighty words with a host of unintelligible formulas and taking up with scandalous ceremonies in order to rob men of their money (Harnack, op. cit., 239), and even for viler purposes.

(1) The Ophites

Gnosticism, before reaching its full development, is chiefly represented by the ophite sects or systems. These were so named from the word ophis, serpent, to which they paid honor as the symbol of intelligence. They held that the Creator of the world was an ignorant and imperfect being, Ialdaboth, the Son of Chaos; and that it was a meritorious act when the serpent persuaded Adam and Eve to disobey him, There were several of the ophite sects, such as the Cainites, who reversed all the standards of moral judgment, choosing as their heroes the persons whom the Bible condemned, such as Cain, the men of Sodom, Esau and Korah.

(2) Valentinus

By the time of Justin Martyr (circa 150 ad), Gnosticism had become divided into a variety of sects and schools, Valentinians, Basilideans, Saturninians and Marcionites. In the Valentinian system, Christ and the Holy Spirit were two eons. The Valentinians granted that ordinary Christians were better than the heathen, and that they might look forward to a kind of salvation; even now ordinary Christians occupied a middle position, better than the hylic or psychic, but inferior to the pneumatic or spiritual, as the Gnostics termed themselves.

(3) Basilides

The Basilideans take their name from Basilides of Alexandria, a man of powerful intellect. He and his son Isidore taught this system, which was afterward considerably modified for the purpose of popular apprehension. The world is continuously evolved from a pansperma or seed of the world, in which all things were originally potentially contained. It is ruled by two great Archons, who yet subserve the designs of the Supreme. There are no eons, but the highest light descends through the successive spheres till it rests on Jesus of Nazareth. The process is complete when the Divine element (sonship) is all drawn out and restored to God; oblivion then falls on lower intelligences. Many fine sayings are attributed to Basilides, e.g. I will say anything rather than doubt the goodness of Providence (Orr, The Early Church, 75).

(4) Saturninus

The Saturninians were so called from Saturninus, said to be a disciple of Menander, who in turn is said to have been a disciple of Simon Magus. The system of Saturninus is marked both by a strong dualism and by a gloomy asceticism. He is also reported to have been one of the founders of the Encratite heresy, which condemned marriage. Tatian, Justin Martyr’s disciple, became a member of this Gnostic sect, holding, it is alleged, the usual theory of eons, and that there was a Demiurge, who was not the Supreme God.

(5) Marcion

Marcion, a native of Pontus, taught in Rome circa 140-55 ad. His system differs much from ordinary Gnostic theories, except that he absolutely distinguished between the God of the Old Testament, who is regarded as merely great, harsh, rigorous, and the good God of the New Testament, who is wholly love. He also held to the usual Gnostic dualism and docetism. Marcion’s system has been described as an overstrained Paulinism, as he lays the stress on faith, not on knowledge. Marcion was the author of a book called the Anthitheses, which contrasted the Old Testament with the New Testament. He also drew up a canon of Scripture, which contained only one gospel, namely, Luke in a mutilated state, and ten Epistles of Paul. Marcion was a rigorous ascetic. In the Lord’s Supper he allowed only water to be used instead of wine. The Marcionites refused baptism to married persons. This sect or church endured for several centuries.

5. Relation to the Old Testament

All the Gnostic systems had one feature in common, namely, that they regarded the Old Testament and the New Testament as revelations of two different Gods, and considered the mission of Christ to proceed from a higher power than the God of the Jewish religion, who was identified with the Demiurge, or Maker of the world. But under this common assumption there was room for two very opposite estimates of the older revelation and of the God whom it reveals. Some of the Gnostic sects regarded the Demiurge as being altogether alien from and opposed to the Supreme God; others considered him merely as a subordinate power, inferior but not hostile to the Supreme God, and acting before the coming of a more perfect revelation, as his unconscious organ (Mansel, The Gnostic Heresies, 45). There can be no doubt that the Gnostic propaganda was seriously hindered by the inability to organize and discipline churches, which is characteristic of all philosophic systems of religion (Harnack, History of Dogma, I, 252). From about 210 they ceased to be a factor of the historical development, though the church of Constantine and Theodosius was alone really able to suppress them (ibid., 251).

6. The Christian Verities

In contrast to Gnosticism the Christian church held fast to these great facts, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, prexistent before the Incarnation, and manifest in the flesh and crucified for us men and for our salvation; that He rose from the dead; that the Old Testament is a true revelation of the one supreme and holy God, the Creator of all things. Dualism, the eternity of matter and its inherent evil, as well as Docetism and oriental mythologies were accordingly rejected as contrary to the Christian faith.

7. Influence on Theology

During the period of the prevalence of Gnosticism there took place the earlier developments of Christian theology. Gnosticism gave a powerful impetus to the formation of a New Testament canon of Scripture; and to the shaping of the earliest creed. See APOSTLES’ CREED.

8. Truth Underlying Docetism

In the revulsion from Gnosticism and Docetism it should not be forgotten that there is truth to be found even amid the errors of these systems. Docetism was an over-statement of a great truth, an over-statement so large as to destroy the true humanity of our Lord. But the truth in Docetism is that the eternal Christ touches and appeals to and has a definite relationship to and actually influences every human heart; and also, that, to the Christian believer, Christ is more and does more than this; Christ dwells in the believer’s heart by faith, Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col 1:27). Docetism was not all folly. Rather we may regard it as one primitive form of the assertion of that mystical element which has never been wanting to Christianity from the first days until now, and we may be sure, never will be wanting to it (Sanday, Christologies Ancient and Modern, 9).

VIII. Modern Gnosticism

Gnosticism in its ancient form has passed away, but it is interesting to observe how its spirit reappears from time to time in modern days. Gnosticism, as already seen, is not one aspect of thought alone, but many. And in one form or another it is seen again and again. For example, the modern denial of the virgin birth of our Lord is that form of Gnosticism which taught that the man Jesus became Christ only at His baptism, when the Holy Spirit descended upon Him from heaven.

Phases of Gnostic teaching are reproduced in modern pantheistic philosophies and other forms of religious doctrine, which hold that there has been no objective atonement and no resurrection of Christ from the dead. Basilides with his powerful speculative grasp and all-embracing evolutionary process might be termed the Hegel of the movement; Valentinus with his robe of fantasy and triple fall and redemption was its Schelling; Marcion with his severe practical bent, his doctrine of faith, and his antitheses of the just God and the good, might without straining be termed its Ritschl (Orr, The Progress of Dogma, 59).

Fichte said, ‘There were no external realities at all, they were the mere objectivity of the subject or creations of the inward eye’; after Fichte came Schelling, and Schelling said, ‘Then this creating eye is God’s own eye’; and after Schelling came Hegel, and Hegel said that ‘God and man are one, and God all men, and all men God, and the whole universe God eternally thinking in the process of development,’ and that or something like it is Hegelianism. I feel in studying this philosophy, as Baron Humboldt says he felt, when he experienced the first shock of an earthquake. I feel a dreadful sense of restlessness and insecurity. The ground seems to give way beneath, and the earth and the heaven to dissolve, the universe becomes a dream, a myth (W.B. Robertson, D.D., Martin Luther, German Student Life, etc., 138).

Philosophy, says Mansel, striving after a first principle which shall be one and simple and unconditioned and incapable of all further analysis in thought, is naturally tempted to soar above that complex combination of attributes which is implied in our conception of personality, and in endeavoring to simplify and purify our representation of the Divine nature, ends by depriving it of every attribute which can make God the object of any religious feeling or the source of any moral obligation (The Gnostic Heresies, 11). God is no longer the author and source of goodness and truth and moral law, but the mind is occupied with the metaphysical relation between God and the world, as absolute and relative, cause and effect, principle and consequence, and God becomes identical with the world.

It is easily seen how teaching of this sort strikes at the root of all religion and morality. The personality of God, the personality and free will of man, the existence of moral evil, the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the redemption which He accomplished for the world, His resurrection, the whole significance of His person and His work – all is denied. This is the spirit and the meaning of Gnosticism.

Dr. Gwatkin sums up the matter thus: Gnosticism undermined Christian monotheism by its distinction of the Creator from the Supreme, Christian morals by its opposition of the philosopher to the unlearned, Christian practice by its separation of knowledge from action; and it cut away the very basis of the gospel whenever it explained away its history. In every case it had got hold of truth on one side – the reality of evil in the world, the function of knowledge in religion, the difference between the letter and the spirit; but fragments of truth are not enough for a gospel, which is false if all truth is not summed up in Christ. Therefore, there could be no peace between the Gnostic illuminati and the Christian churches (Early Church History, II, 68).

Literature

Uhlhorn, The Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism; Neander, Church History, Antignostikus; Reuss, History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age; Lightfoot, Notes on Epistles of St. Paul, Colossians, Philippians; Gwatkin, Early Church History to 313 ad, II; W. Bousset, article Gnosticism, Encyclopedia Brit, 11th edition; Harnack, History of Dogma, I (English translation); Orr, Neglected Factors in the Study of the Early Progress of Christianity, Sin as a Problem of Today, The Progress of Dogma, The Early Church; Mansel, The Gnostic Heresies; Robert Law, B.D., The Tests of Life.

Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

Gnosticism

An early system of philosophy professedly Christian. One of their theories was that the Lord was an on and not really a man. Apparently to refute this the apostle insists on Christ having come ‘in flesh.’ 1Jn 4:2-3; 2Jn 1:7. The same may be alluded to in Col 2:9, “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily ,” in opposition to their mysticism. See GENEALOGIES.

Fuente: Concise Bible Dictionary

Gnosticism

Gnosticism. The zeal with which a learner commences the study of ecclesiastical history is not unfrequently damped at an early stage, when he finds that, in order to know the history of religious thought in the 2nd cent., he must make himself acquainted with speculations so wild and so baseless that it is irksome to read them and difficult to believe that time was when acquaintance with them was counted as what alone deserved the name of “knowledge.” But it would be a mistake to think too disdainfully of those early heretics who go by the common name of Gnostics. In the first place, it may be said in their excuse that the problems which they undertook to solve were among the most difficult with which the human intellect has ever grappled-namely, to explain the origin of evil, and to make it conceivable how the multiplicity of finite existence can all have been derived from a single absolute unconditioned principle. And besides, these speculators only did what learned theologians have constantly since endeavoured to do-namely, combine the doctrines which they learned from revelation with the results of what they regarded as the best philosophy of their own day, so as to obtain what seemed to them the most satisfactory account and explanation of the facts of the universe. Every union of philosophy and religion is the marriage of a mortal with an immortal: the religion lives; the philosophy grows old and dies. When the philosophic element of a theological system becomes antiquated, its explanations which contented one age become unsatisfactory to the next, and there ensues what is spoken of as a conflict between religion and science; whereas, in reality, it is a conflict between the science of one generation and that of a succeeding one. If the religious speculations of the 2nd cent. appear to us peculiarly unreasonable, it is because the philosophy incorporated with them is completely alien to modern thought. That philosophy gave unlimited licence to the framing of hypotheses, and provided that the results were in tolerable accordance with the facts, no other proof was required that the causes which these hypotheses assumed were really in operation. The Timaeus of Plato is a favourable specimen of the philosophic writings which moulded the Gnostic speculations; and the interval between that and a modern treatise on physics is fully as wide as between Gnosticism and modern scientific theology. So it has happened that modern thought has less sympathy with heretical theories deeply coloured by the philosophy of their own time than with the plain common sense of a church writer such as Irenaeus, which led him to proceed by the positive historical method, and reject what was merely fanciful and speculative. And it may be said that deeply important as were some of the particular questions discussed in the conflict between the church and Gnosticism, an even more important issue of that conflict was the decision of the method by which religious knowledge was to be arrived at. The Gnostics generally held that the Saviour effected redemption by making a revelation of knowledge, yet they but feebly attempted to connect historically their teaching with his; what was derived from Him was buried under elements taken freely from heathen mythologies and philosophies, or springing from the mere fancy of the speculator, so that, if Gnosticism had triumphed, all that is distinctively Christian would have disappeared. In opposition to them, church writers were led to emphasize the principle that that alone is to be accounted true knowledge of things divine which can be shewn by historical tradition, written or oral, to have been derived from the teaching of Christ and His apostles, a principle the philosophic justice of which must be admitted if Christ be owned as having filled the part in the enlightenment of the world which orthodox and Gnostics alike attributed to Him. Thus, by the conflict with Gnosticism reverence in the church was deepened for the authority of revelation as restraining the licence of human speculation, and so the channel was marked out within the bounds of which religious thought continued for centuries to flow.

We deal here with some general aspects of the subject, referring to the articles on the chief Gnostic teachers for details as to the special tenets of the different Gnostic sects.

Use of the Word Gnosticism.-In logical order we ought to begin by defining Gnosticism, and so fixing what extension is to be given to the application of the term, a point on which writers are not agreed. Baur, for instance, reckons among Gnostics the sectaries from whom the Clementine writings emanated, although on some of the most fundamental points their doctrines are diametrically opposed to those commonly reckoned as Gnostic. We conform to more ordinary usage in giving to the word a narrower sense, but this is a matter on which controversy would be only verbal, Gnosticism not being a word which has in its own nature a definite meaning. There is no difficulty in naming common characteristics of the sects commonly called Gnostic, though perhaps none of them is distinctive enough to be made the basis of a logical definition. They professed to be able to trace their doctrine to the apostles. Basilides was said to have learned from a companion of St. Peter; gospels were in circulation among them which purported to have been written by Philip, Thomas, and other apostles; and they professed to be able to find their doctrines in the canonical scriptures by methods of allegorical interpretation which, however forced, could easily be paralleled in the procedure of orthodox writers. If we made our definition turn on the claim to the possession of such a Gnosis and to the title of Gnostic, we should have to count Clement of Alexandria among Gnostics and I. Timothy among Gnostic writings; for the church writers refused to surrender these titles to the heretics and, claiming to be the true Gnostics, branded the heretical Gnosis as “falsely so called.” If we fix our attention on the predominance of the speculative over the practical in Gnosticism, which, as Baur truly remarks, led men to regard Christianity less as a means of salvation than as furnishing the principles of a philosophy of the universe, we must allow that since their time very many orthodox writings have been open to the same criticism. We come very close to a definition if we make the criterion of Gnosticism to be the establishment of a dualism between spirit and matter; and, springing out of this, the doctrine that the world was created by some power different from the supreme God, yet we might not be able to establish that this characteristic belongs to every sect which we count as Gnostic; and if we are asked why we do not count such sects as the Manicheans among the Gnostics, the best answer is that usage confines the word to those sects which arose in the ferment of thought when Christianity first came into contact with heathen philosophy, excluding those which clearly began later. A title of honour claimed by these sectaries for themselves, and at first refused them by their opponents, was afterwards adopted as the most convenient way of designating them.

We have no reason to think that the earliest Gnostics intended to found sects separated from the church and called after their own names. Their disciples were to be Christians, only elevated above the rest as acquainted with deeper mysteries, and called , because possessed of a Gnosis superior to the simple faith of the multitude. Probably the earliest instance of the use of the word is by Celsus, quoted by Origen, v. 61, where, speaking of the multiplicity of Christian sects, he says that there were some who professed to be Gnostics. Irenaeus (i. xxv. 5, p. 104), speaking of the Carpocratians and in particular of that school of them which Marcellina established at Rome, says that they called themselves Gnostics. It is doubtless on the strength of this passage that Eusebius (H. E. iv. 7), quoting Irenaeus in the same context, calls Carpocrates the father of the sect called that of the Gnostics. In the habitual use of the word by Irenaeus himself it does not occur as limited to Carpocratians. Irenaeus, in his first book, when he has gone through the sects called after the names of heretical teachers, gives in a kind of appendix an account of a number of sects in their general characteristics Ophite, but he does not himself use that name. He calls them “multitudo Gnosticorum,” tracing their origin to Simon Magus, and counting them as progenitors of the Valentinians. And constantly we have the expression Basilidians, Valentinians, etc., “et reliqui Gnostici,” where, by the latter appellation, the Ophite sects are specially intended. The form of expression does not exclude from the title of Gnostic the sects named after their founders; and the doctrine of the Valentinians is all through the work of Irenaeus a branch of “Gnosis falsely so called”; yet it is usually spoken of less as Gnosticism than as a development of Gnosticism, and the Valentinians are described as more Gnostic than the Gnostics, meaning by the latter word the Ophite sects already mentioned. In the work of Hippolytus against heresies, the name is almost exclusively found in connexion with the sect of the Naassenes or Ophites, and three or four times it is repeated (v. 2, p. 93; 4, p. 94; 11, p. 123) that these people call themselves Gnostics, claiming that they alone “knew the depths.” The common source of Epiphanius and Philaster had an article on the Nicolaitanes, tracing the origin of the Gnostics to Nicolas the Deacon (see also Hippolytus, vii. 36, p. 258, and the statement of Irenaeus [II. ii. p. 188] that Nicolaitanism was a branch of Gnosis). Epiphanius divides this article into two, making the Gnostics a separate heresy (Haer. 26). Hence ancient usage leaves a good deal of latitude to modern writers in deciding which of the 2nd-cent. sects they will count as Gnostic.

Classification of Gnostic Sects.-Some general principles of philosophic classification may be easily agreed on, but when they come to be applied, it is found that there are some sects to which it is not obvious where to assign a place, and that some sects are separated whose affinities are closer than those of others which are classed together. A very important, though not a complete, division is that made by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. iii. 5) into the ascetic and licentious sects: both parties agreeing in holding the essential evil of matter; the one endeavouring by rigorous abstinence to free as much as possible man’s soul from the bondage to which it is subjected by union with his material part, and refusing to marry and so enthral new souls in the prisons of bodies; the other abandoning as desperate any attempt to purify the hopelessly corrupt body, and teaching that the instructed soul ought to hold itself unaffected by the deeds of the body. All actions were to it indifferent. The division of Neander is intended to embrace a wider range than that just described. Taking the common doctrine of the Gnostic sects that the world was made by a Being different from the supreme God, he distinguishes whether that Being was held to have acted in subordination to the Supreme, and on the whole to have carried out his intentions, or to have been absolutely hostile to the supreme God. Taking into account the generally acknowledged principle that the Creator of the world was the same as the God worshipped by the Jews, we see that Gnostics of the second class would be absolutely hostile to Judaism, which those of the former class might accept as one of the stages ordained by the Supreme in the enlightenment of the world. Thus Neander’s division classifies sects as not unfriendly to Judaism or as hostile to it; the former class taking its origin in those Alexandrian schools where the authority of such teachers as Philo had weight, the latter among Christian converts from Oriental philosophy whose early education had given them no prejudices in favour of Judaism. Gieseler divides into Alexandrian Gnostics, whose teaching was mainly influenced by the Platonic philosophy, and Syrian strongly affected by Parsism. In the former the emanation doctrine was predominant, in the latter dualism. Undoubtedly the most satisfactory classification would be if it were possible, as Matter suggested, to have one founded on the history of the generation of the sects, distinguishing the school where Gnosticism had its beginning, and naming the schools which successively in different places altered in different directions the original scheme. But a good classification of this kind is rendered impossible by the scantiness of our materials for the history of Gnosticism. Irenaeus is the first to give any full details, and he may be counted two generations later than Valentinus; for Marcus, the disciple of Valentinus, was resisted by one whom Irenaeus looked up to with respect as belonging to the generation above his own. The interval between Valentinus and the beginning of Gnosticism was, moreover, probably quite as great as that between Valentinus and Irenaeus. The phrase used by Hippolytus in telling us that the Naassenes boasted that they alone “knew the depths” was also a watchword of the false teachers reprobated in the Apocalypse (Rev 2:24). We can hardly avoid the inference that these Naassenes inherited a phrase continuously in use among heretical teachers since before the publication of the Revelation. Of the writers who would deny the pastoral epistles to be St. Paul’s, a large proportion date the Revelation only 2 or 3 years after St. Paul’s death; therefore, whether or not it was St. Paul who wrote of the “falsely called knowledge,” it remains probable that heretical pretenders to Gnosis had arisen in his lifetime. If the beginnings of Gnosticism were thus in apostolic times, we need not be surprised that the notices of its origin given by Irenaeus more than a century afterwards are so scanty; and that the teachers to whom its origin has been ascribed, Simon, Menander, Nicolas, Cerinthus, remain shadowy or legendary characters. It follows that conclusions as to the order of succession of the early Gnostic sects and their obligations one to another are very insecure. Still, some general facts in the history of the evolution of Gnosticism may be considered fairly certain; and we are disposed to accept the classification of Lipsius and count three stages in the progress of Gnosticism, even though there may be doubt to what place a particular sect is to be assigned. The birthplace of Gnosticism may be said to be Syria, if we include in that Palestine and Samaria, where church tradition places the activity of those whom it regards as its founders, Simon and Menander. It may also be inferred from the use made of O.T. and of Hebrew words that Gnosticism sprang out of Judaism. The false teaching combated in Colossians, which has several Gnostic features, is also distinctly Jewish, insisting on the observance of Sabbaths and new moons. The Epp. to Timothy and Titus, dealing with a somewhat later development of Gnosticism, describe the false teachers as “of the circumcision,” “professing to be teachers of the law” and propounders of “Jewish fables.” It is not unlikely that what these epistles characterize as “profane and old wives’ fables” may be some of the Jewish Haggadah of which the early stages of Gnosticism are full. The story of Ialdabaoth, e.g., told by Irenaeus (i. 30), we hold to date from the very beginning of Gnosticism, if not in its present shape, at least in some rudimentary form, as fragments of it appear in different Gnostic systems, especially the representation of the work of Creation as performed by an inferior being, who still fully believed himself to be the Supreme, saying, “I am God, and there is none beside me,” until, after this boast, his ignorance was enlightened. The Jewish Cabbala has been asserted to be the parent of Gnosticism; but the records of Cabbalistic doctrine are quite modern, and any attempt to pick out the really ancient parts must be attended with uncertainty. Lipsius (p. 270, and Grtz, referred to by him) shews that the Cabbala is certainly not older than Gnosticism, its relation to it being not that of a parent, but of a younger brother. If there be direct obligation, the Cabbala is the borrower, but many common features are to be explained by regarding both as branches from the same root, and as alike springing from the contact of Judaism with the religious beliefs of the farther East. Jewish Essenism especially furnished a soil favourable to the growth of Gnosticism, with which it seems to have had in common the doctrine of the essential evil of matter, as appears from the denial by the Essenes of the resurrection of the body and from their inculcation of a disciplining of man’s material part by very severe asceticism. (See Lightfoot, Colossians, 119 seq.) Further, the Ebionite sects which sprang out of Essenism, while they professed the strongest attachment to the Mosaic law, not only rejected the authority of the prophetical writings, but dealt in a very arbitrary manner with those parts of the Pentateuch which conflicted with their peculiar doctrines. We have parallels to this in theories of some of the early Gnostic sects which referred the Jewish prophetical books to the inspiration of beings inferior to Him by Whom the law was given, as well as in the arbitrary modes of criticism applied by some of the later sects to the books of Scripture. A form of Gnosticism thus developed from Judaism when the latter was brought into contact with the mystic speculations of the East, whether we suppose Essenism to have been a stage in the process of growth or both to have been independent growths under similar circumstances of development. Lipsius notes as the characteristics of those sects which he counts as belonging to the first stage of Gnosticism that they still move almost or altogether within the circle of the Jewish religious history, and that the chief problem they set themselves is the defining the relation between Christianity and Judaism. The solutions at which they arrive are very various. Those Jewish sects whose Essenism passed into the Ebionitism of the Clementines regarded Christianity as essentially identical with Judaism, either religion being sufficient for salvation. These sects are quite orthodox as to the Creation, their utmost deviation (if it can be called so) from the received belief being the ascription of Creation to the immanent wisdom of God. Other Jewish speculators came to think of the formation of matter as accomplished by a subordinate being, carrying out, it may be, the will of the Supreme, but owing to his finiteness and ignorance doing the work with many imperfections. Then came the theory that this subordinate being was the God of the Jews, to which nation he had issued many commandments that were not good, though overruled by the Supreme so as to carry out His ends. Lastly came the theory of the Cainites and other extreme Ophite sects, which represented the God of the Jews as the determined enemy of the Supreme, and as one whose commands it was the duty of every enlightened Gnostic to disobey. With all their variety of results, these sects agreed in the importance attached to the problem of the true relations of Judaism to Christianity. They do make use of certain heathen principles of cosmogony, but these such as already had become familiar to Syriac Judaism, and introduced not so much to effect a reconciliation between Christianity and heathenism as to give an explanation of the service rendered to the world by the publication of Christianity, the absolute religion. This is made mainly to consist in the aid given to the soul in its struggles to escape the bonds of finiteness and darkness, by making known to it the supersensual world and awaking it to the consciousness of its spiritual origin. Regarding this knowledge as the common privilege of Christians, the first speculators would count their own possession of it as differing rather in degree than in kind; and so it is not easy to draw a sharp line of distinction between their doctrine on the subject of Gnosis and that admitted as orthodox. Our Lord had described it as the privilege of His disciples to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven; later when His followers learned of a suffering Messiah, and of the fulfilment in Jesus of the types of the Mosaic law, they felt that the veil had been removed for them, and that they enjoyed a knowledge of the meaning of the O.T. Scriptures to which their unconverted brethren were strangers. This feeling pervades the Ep. to the Hebrews, and still more that of Barnabas. Another doctrine which St. Paul describes as a mystery formerly kept secret, but now revealed through his gospel, is the admission of the Gentiles on equal terms with the Jews to the inheritance of the kingdom of Christ. It was no part of orthodox Christian doctrine that all Christians possessed the true Gnosis in equal degree. Some required to be fed with milk, not with strong meat, and had not their senses exercised by reason of use to discern between good and evil. Clement of Alexandria distinguished between faith and knowledge. The difference, therefore, between the Gnostic doctrine and that of the church mainly depends on the character of what was accounted knowledge, much of the Gnostic so-called knowledge consisting in acquaintance with the names of a host of invisible beings and with the formulae which could gain their favour.

Gnosticism, in its first stage, did not proceed far outside the limits of Syria. What Lipsius counts as the second stage dates from the migration of Gnostic systems to Alexandria, where the myths of Syriac Gnosis came to be united to principles of Grecian philosophy. Different Gnostic systems resulted according as the principles of this or that Grecian school were adopted. Thus, in the system of Valentinus, the Pythagorean Platonic philosophy predominates, the Stoic in that of the Basilidians as presented by Hippolytus. In these systems, tinged with Hellenism, the Jewish religion is not so much controverted or disparaged as ignored. The mythological personages among whom in the older Gnosis the work of creation was distributed are in these Hellenic systems replaced by a kind of abstract beings (of whom the Valentinian aeons are an example) which personify the different stages of the process by which the One Infinite Spirit communicates and reveals itself to derived existences. The distinction between faith and knowledge becomes sharpened, the persons to whom faith and knowledge respectively are to serve as guides being represented as essentially different in nature. The most obvious division of men is into a kingdom of light and a kingdom of darkness. The need of a third class may have first made itself felt from the necessity of finding a place for members of the Jewish religion, who stood so far above heathenism, so far below Christianity. The Platonic trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit afforded a principle of threefold classification, and men are divided into earthly ( or ), animal (), and spiritual (). In these Hellenic Gnostic systems the second class represents not Jews but ordinary Christians, and the distinction between them and the Gnostics themselves (who are the spiritual) rests on an assumed difference of nature which leaves little room for human free will. Salvation by faith and corresponding works is disparaged as suitable only for the psychical, the better sort of whom may, by this means, be brought to as high a position in the order of the universe as their nature is capable of; but the really spiritual need not these lower methods of salvation. It suffices for them to have the knowledge of their true nature revealed for them to become certain of shaking off all imprisoning bonds and soaring to the highest region of all. Thus ordinary historical Christianity runs the risk of meeting the same fate in the later Gnostic systems that befell Judaism in the earlier. The doctrines and facts of the religion are only valued so far as they can be made subservient to the peculiar notions of Gnosticism; and the method of allegorical interpretation was so freely applied to both Testaments that all the solid parts of the religion were in danger of being volatilized away.

The natural consequence of this weakening of the historic side of Christianity was the removal of all sufficient barrier against the intrusion of heathen elements into the systems; while their moral teaching was injuriously affected by the doctrine that the spiritual were secure of salvation by necessity of their nature and irrespectively of their conduct. Gnosticism, in its third stage, struggles in various ways to avoid these faults, and so again draws nearer to the teaching of the Catholic church. Thus the DOCETAE of Hippolytus allow of immense variety of classes, corresponding to the diversity of ideas derived from the world of aeons, which each has received; while again they deny to none a share in our Lord’s redemption, but own that members of different sects are entitled, each in his degree, to claim kinship with Jesus and to obtain forgiveness of sins through Him. So again in one of the latest of the Gnostic systems, that of PISTIS SOPHIA, there is no assertion of an essential diversity of nature among men, but the immense development of ranks and degrees in the spiritual world, which that work professes to reveal, is used so as to provide for every man a place according to his works. In the system of Marcion, too, the theory of essentially different classes is abandoned; the great boast of Christianity is its universality; and the redemption of the Gospel is represented, not as the mere rousing of the pneumatic soul to consciousness of privileges all along possessed, but as the introduction of a real principle of moral life through the revelation of a God of love forgiving sins through Christ.

We add brief notes on a few main points of the Gnostic systems.

Creation and Cosmogony.-Philo (de Op. Mund.) had inferred from the expression, “Let us make man,” of Genesis that God had used other beings as assistants in the creation of man, and he explains in this way why man is capable of vice as well as virtue, ascribing the origin of the latter to God, of the former to His helpers in the work of creation. The earliest Gnostic sects ascribe the work of creation to angels, some of them using the same passage in Genesis (Justin. Dial. cum Tryph. c. 67).

Doctrine with respect to Judaism.-The doctrine that the Creator of the world is not the supreme God leads at once to the question, What then is to be thought of the God of the Jews, who certainly claimed to have created the world? This question is most distinctly answered in the doctrine of the Ophite system (Iren. i. 30). According to it he who claimed to be a jealous God, acknowledging none other, was led by sheer ignorance to make a false pretension. He was in truth none other than the chief of the creative angels, holding but a subordinate place in the constitution of the universe. It was he who forbad to Adam and Eve that knowledge by which they might be informed that he had superiors, and who on their disobedience cast them out of Paradise.

Doctrine concerning the Nature of Man.-With the myth, told by Saturninus, of the animation of a previously lifeless man by a spark of light from above, he connected the doctrine, in which he was followed by almost all Gnostic sects, that there would be no resurrection of the body, the spark of light being taken back on death to the place whence it had come, and man’s material part being resolved into its elements. Saturninus is said to have taught the doctrine, antagonistic to that of man’s free will, that there were classes of men by nature essentially different, and of these he counted two-the good and the wicked. The doctrine became common to many Gnostic systems that the human frame contained a heavenly element struggling to return to its native place.

Redemption and Christology.-The Gnostic systems generally represent man’s spirit as imprisoned in matter, and needing release. The majority recognize the coming of Christ as a turning-point in human affairs, but almost all reduce the Redeemer’s work to the impartation of knowledge and the disclosure of mysteries. With regard to the nature of Christ, the lowest view is held by Justinus, who describes Jesus but as a shepherd boy commissioned by an angel to be the bearer of a divine revelation, and who attributes to Him at no time any higher character. Carpocrates makes Jesus a man like others, only of more than ordinary steadfastness and purity of soul, possessing no prerogatives which other men may not attain in the same or even higher degree if they follow, or surpass, His example. Besides furnishing an example, He was also supposed to have made a revelation of truth, to secret traditions of which the followers of Carpocrates appealed. At the opposite pole from those who see in the Saviour a mere man are those who deny His humanity altogether. We know from St. John’s epistle that the doctrine that our Lord had not really come in the flesh was one which at an early time troubled the church.

Authorities.-The great work of Irenaeus against heresies is the chief storehouse whence writers, both ancient and modern, have drawn their accounts of the Gnostic sects. It was primarily directed against the then most popular form of the heresy of Valentinus, and hence this form of Gnosticism has thrown all others into the shade, and many modern writers when professing to describe Gnosticism really describe Valentinianism. Irenaeus was largely copied by Tertullian, who, however, was an independent authority on Marcionism; by Hippolytus, who in his work against heresies adds, however, large extracts from his independent reading of Gnostic works; and by Epiphanius, who also gives a few valuable additions from other sources. The Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria, though provokingly desultory and unsystematic, furnish much valuable information about Gnosticism, which was still a living foe of the church. The writings of Origen also yield much important information. The matter, not borrowed from Irenaeus, to be gleaned from later heresiologists is scanty and of doubtful value.

Modern works which have made valuable contributions to the knowledge of Gnosticism include Neander, Genetische Entwickelung (1818), and Church Hist. vol. ii. (1825 and 2nd ed. 1843, trans. in Clarke’s series); Burton, Bampton Lectures (1829); Baur, Christliche Gnosis (1835); Die christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte (1853, 2nd ed. 1860); and Mansel, The Gnostic Heresies (1875).

[G.S.]

Fuente: Wace’s Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature