Gnosticism
Excerpt from The Gnostic Heresies Of The First And Second Centuries by Henry Longueville Mansel
Gnosticism, the greatest of the philosophical threats, was at its peak of power about 150 AD . Its roots reached back into New Testament times. Paul seemed to have been fighting an incipient form of Gnosticism in his letter to the Colossians. Christian tradition related the origin of Gnosticism to Simon Magus,[1] whom Peter had had to rebuke so severely.
Gnosticism sprang from the natural
human desire to create a theodicy, an explanation of the origin of evil. The
Gnostics, because they associated matter with evil, sought a way to create a
philosophical system in which God as spirit could be freed from association
with evil and in which man could be related on the spiritual side of his nature
to Deity. It was also a logical or rational system that illustrated the human
tendency to seek answers to the great questions of the origin of man. It sought
to do this by synthesizing Christianity and Hellenistic philosophy. The
Gnostics, like the Greeks of the first two chapters of 1 Corinthians, sought by
human wisdom to understand the ways of God with man and to avoid what seemed to
them to be the stigma of the Cross. If the Gnostics had succeeded, Christianity
would have been simply another philosophical religion of the ancient world. Discovery
of nearly one thousand pages about Egyptian and Syrian
Gnosticism at Nag Hammadi in Upper
Egypt in 1946 gives us some idea of their doctrines. Dualism was one of their
main tenets. The Gnostics insisted upon a clear separation between the worlds
of the material and spiritual because to them matter was always associated with
evil and spirit with good. Hence God could not have been the Creator of this
material world.
The gap between God and the world of
matter was bridged by the idea of a demiurge who was one of a series of
emanations from the high god of Gnosticism. These emanations were beings with
less of spirit and increasingly more of matter. The demiurge, as one of these
emanations, had enough of spirit in him to have creative power and enough of
matter to create the evil material world. This demiurge the Gnostics identified
with the Jehovah of the Old Testament, whom they heartily disliked.
To explain Christ, they adopted a
doctrine known as Docetism. Because matter was evil, Christ could not be
associated with a human body despite the Bible’s teaching to the contrary.
Christ as absolute spiritual good could not unite with matter. Either the man
Jesus was a phantom with the seeming appearance of a material body (Docetism),
or Christ came upon the human body of Jesus only for a short time—between the
baptism of the man Jesus and the beginning of His suffering on the cross. Then
Christ left the man Jesus to die on the cross. It was the task of Christ to
teach a special gnosis or knowledge that would help man save himself by an
intellectual process.
Salvation, which was only for the
soul or spiritual part of man, might begin with faith, but the special gnosis,
which Christ imparted to the elite, would be far more beneficial, according to
the Gnostic, in the process of salvation of his soul. Since the body was
material and was destined to be cast off, it might be kept under by strict
ascetic practices or be given over to libertinism. Only the pneumatic Gnostics,
those possessing the esoteric gnosis, and the psychic group, those having faith
but no access to the gnosis, would get to heaven. The hylic group would never
enjoy the heavenly state, for they were destined to eternal loss. There was no
place for the resurrection of the body.
The sacraments were not observed
because they involved material wine and bread, which were linked with evil. This
description of the major tenets held in common by the Gnostics should not
mislead one as to the existence of numerous Gnostic sects with special
doctrines of their own. Even a casual reading of the first few books of
Irenaeus’s Against Heresies will show the reader how numerous were the groups
and how varied their ideas. Saturninus headed a Syrian school of Gnosticism; in
Egypt, Basilides led another school. Marcion and his followers seem to have
been the most influential of the groups linked by some with Gnosticism.
Marcion left his native Pontus about
140 and went to Rome, where he became influential in the Roman church. He felt
that Judaism was evil and, therefore, he hated the Jewish Scriptures and the
Jehovah described therein. He set up his own canon of Scripture, which included
a truncated gospel of Luke and ten of the letters of the New Testament
associated with the name of Paul. Although his business made him wealthy enough
to be a real help to the Roman church, Marcion was expelled for holding to
these ideas. He then founded his own church. It held to a Gnostic dualism that
rejected the God of the Old Testament for a god of love revealed in Jesus. It
also accepted Marcion’s canon of Scripture.
A critique of Gnosticism from a
scriptural standpoint will soon make it clear that the church was wise to fight
this doctrine. It posited two gods, the evil one of the Old Testament to create
and the good one to redeem.
Consequently, it pandered to
anti-Semitism in the church. It also rejected the reality of the humanity,
sacrificial death, and physical resurrection of Christ, whom John claimed dwelt
among us to reveal the glory of God.
Little wonder that Paul asserted the
fullness of God in Christ in his letter to the Colossian church (Col. 1:19;
2:9). Gnosticism also pandered to spiritual pride with its suggestion that only
an aristocratic elite would ever enjoy the pleasures of dwelling with Deity in
heaven. It had no place for the human body in the future life. In this respect
it resembled the thinking of Greek mythology and philosophy that also had no
future for the human body beyond this life. Its asceticism was a contributing
factor to the medieval ascetic movement that we know as monasticism.
It did, however, contribute
unwittingly to the development of the church. When Marcion formed his canon of
New Testament Scriptures, the church was forced in self-defense to give
attention to the problem of what books were to be considered canonical and thus
authoritative for doctrine and life. The development of a short creed to test
orthodoxy was speeded up to meet a practical need. The bishop’s prestige was
enhanced by emphasis on his office as a center of unity for the faithful
against heresy. This in turn led to the later rise to prominence of the Roman
bishop. Polemicists such as Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus engaged in
literary controversy to refute Gnostic ideas. Gnostic and Manichean dualism
reappeared in the doctrines of the seventh-century Paulicans, the
eleventh-century Bulgarian Bogomils, and the later Albigenses in southern
France.
Important points on Gnosticism
1.
Gnosticism was
perhaps the most dangerous heresy that threatened the early church during the
first three centuries. Influenced by such philosophers as Plato, Gnosticism is
based on two false premises. First, it espouses a dualism regarding spirit and
matter. Gnostics assert that matter is inherently evil and spirit is good. Second,
Gnostics claim to possess an elevated knowledge, a “higher truth” known only to
a certain few. Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis which means “to
know.” Gnostics claim to possess a higher knowledge, not from the Bible, but
acquired on some mystical higher plane of existence.
2.
Gnosticism created a version of
Christianity drastically recast to fit several then popular and persuasive
convictions common in the ancient Mediterranean culture.
3.
he Gnostics believe that Jesus’
physical body was not real, but only “seemed” to be physical, and that His
spirit descended upon Him at His baptism, but left Him just before His
crucifixion. Such views destroy not only the true humanity of Jesus, but also
the atonement, for Jesus must not only have been truly God, but also the truly
human (and physically real) man who actually suffered and died upon the cross
in order to be the acceptable substitutionary sacrifice for sin ( Heb.2:14-17).
4 4.
On the matter of salvation, Gnosticism
teaches that salvation is gained through the acquisition of divine knowledge
which frees one from the illusions of darkness. Although they claim to follow
Jesus Christ and His original teachings, Gnostics contradict Him at every turn.
Jesus said nothing about salvation through knowledge, but by faith in Him as
Savior from sin.
[1]
Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2d ed.,
1963), 7–8.
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