Gnosticism

I

Introduction

Gnosticism, esoteric religious movement that flourished during the 2nd and 3rd centuries ad and presented a major challenge to orthodox Christianity. Most Gnostic sects professed Christianity, but their beliefs sharply diverged from those of the majority of Christians in the early church (see Heresy). The term gnosticism is derived from the Greek word gnosis (“revealed knowledge”). To its adherents, Gnosticism promised a secret knowledge of the divine realm. Sparks or seeds of the Divine Being fell from this transcendent realm into the material universe, which is wholly evil, and were imprisoned in human bodies. Reawakened by knowledge, the divine element in humanity can return to its proper home in the transcendent spiritual realm.

II

Mythology

To explain the origin of the material universe, the Gnostics developed a complicated mythology. From the original unknowable God, a series of lesser divinities was generated by emanation. The last of these, Sophia (“wisdom”), conceived a desire to know the unknowable Supreme Being. Out of this illegitimate desire was produced a deformed, evil god, or demiurge, who created the universe. 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.

III

Gnosticism and Christianity

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’ 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.

IV

Rites

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 formulas 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 (followers of Valentinus, a Gnostic teacher of the early 2nd century ad), a special rite, called the bridal chamber, celebrated the reunion of the lost spirit with its heavenly counterpart.

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