Gnosticism
Gnosticism - His Holy Church
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As the Church moved West from Jerusalem and away from its Jewish roots it
encountered a subtle and forminable force. The attempt of the Hellenistic Greek
mind to think through and present the Gospel in the categories of Greek
philosophy would shake the very foundations of early Christianity with its
gnosticism. There are many areas to explore to follow the history of the
Gnostics, so we will just touch at the basics.
The Orphic movement centuries before Christ was perpetuated through Platonism
and Neoplatonism and marked the beginning of the trichotomy of man, (Plato),
physical-body, pysche-mind, and pnuema-spirit. The doctrines of the Orphic
school contain two main elements: (1) the religion of Dionysius, with its
orgies, mysteries, and purifications: and (2) philisophical speculation on
nature and gods.
Platonism embodied Plato's philosophy of the combination of the intellectual
with the mystical dominated by a pervading ethical motive and the dissonant
passion for physical improvement and a persistant faith in the power and the
supremacy of the mind. The love for truth and zeal for human improvement was the
beginning of philosophy - the search for truth.
Neoplatonism aarose among the Greeks of Alexandria. Exercise of the mind was
considered of little value in its emhasis on religion. Introducing the
suprarational - that which lies beyond reason and beyond reality since neither
perception nor rational cognition is a sufficient basis for justification of
religious ethics. the higher sphere of knowledge, the suprarational, must depend
upon divine communication, i.e. "revelation knowledge."
Porphyry of Greece (A.D. 233-304) offered Neoplatonism as a substitute fro
Christianity. With its two divisions - holiness and hyper-faith and
suprarational-revelation knowledge, (divinely placed in one's mind by the Holy
Spirit, rather than acquired by study), and an attitude that the exercise of
reason takes the mind off contemplation of the eternal in which condition man
cannot then receive divine revelation - we see the roots of this movement alive
today in the Charismatic movements.
Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis (knowledge, enlightenment).
During the first four centuries A.D. Gnostics were identified as a group of
people who proclaimed salvation knowledge. Gnosticism centered around two
general questions, the origin of the universe and God, and God's method of
governing the world. Gnosticism was highly syncretic, borrowing from Orphic and
Platonic dualism, Syrian conceptions, Persian dualism, (both good and evil are
in God), the mystery cults (the Bahais of the ancient world), Mesopotamian
astrology, and Egyptian religion.
Chief of the Gnostic teachers and schools were the Ophites, the Cainites, the
Sethians, the Peratae (or Peratics, from the Greek, perao, to pass or cross, or
to go beyond [the boundary] of the material world), Simon Magus and the
Simoneons, the Nicolaitans, Cerinthus, Basilides, and Valentines.
"Heresy" is derived from the Greek word, hiresis, which meant "capture" (from
haireo, or "election", or "choice" from haieomai) and assumed the idea of
opposition to prevailing opinion or authority. In the New Testament, it
signifies a way of life, a school, sect, or a party, not necessarily in a
negative sense. It also signified discord and, finally error. The term "heretic"
(hairerikos anthropos), occurs only once in the New testament (Titus 3:10) and
means a "sectarian" rather than one who was in error.
From the time of Constantine, the word heresy is used of false teaching.
Philastrius, Bishop of Brixia (died A.D. 387), in his 'Book of Heresies",
numbered twenty-eight Jewish and 128 Christian heresies. Epiphanius (died A.D.
403) listed eighty heresies, twenty before and sixty after Jesus. Augustine
(died A.D. 430) listed eighty-eight Christian heresies.
Augustine said that it was altogether impossible or, at any rate, most
difficutlt to define heresies, that the spirit in which error is held, rather
than the error itself, constitutes the heresy.
The many Gnostic systems seem complicated and bizarre. In general, they held
that there exists a first principle, the all-Father, unknowable, which is love
and who, alone, can generate other beings. Since love cannot dwell alone, the
all-Father brought into existence other beings, aeons, which, together with
all-father, constitute pleroma, fullness, or true reality.
From this world of the Spirit, the present world appeared. This was the work
of one of the aeons who, moved by pride, wished to do what the all-Father had
done and create something on his own. The present world was ascribed to a
subordinate being, a demiurge who was identified with the God of the Old
Tesament (a rejection of the Old Testament). This present world has in it some
traces of the spirit world with men belonging to this present world and are
compounded of spirit, matter, soul, and flesh. Some having more spirit than
others.
... two types of "philosophical" and "moral" dualism were capable of fusing
and merging in various combinations. The body, matter, and "this world" could
become identified, or at least associated, with darkness and evil, and the soul,
with goodness and light. Another pair of opposites, "spirit" and "flesh," though
not identical with Platonic dualism, was yet sufficiently similar to combine
with it in various ways. ..
...Gnosticism presents a peculiar combination of the two types of dualism:
this world and our bodily existence, a being characterized by evil, are the work
of a lower, imperfect deity (the "demiurge" or creator), above whom there is a
completely distinct, more transcendent and spiritual, good and "true" god. This
higher deity intervenes and "save" the elect from the power of the evil creator
who holds them imprisoned in matter and in this world...
...Some of the gnostic sects equated this lower and evil demiurge with the
god of the Hebrew Bible, i.e., with the Jewish God and giver of the law. Gnostic
dualism has therefore been described as a metaphysical anti-Semitism. The
gnostic rejection of creation and the cosmos, as well as of the biblical law, as
the work of a lower, evil, or at least imperfect, power led in some cases to
manifestations of antinomianism, (against Law - editor), and in others to a very
rigorous asceticism and rejection of this world...'Encyclopedia Judaica' Vol 6
pg 243, 1996 corrected edition.
...The esoteric discipline and ecstatic visionary practices of the early
Merkabah mystics while exhibiting certain gnostic traits, certainly did not
share the basic dualism of the great gnostic systems. Dualistic elements,
however, were not absent, as e.g., in the doctrine of Metatron (originally
Javel) as the "lesser" YHVH ...'Ibid." pg.244
"The influence exercised by the Greek philosopher Plato on posterity both
directly and through his interpreters was enormous and has been detailed in vast
literature...In Alexandria, one of the great centers of Hellenistic
civilization, Philo in the first century C.E. was faced with the necessity of
effecting a reconciliation between Greek philosophy and scripture. This he did
by reading the principles of Platonism of his day into the Pentateuch by
interpreting the latter in an allegorical manner. Philo did not leave any direct
impression on later Jewish literature until...the 16th century." 'Encyclopedia
Judaica' Vol. 13 pg 628, 1996 corrected edition.
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By Brother Jeffrey Keith
