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7/31/2019 Gnosticism in the Early Church[1]
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James Robinson Page 1 8/7/2004
Gnosticism in the Early Church
By: James Robinson
McCormick Theological School
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Gnosticism is a generic term for a variety of religious movements of the first
centuries of the Christian era. Although the theology, ritual practice, and ethics
of these groups differed considerably, all purported to offer salvation from the
oppressive bonds of material existence through gnosis, or knowledge. The
purpose of this paper is to highlight the implications of Gnosticism in the early
church.
What is known about Gnosticism traditionally depended upon reports in the
church fathers such as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Origen, and Epiphanius,
who are opponents of Christian Gnostic teachers.
1
Irenaeus was above all a pastor. He was not particularly interested in the
philosophical speculation or in delving into mysteries hitherto unsolved, but rather
in leading his flock in Christian life and faith. Therefore, in his writings he did not
seek to rise in great speculative flights, but simply to refute heresy and instruct
believers. The writings of Irenaeus are an excellent witness to the faith of the
church towards the end of the second century. 2
An example of his written works was his insight on how heretics follow neither
scripture nor tradition. He expresses that heretics confuted from the Scriptures
turning them around and accuse these same Scriptures, as if they were not
correct, nor of authority, and [assert] that they are ambiguous, and that those
who are ignorant of tradition cannot extract the truth from them. For [they allege]
that the truth was not delivered by means of written documents, but viv voce:
1 Paul J. Achtemeier and others, eds.,Harpers Bible Dictionary (New York: HarperSanFrancisco,
1985), 349.2 Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation
(New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1984), 68.
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wherefore also Paul declared, "But we speak wisdom among those that are
perfect, but not the wisdom of this world."
Irenaeus continues that this wisdom alleges to be the fiction of his own
inventing, forsooth; so that, according to their idea, the truth properly resides at
one time in Valentinus, at another in Marcion, at another in Cerinthus, then
afterwards in Basilides, or has even been indifferently in any other opponent,
who could speak nothing pertaining to salvation. It was his hypothesis that for
every one of these men, being altogether of a perverse disposition, depraving the
system of truth, is not ashamed to preach himself.
3
Hippolytus was the intellectual disciple of Irenaeus and a Greek speaking
Christian who settled in Rome. He wrote an influential work called Refutation of
all Heresies. A copy of the work was discovered in 1832 at Mount Athos and is
important for its summary of heretical doctrines, which Hippolytus rejected
outright as blasphemous. The work is in two parts: the first part traces the origins
of heresy to pre-Christian Greek philosophy, which he describes as erroneous,
and the second part gives an account of thirty-three Gnostic systems.
He declared that the basis of Gnostic doctrine was not Christian and therefore
all who believed it were godless. He substantiated this claim by highlighting the
false doctrines of Simon Magus, especially what he regarded as his false
teaching of the Infinite Force as the original force or the principle of the universe.
A particular emphasis on his teaching is the unsound notion that Gods love is
unconditional and immeasurable. As an advocate of the Logos Christology, he
3 Irenaeus Against All Heresies Book III, chapters 2- 5
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also believed strongly in the virgin birth of Jesus, which he linked to the doctrine
of the Logos. Jesus was fully man, and so Hippolyus stated, Let us believe then,
dear brethren, according to the tradition of the apostles, that God, the Lord came
down from heaven (and entered) into the holy virgin Mary, assuming also a
human, by which I mean a rational soul and becoming then all that man is with
the exception of sin, he might save fallen man and confer immorality on men who
believe in his name.4
Tertullian, who was a lawyer, affirmed that once one has found the truth of
Christianity, one should abandon any further search for truth. As Tertullian, sees
the matter, a Christian who is still searching for further truth lacks faith. His
beliefs were that if any quest for truth goes beyond that of the body of doctrine is
dangerous. All outside sources were to be rejected. This is particularly true of
pagan philosophy, which is the source of all heresy, and is nothing but idle
speculation.
In short, Tertullain condemns all speculation. To speak, for instance, of what
Gods omnipotence can do is a waste of time and a dangerous occupation. What
we are to ask is not what God could do, but rather what is it that God has in fact
done. This is what the church teaches. This is what is to be found in Scripture.
The rest is idle and risky curiosity.
For all these reasons, Tertullian is a unique personality in the story of
Christianity. A fiery champion of orthodoxy against every sort of heresy, in the
end he joined one of the movements that the church at large considered
4 John Glyndwr Harris, Gnosticism: Beliefs and Practices (Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 1999)
147-149.
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heretical. And, even then, he produced writings and theological formulas that
would be very influential in the future course of orthodox theology. Furthermore,
he was the first Christian theologian to write in Latin, which was the language of
the western half of the empire, and thus he may be considered the founder of
western theology (Gonzalez 1984, 73-77).
Origen draws a distinction between the gnosis of the advanced or perfect
and the belief of the simple Christians. According to Origen, these simple
Christians concentrated their faith on the man Jesus Christ who was crucified.
But without denying this faith, he thinks that what really matters is knowledge of
Jesus Christ who is spiritually present as Gods Word and Wisdom. Origen
understands the apostle Paul as having had a message on two levels, for the
simple and for the advanced.
He thought that the Bible had to be interpreted allegorically. This starting point
gave him the possibility of interpreting all kinds of texts from the Old and New
Testaments spiritually, with reference to his own views. Allegorical interpretation
contributed to the preservation in the church of the Old Testament, which was
sometimes felt to be difficult.
It is evident from some of Origens views that he interpreted Christian faith in
a way, which sometimes suggests the Gnostics. However, is it important that he
attributes the creation of this world to the one God and not to a lower Creator.
According to Origen, the fact that human beings live on this earth is a result of
the choice, which the soul once made when it joined in the rebellion against God
(as nous). In his view, the soul is thus itself responsible for its existence in the
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earthly body. He thought that the fact that the fallen soul has found its way into a
body it could learn to return to God again through Christ. Thus Origen opposes
the view that he encountered in Gnostics, namely that by nature they were
already spiritual and elect. However, Origens view that the purpose of the
human beings is once again to be completely spiritual and to leave the material
body behind them is akin to the Gnostics.5
Apart from a few hints that can be found in the Ecclesiastical History of
Eusebius of Caesarea (d.339), we have to wait until the second half of the fourth
century to find another important writer engaged in the hunt for heretics,
especially Gnostic heretics. This is Epiphanius, born c. 315 at Eleutheropolis, not
far from Gaza in Palestine. As a young man he visited the most celebrated
monks in Egypt; he returned to Gaza and founded a monastery, over which he
presided for about thirty years. This helped to provide him with an aura of
sanctity, an advantage when the bishops elected him as Metropolitan in 367. He
thus became Bishop of Constantia (ancient Salamis). And from there he fought
his battles, both theological (he was an implacable opponent of Origen and his
followers) and heresiological.
With his Panarion (Medicine Chest) (374-7) he intended to offer a reliable
antidote to those who had been bitten by the poison of heresy, as well as
protection and encouragement to those who had remained true to the faith. That
heresy flourished at that time there can be no doubt: one has only to think of the
endless theological controversies begun by Arius. That Gnostic groups continued
5 Riemer Roukema, Gnosis and Faith in Early Christianity: An Introduction to Gnosticism
(Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999) 153-155.
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to flourish is a matter of less uncertainty. Nevertheless it is significant that
Epiphanius in some cases has had firsthand experience of his opponents. That
the heresies from Simon Magus to those of his contemporaries, the Messalians,
reappear and are rounded up to the prophetic number eighty, to which
Epiphanius limits them, is a further example of the ancients love of arithmetical
speculation (cf. the parallel of the eighty concubines in Song of Songs 6:8) and
certainly not an actual historical fact. The heresiological material is subdivided or
multiplied according to this numerical scheme, with results and problems for the
modern scholar that may easily be imagined. Moreover, Epiphanius, with his
Tertullian-like hatred of over-audacious philosophical or theological speculation
(to which may be added his failure to understand it, unlike the African writer),
appears as the exact antithesis of modern scientific method. The heretics are
finally consigned to an increasingly fantastic genealogical pedigree, painted in
the gloomiest colors, charged with the sins and condemned to the harshest
penalties.6
Over the centuries many have denied that the Gnostics can properly be
described as Christian. Their own leaders certainly rejected the teachings of
Catholic Christianity. Nevertheless, Gnostics always claimed to be followers of
the Christ. They often considered themselves outside, or above, the Catholic
wing of the Christian movement. Gnostic teachings sought to open the adherents
to those higher spiritual realms that exist beyond the material world. Their truths
were not for the uninitiated and the common people but were reserved for the
6 Giovanni Filoramo,A History of Gnosticism, trans. Anthony Alcock (Cambridge: Basil
Blackwell, Inc., 1990), 6-7.
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intellectuals and the elite. Set against the background of Alexandrian intellectual
and spiritual life in the second century, as exemplified by a thinker such as
Clement, the Gnostics do not look like entire strangers to the Christian way, only
seekers after a mystical higher life.
As for the Gnostic party, by the third century its numbers proportionally had
dwindled. The causes for this were more than simply the opposition expressed
by the Catholic party. Despite the vehement character of the Catholic writers
attacks, we have little evidence that books alone caused the Gnostic movement
to diminish. Catholic leaders had no power other than that of persuasion to
employ against the Gnostics or any other party that they considered to be
unacceptably deviant in the second and third centuries. Gnosticism died down
not because the Catholic party suppressed italthough that did come later, in
the fourth centurybut because the Catholic party simply swallowed it up with its
numbers. The increase in members in Catholic Christianity in Alexandria and
elsewhere eventually proved to be too great.7
The attempt to picture Gnosticism as a mighty movement of the human mind
towards the noblest and highest truth, a movement in some way parallel to that of
Christianity, has completely failed. It has been abandoned by recent
unprejudiced scholars such as W. Bousset and O. Gruppe, and it is to be
regretted that it should have been renewed by an English writer, G.R.S. Mead, in
"Fragments of a Faith Forgotten", an unscholarly and misleading work, which in
7 Dale T. Irvin and Scott W. Sunquist,History of the World Christian Movement Vol.1: Earliest
Christianity to 1453 (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001), 89-90.
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English-speaking countries may retard the sober and true appreciation of
Gnosticism as it was in historical fact.
Gnosticism was not an advance it was retrogression. It was born amidst the
last throes of expiring cults and civilizations in Western Asia and Egypt. Though
hellenized, these countries remained Oriental and Semitic to the core. This
Oriental spirit -- Attis of Asia Minor, Istar of Babylonia, Isis of Egypt, with the
astrological and cosmogonic lore of the Asiatic world -- first sore beset by
Ahuramazda in the East, and then overwhelmed by the Divine greatness of
Jesus Christ in the West, called a truce by the fusion of both Parseeism and
Christianity with itself. It tried to do for the East what Neo-Platonism tried to do for
the West.
During at least two centuries it was a real danger to Christianity, though not so
great as some modern writers would make us believe, as if the merest breath
might have changed the fortunes of Gnostic, as against orthodox, Christianity.
Similar things are said of Mithraism and neo-Platonism as against the religion of
Jesus Christ. But these sayings have more piquancy than objective truth.
Christianity survived, and not Gnosticism, because the former was the fittest--
immeasurably, nay infinitely, so. Gnosticism died not by chance, but because it
lacked vital power within itself; and no amount of theosophistic literature, flooding
English and German markets, can give life to that which perished from intrinsic
and essential defects.
It is striking that the two earliest champions of Christianity against Gnosticism-
- Hegesippus and Irenaeus-- brought out so clearly the method of warfare which
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alone was possible, but which also alone sufficed to secure the victory in the
conflict, a method which Tertullian some years later scientifically explained in his
"De Praescriptione".
Both Hegesippus and Irenaeus proved that Gnostic doctrines did not belong
to that deposit of faith which was taught by the true succession of bishops in the
primary sees of Christendom; both in triumphant conclusion drew up a list of the
Bishops of Rome, from Peter to the Roman bishop of their day; as Gnosticism
was not taught by that Church with which the Christians everywhere must agree,
it stood self-condemned.
A just verdict on the Gnostics is that of O. Gruppe (Ausfhrungen, p. 162): the
circumstances of the period gave them a certain importance. But a living force
they never were, either in general history or in the history of Christendom.
Gnosticism deserves attention as showing what mention dispositions
Christianity found in existence, what obstacles it had to overcome to maintain its
own life; but "means of mental progress it never was".8
8The Catholic Encyclopedia
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Bibliography
Achtemeier, Paul J., Roger S. Boraas, Michael Fishbane, Pheme Perkins,
William O. Walker, Jr., eds. Harper Bible Dictionary. New York:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1985.
Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity Vol.1: The Early Church to the Dawn
of Reformation. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1984.
Harris, John Glyndwr. Gnosticism: Beliefs and Practices. Portland: Sussex
Academic Press, 1999.
Roukema, Riemer. Gnosis and Faith in Early Christianity: An Introduction to
Gnosticism. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999.
Filoramo, Giovanni. A History of Gnosticism, trans. Anthony Alcock. Cambridge:
Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1990.
Dale T. Irvin and Sunquist, Scott W. History of the World Christian Movement
Vol.1: Earliest Christianity to 1453. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001.
The Catholic Encyclopedia
Irenaeus Against All Heresies Book III, chapters 2- 5