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Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a theological term referring to a system of belief that
qualitatively separates the spirit from the material. It also believes
that knowledge is secret and only obtainable by a few. Gnostics
generally believe that what is spiritual is good and what is material is
bad.
Gnosticism, a religious movement that flourished during the 2nd and
3rd centuries AD. Most Gnostic sects professed Christianity, but their
beliefs sharply diverged from those of the majority of Christians in the
early Church. The term Gnosticism is derived from the Greek word gnosis
(“revealed knowledge”).
Gnostic texts ( such as the Nag Hammadi texts ) reveal nothing about the
history of the various sects or about the lives of their most prominent
teachers. Gnostic mythology may have been derived from Jewish sectarian
speculation centred in Syria and Palestine during the late 1st century
ad, which in turn was probably influenced by Persian dualistic
religions, especially Zoroastrianism. The most prominent Christian
Gnostics were Valentinus and his disciple Ptolemaeus, who during the 2nd
century were influential in the Roman Church and Basilides. Basilides,
from Alexandria, Egypt ( active between 120 - 145 ) wrote Exegitica and
claimed to possess a secret handed down from St Peter and St Matthias.
Valentius is believed to have been the author of the Gnostic Gospel of
Truth. Christian Gnostics, while continuing to participate in the larger
Christian community, apparently also gathered in small groups to follow
their secret teachings and rituals.
During the 2nd century another strain of Gnosticism emerged in eastern
Syria, stressing an ascetic interpretation of Jesus's teachings. Later
in the century Gnosticism appeared in Egypt, and the emergence of
monasticism there may be linked with the influence of the Syrian ascetic
sects.
To explain the origin of the material universe, the Gnostics developed a
complicated mythology. From the original unknowable God referred to as
Aeons, from this a series of 30 pairs of lesser divinities was generated
by emanation. The combined Aeons make up the concept of a complete God,
known as Pleroma. The last of pair of these are Sophia (“wisdom”) and
Christ. The universe was produced by a deformed, evil god, or demiurge.
The divine sparks that dwell in humanity fell into this universe or else
were sent there by the supreme God in order to redeem humanity. The
Gnostics identified the evil god with the God of the Old Testament,
which they interpreted as an account of this god's efforts to keep
humanity immersed in ignorance and the material world and to punish
their attempts to acquire knowledge. It was in this light that they
understood the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, the flood, and
the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Although most Gnostics considered themselves Christians, some sects
assimilated only minor Christian elements into a body of non-Christian
Gnostic texts. The Christian Gnostics refused to identify the God of the
New Testament, the father of Jesus, with the God of the Old Testament,
and they developed an unorthodox interpretation of Jesus's ministry. The
Gnostics wrote apocryphal Gospels (such as the Gospel of Thomas and the
Gospel of Mary) to substantiate their claim that the risen Jesus told
his disciples the true, Gnostic interpretation of his teachings: Christ,
the divine spirit, inhabited the body of the man Jesus and did not die
on the cross but ascended to the divine realm from which he had come.
The Gnostics thus rejected the atoning suffering and death of Christ and
the Resurrection of the body. They also rejected other literal and
traditional interpretations of the Gospels. They believed that Jesus's
purpose was to give mankind gnosis so they could escape the imperfect
physical world and return to the Pleroma. There are three types of
humans: hylics, who are bound to evil matter and cannot be saved;
psychics, who can be partly saved as they have a soul; and pneumatics,
who can return to the Pleroma if thet achieve gnosis.
Some Gnostic sects rejected all sacraments; others observed baptism and
the Eucharist, interpreting them as signs of the awakening of gnosis.
Other Gnostic rites were intended to facilitate the ascent of the divine
element of the human soul to the spiritual realm. Hymns and magic
formulae were recited to help achieve a vision of God; other formulas
were recited at death to ward off the demons who might capture the
ascending spirit and imprison it again in a body. In the Valentinian
sect a special rite, called the bridal chamber, celebrated the reunion
of the lost spirit with its heavenly counterpart.
The doctrine that the body and the material world are evil led some
sects to renounce even marriage and procreation. Other Gnostics held
that because their souls were completely alien to this world, it did not
matter what they did in it. Gnostics generally rejected the moral
commandments of the Old Testament, regarding them as part of the evil
god's effort to entrap humanity.
Much scholarly knowledge of Gnosticism comes from anti-Gnostic Christian
texts of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, which provide the only extensive
quotations in the Greek of the original Gnostic texts. Most surviving
Gnostic texts are in Coptic, into which they had been translated when
Gnosticism spread to Egypt in the late 2nd and the 3rd centuries. In
1945 an Egyptian peasant found 12 codices containing more than 50 Coptic
Gnostic writings near Nag Hammadi. It has been determined that these
codices were copied in the 4th century in the monasteries of the region.
It is not known whether the monks were Gnostics, or were attracted by
the ascetic nature of the writings, or had assembled the writings as a
study in heresy.
By the 3rd century Gnosticism began to succumb to orthodox Christian
opposition and persecution. Partly in reaction to the Gnostic heresy,
the Church strengthened its organization by centralizing authority in
the office of bishop, which made its effort to suppress the poorly
organized Gnostics more effective. Furthermore, as orthodox Christian
theology and philosophy developed, the primarily mythological Gnostic
teachings began to seem bizarre and crude. Both Christian theologians
and the 3rd-century Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus attacked the
Gnostic view that the material world is essentially evil. Christians
defended their identification of the God of the New Testament with the
God of Judaism and their belief that the New Testament is the only true
revealed knowledge. By the end of the 3rd century Gnosticism as a
distinct movement seems to have largely disappeared.
One small non-Christian Gnostic sect, the Mandaeans, still exists in
Iraq and Iran, although it is not certain that it began as part of the
original Gnostic movement. Although the ancient sects did not survive,
aspects of the Gnostic world view have periodically reappeared in many
forms: the ancient dualistic religion called Manichaeism and the related
medieval heresies of the Albigenses ( Cathars
-France ), Bogomils ( widespread in the area of modern Bulgaria in the
tenth to thirteenth centuries ), and Paulicians; the medieval Jewish
mystical philosophy known as Kabbalah.
The essence of Gnosticism has proved very durable: the view that the
inner spirit of humanity must be liberated from a world that is
basically deceptive, oppressive, and evil.
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