Gnosticism |
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It is not easy to define Gnosticism since there were many forms of the heresy. Some of its forms were obviously non-Christian but it was the apparently Christian forms that were the more dangerous for the Church because they were more subtle. Most of the Gnostic sects had Christ as their central figure but their teachings about him bore little resemblance to those of the Biblical Scriptures. The Gnostics had a body of "Scriptures" which looked, on the surface, similar to those of Christianity but which placed a far greater emphasis on mystical "knowledge". The word "Gnostic" comes from the Greek "Gnosis" which means "knowledge". Like many of the mystery religions of the time, they believed that salvation is through mystical knowledge which is only available to the initiated or the elect. Taking their ideas from the myths of Greece, Persia, India and Egypt, they divided people into three kinds.
There is a sense in which people can, indeed, fall into the categories of "fleshly", "soulish" and "spiritual" but the Gnostics went to extremes with this concept and made it into a "caste" system. Gnostic DoctrineThe Gnostics had a dualistic system of belief holding that the Spiritual and the Material were opposed to each other. They believed that matter was ultimately evil and that Spirit was good. They believed that the destiny of Spiritual Man was to be released from the body (matter) into the Spirit. Since matter was evil and the body was material they taught that it was good to abstain from all kinds of pleasure. They encouraged very strict asceticism, although some sects later taught that, since all flesh was to be destroyed, moral behaviour was irrelevant so people should behave just as they like. Since the world is matter, it too is evil so it cannot have been made by a perfect Supreme Being. (They often used the name "Logos" for this supreme being which is why John's Gospel makes it clear that the Logos became flesh and lived with us.) The difficulty with this gnostic doctrine lies in the question, "If the Supreme Being could not have made the material world, who did?" Their answer was that there was a series of thirty "emanations" originating from the Supreme Being. Each successive emanation proceeded from the one before, each a bit more corrupt than the former, until eventually a being, or Demiurge, came that was sufficiently far from the Light to be able to conceive and create an evil world. Into this evil world, made by the God of the Jews, the Supreme Being had to send a pure emanation, the Christ, to bring the Spiritual Elect to salvation through the secret knowledge that he imparted to them. Of course, this Christ could not have taken flesh upon himself because to do so would have corrupted Him so he had only the appearance of a human body. The majority of Gnostics believed that Jesus only appeared to die on the cross (since a non-material Christ could not die), though some taught that Jesus and the Christ were separate and that Jesus died but the Christ did not. The Gnostics already existed alongside the early Church and are alluded to in several of the Epistles and in Revelation.
The following Scriptures are also relevant
Gnosticism, therefore, while it claimed to be Christian in that it had teachings about the Christ, denied the Incarnation, the atoning death of Jesus and the relationship of Christ with the Father. It avoided the truth of the fall of man and it opposed Spirit and Matter, whereas the truth of Scripture is that Spirit and Matter were both created by God and both are affected by the fall. I have received (26.12.97) an e-mail from Gnostic Friends Network containing some corrections to the above article. At this time, rather than re-write the article, I add these footnotes. They also point out 'that the common understanding of gnosticism as hard dualism is also a little misleading. A lot of gnostic teachers were monist, and saw matter not as "evil," but as an illusion. It is also their contention that Catholicism (by which they mean mainstream Christianity rather than Roman Catholicism) and Gnosticism were "both in the general Christian milieu for a while." (In other words both were acceptable forms of Christianity which existed side by side until gnosticism was forced underground. This last point may be open to question but it is true that Gnosticism was not always "secret". If you wish to read more about modern as well as ancient Gnosticism you can find material at: The Gnostic Friends Network page. However, this is something that should be tackled with care. The site is distinctly anti-Christian and particularly anti-Jehovah and anti-Bible. |