A few things must be made clear at the outset of any discussion of classical Gnosticism or Gnostic Christianity. First, it is not a single Christian sect; rather, it’s a label that’s been applied, in modern times, to a range of Christian sects. Thus, not everything said about “Gnosticism” will apply uniformly to all of these sects. On top of that, some sects that don’t precisely fit the label happen to have some aspects in common with other sects that were more clearly Gnostic in nature. The concept itself is fungible.
Second, our understanding of Gnostic (and near-Gnostic) sects is limited. This is partly due to their own nature, but also due to the rest of Christendom having done a remarkably good job of eradicating the Gnostics’ historical record. The Gnostic sects all came under fire from the more “literalist” Christian sects, which went on to become the Catholic and various Orthodox churches after Christianity became officially tolerated by the Roman Empire. This proto-Catholic/proto-Orthodox portion of the Church proceeded to harass Gnostic Christians, repressed them, destroyed their literature as much as they were able to, and allowed Gnosticism to pass into history.
Today we only know of the Gnostic sects from what their opponents said of them, and a chance few documentary discoveries, the most important being what’s called “the Nag Hammadi Library,” a cache of mostly Gnostic texts discovered in Egypt in 1945.
As noted, the Gnostics’ nature can make them difficult to understand. What they all have in common — that is, what gives them the label “Gnostic” — is their focus on a deeply personal and direct knowledge of the Divine. The term “gnostic” itself comes from this very principle; γνωσις (or gnōsis) is the Greek word for “knowledge.” Each worshipper was encouraged to learn about the Divine in his or her own way. While the Gnostics did leave behind texts describing those beliefs, most of them assumed a degree of variation might apply. Many of their texts are purposely vague, allegorical, or involve allusions to other notions; this was part of how the beliefs of the sect were introduced to followers.
In addition to this underlying emphasis on personal gnōsis of the Divine, most Gnostic sects also encompassed a profoundly (on occasion, harshly) dualistic worldview. The physical world itself is something of a prison and an illusion, which prevents human beings from comprehending their own inherent spiritual, divine nature. The physical world was controlled by a deity, to be sure, but a lesser one, unsavory if not malevolent, often called the Demiurge. The wider celestial realm that surrounded the physical was where the “true” God lived, and was humanity’s actual home. The goal of Gnosticism was to assist the believer in freeing him/herself from the physical world’s thralldom and allow him/her to join with the Divine in that celestial realm (the Pleroma).
Another principle held by nearly all Gnostic sects was a certain degree of secrecy surrounding their beliefs. The spirituality taught by the sect was not to be given out willy-nilly to just anyone; it carried power, and as such, could only be given to those worthy of it, lest it be abused. It also couldn’t be understood directly; one had to be introduced to it over time. This is one of the reasons for the esoteric nature of nearly all Gnostic sects. Their texts often use allegory and allusion; anyone ignorant of the sect’s ways who managed to read one of those texts wouldn’t necessarily be given this information outright. Also, this meant the believers themselves were introduced to the sect in stages, and thus initiated into those beliefs.
What’s more, a number of the Gnostic sects believed only certain human beings should even be exposed to those beliefs at all. These sects divided humanity into categories: Somatic or hylic; psychic; and pneumatic. Somatics/hylics were truly worldly people unworthy of belonging. They were “locked into” their physical natures and would never be able to rise above them. Psychics were worldly persons with some capacity to perceive there was something beyond just the physical. These were worthy of entering the sect. As they worked through it, progressively initiated into its mysteries, they would become pneumatics, who genuinely comprehended their essentially-divine nature and had a knowledge of the divine, themselves.
The religion of some Gnostic sects was almost fully bifurcated, having a collection of esoteric teachings underpinning, or even enveloped by, a collection of exoteric teachings. Worshippers who entered the sect would be introduced first to the exoteric teachings, and over time, would be taught the sect’s esoteric principles. These exoteric and esoteric pairings sometimes moved in lockstep with the different layers of initiation into the sect. This helped protect the secrecy of those esoteric doctrines, since believers only discovered them once they’d belonged to the faith for a certain period of time.
At this point, one can see how these ideas would cause conflict with more “literalist” Christians. Contrasted with the Gnostics, most of whom thought their beliefs should only be shared with some, the “literalist” faction of Christianity thought the opposite: That everyone should believe in Christ, and that none were excluded. Furthermore, they tended to want Christianity to be viewed in a uniform way rather than in individual forms. As they saw it, Christ had taught certain things, and those were the core of Christianity. In their view there couldn’t simultaneously be two collections of notions that comprised the religion. Jesus’ teachings were plain, and intended for all, and hadn’t been customized to various people. Individualized faith was not something they could countenance.
Of note is the Gnostics’ presumption that only certain people were eligible to be part of their sects. This elitism outraged a lot of “literalist” Christians. Recall that, during the mid-1st century, Christian missionary and apostle Paul aka Saul of Tarsus had worked diligently to design a church that could include both Jews and Gentiles. His writings appeal to egalitarianism and inclusion; slaves and freemen could be Christian, and so too could men and women. Everyone was welcome, according to “literalist” Christianity. All human beings, ultimately, were required to be Christian, according to “literalists.” The Gnostics’ elitism and layering of humanity flew in the face of that.
Yet another factor setting the Gnostic sects apart from the “literalists” were clergy. In Gnostic sects, senior members initiated those who’d come in after them, through each of the various layers of indoctrination. Although it’s possible some of those senior members and leaders of Gnostic sects had titles of some kind, for the most part, there were no Gnostic clergy, at least not in any way that resembled the hierarchy of clerics found in “literalist” churches by the start of the 2nd century. Under Gnosticism, it was ultimately up to each and every individual believer to grow into the sect’s spiritual teachings and come to know the deity in his/her own way. Once that happened, one was “joined” with the divine — for lack of a better way of phrasing it — which more or less obviated any need for clergy to administer sacraments.
Hence, overall, there was an intellectual and spiritual gulf that separated Gnostic and “literalist” Christians, one that, in the end, was never bridged. One reason for that was the traditions to which they belonged. Gnostic Christianity leaned heavily on much older Hellenic mysticism. It might help to know something about that if one is to understand Gnosticism.
There’s been a lot of speculation about the origins of Gnosticism. While in a few cases we know how some of the sects came into existence (e.g. that of the Valentinians, established by Valentinus), what’s less clear are the origins of the prevailing ideas, as outlined already, that the Gnostic sects adhered to. It’s clear that Gnosticism owes quite a bit to the various “mystery religions” that permeated the Greco-Roman world, especially in the east.
Among the similarities they shared: A certain degree of secrecy concerning the sect’s ways; a fundamentally mystical philosophy and worldview; esoteric teachings that involved layers of revelation; a dualistic worldview; belief that reality and truth were more or less hidden from human eyes; a degree of exclusivity (i.e. only certain people could belong to the sect); and belief in a divine messenger who’d revealed that reality and truth to a small number of followers. What separated them was, the “mystery religions” centered on figures out of myth and/or legend, but Gnosticism concerned Jesus the Christ, who lived and taught in the Levant and hadn’t long been known in Greco-Romain culture.
Gnosticism also reflected the mysticism widely practiced in the Greco-Roman world, which was not solely a characteristic of “mystery religions.” It had a broader reach among all the educated, especially within Hellenic tradition.
What’s remarkable about Gnosticism is that, while it obviously descends from the larger Greco-Roman tradition, which in turn was a product of its Roman, Hellenic, Egyptian, Anatolian, and other Near Eastern forebears, it’s clearly and specifically tied to Judaism. Nearly all the Gnostic sects held Its founding teacher was a Jew who’d lived and taught almost exclusively among Jews during his lifetime. The oldest Gnostic-related text we have is the Gospel of Thomas, discovered at Nag Hammadi, written probably near the end of the 1st century. This sayings gospel refers to secret teachings and shows a dualistic worldview, which are aspects of Gnosticism. As such, it may reflect the beliefs of an early proto-Gnostic community, but it centers on a teacher named Yeshua (Jesus) and its characters are all Jewish.
Other sects which had some beliefs in common with Gnosticism claimed as their founder, or main inspiration, John the Baptist rather than Jesus the Christ. These were not truly Gnostic, however, since they did not focus on individuals’ gnosis of the Divine. Instead, they viewed the rite of baptism as being the chief engine of deliverance from the physical realm, and as such followed from Judaism. The majority of Gnostic sects we’re aware of, and fit the definition of Gnostic, were very clearly Christian in nature.
The oldest identifiable Gnostic sect that we have substantial evidence of is that of Basilides of Alexandria, who lived and taught in the early 2nd century. So it’s not currently safe to assume Gnosticism existed prior to the start of that century (aside from the curious case of the sage Cerinthus, who taught a version of Christianity that had both Gnostic and “literalist” elements). It’s true that Acts of the Apostles mentions Simon Magus, a figure associated with Gnosticism, having been confronted by Peter. And some scholars have noted references to what might be thought of as Gnostic motifs earlier in Christianity’s history, such as in Paul’s mention of a man (possibly himself) who’d been “caught up to the third heaven” (2 Cor 12:2). But Simon wasn’t associated with Gnosticism until the mid- to late 2nd century, and the mentions of him from earlier than that make it clear that he was, above all else, a Samaritan (whose religion was similar to Judaism). So if Simon had any Gnostic inclinations, his would likely have been a Jewish form of it, not a Christian one. And the allusions noted aren’t overwhelming evidence that Gnosticism existed as a distinct form of Christianity in the 40s and 50s CE when Paul was writing. All they do suggest that he, and likely his readers, were familiar with much-older Hellenic notions of a layered cosmos, which in turn was incorporated later into most Gnostic sects.
Put all of this together, and it appears the seeds of Gnosticism developed within Christianity and began to manifest in a distinct form probably just before the turn of the 1st century. The early 2nd century also happens to be about the time other innovations worked their way into Christianity, such as something of a layered clergy (with deacons, presbyters, and bishops or “overseers”) as well as an effort to view the Jews’ deity and scriptures, along with Jesus the Christ, in terms of prevailing Hellenic tradition. An example of this is the opening verses of the gospel of John, written in the 90s, which identify Jesus as the primeval — and very Hellenic — Λογος (Logos), along the lines of Heraclitus in the 6th to 5th centuries BCE, or Aristotle in the 4th century BCE. Note that the union of Judaism with Hellenic thinking was not new by that time; such efforts had been underway since the dawn of the Jewish Diaspora in the wake of Alexander’s conquest. But it was a moment within the development of Christianity, as found in the surviving documentation, when this took place within Christendom.
As with every other aspect or form of Christianity, the documentation we have also does not show that there had ever been any uniformity within Gnosticism. So far I’ve mentioned two Gnostic leaders: Valentinus, and Basilides. Both men came from Alexandria, and they overlapped chronologically (with the former living longer and reaching a larger audience, especially after he relocated to Rome). But their doctrines were far from identical. Both fit within the overarching category of Gnosticism but they had notable differences. After them, the historical record only shows a long sequence of varied forms of Gnosticism that emerged, thrived (some longer than others), waned, and ultimately died out. Again, the phenomenon of Christianity as a movement fractured from the very moment of its inception, is clear.
During its first three centuries, Christianity was by far a minority religion. Compared with the vast Greco-Roman civilization which spawned it, the numbers of Christians remained small. Gnostic Christians made up some part of that relatively-small number, but it’s hard to guess how many there were, versus the “literalist” sects that eventually overwhelmed them. Some scholars posit that Gnostics’ numbers were minuscule; others suggest the majority of Christians were Gnostics.
What we do know is that a minority of Christians were educated, and sometimes traveled, and they wrote about their beliefs and those of other Christians. It’s the documentation left behind by this very-small number of believers, that leads us, in the 21st century, to talk about Christian sects in distinct terms. Some of them, especially within the sphere of “literalist” Christianity, had a lot to say about the Gnostic sects and their beliefs. Within the small world of Christian believers of the time, Gnostic sects’ numbers cannot have been small, because they were noticed and discussed. There was, in fact, quite a bit of agitation about them — if the writings of “heresy-hunters” like Irenaeus are any indication.
One aspect of Gnostic Christianity is that it appears to have had a lot of traction within cities. At least, that’s what’s reported, and it seems to have been one of the sources of “literalists’” agitation about them. There also must have been some overlap between communities of Gnostic and “literalist” Christians. This overlap was in the form of competing Gnostic and “literalist” congregations within the same city or region, and likely also in the form of individual Christians who belonged to both.
Although there were certainly some educated Christians of the “literalist” sort, Gnosticism’s focus on the cities meant that it had a greater reach within the ranks of the educated. This, in turn, was yet another source of anxiety for “literalist” Christians, due to their obsession over the written word. Their own particular form of the religion would die out without members who were literate and had the time and resources to preserve their faith by copying its sacred texts and thus perpetuating them. As has been noted, Gnostics certainly composed and transmitted texts of their own, but their sects didn’t depend on literacy to the degree that “literalists” did. Weekly liturgies in “literalists’” congregations required at least one person be on hand to read selections. The rites of Gnostics — as far as is known — didn’t depend on that.
Thus, Gnosticism’s appeal to the urban intelligentsia of the time was an implicit threat to “literalist” Christianity. And they certainly took notice.
That Gnostic Christians understood their faith, and especially their deity, in individual, subjective terms, separated them from “literalist” Christians in another way. With few exceptions, Gnosticism was not exclusive. That is, it didn’t require its followers to believe in, and worship, only their faith and deity. Gnostic Christians were much more similar to pagans of the era, viewing religious practices and the deities behind them as having a place in society and in their own lives. They could, and often did, participate in other religious rites, such as sacrifices to the various civic gods of their region.
Religion was multi-layered in the Greco-Roman world, and so too was the worldview of Gnostics, as has already been mentioned. Gnostic Christians, overall, fit more easily into their society. Gnostics differed from others only to the extent they considered themselves to have a private understanding of the Divine that others didn’t possess.
The foundations for the destruction of Gnosticism can already be seen above. The Gnostic sects held an appeal for Christians and anyone aspiring to be Christian, that “literalist” sects couldn’t offer, in that being a Gnostic didn’t generally force them to change social allegiances they already had, such as obeisance to the civic gods. This meant that their relations with society as a whole didn’t have to change appreciably, either.
This reality did nothing to ingratiate Gnostic Christians among “literalists.” It was compounded by Gnosticism’s divisions of humanity into classes, only some of whom were eligible to belong to a given Gnostic sect, or to be taught any of its more esoteric teachings. Many Gnostics viewed “literalist” Christians as hylics or somatics whose spirituality and understanding was limited, or even stunted. In some ways, they viewed “literalist” Christianity on par with the exoteric teachings of their own sect. That is, for them, “literalist” Christianity was merely an outward, superficial form of the faith; only they knew and embraced the true faith of the true deity. In a few cases, Gnostics viewed “literalist” Christians as following the Demiurge or the evil being who still controlled the physical realm, from whom they’d been delivered.
As has been noted, for its first three and a half centuries, Christianity as a whole was by far a minority religion in the Greco-Roman world. Due to “literalists’” frequent refusal to participate in the overall civic religion — believing as they did that worshipping deities other than their own was blasphemous and forbidden — they were occasionally persecuted. Much has been said of this period and the degree to which Christianity was oppressed by the Roman state. Many erroneously believe that being a Christian was an automatic death sentence and that platoons of Roman legions roamed from home to home weekly or daily trying to find out who was a Christian, then haul them away and prosecute them for it. It was almost certainly not the case that Roman oppression of the religion was that perpetual and pervasive. There were certainly periods of repression, including some which were limited to cities, provinces or regions, but the total number of people prosecuted at all, for being Christian, was vanishingly small. And for nearly the entire first three centuries, Christianity wasn’t explicitly outlawed.
The most severe persecution was that of Diocletian. It lasted only a few years and at first centered on Manicheans, whose faith ironically had branched off from Gnosticism. (Its founder, Mani, had in all likelihood started out as an Elkasaite, and that sect leaned in the direction of Gnosticism.) After its first year, Christianity became included in this persecution. But even then, it wasn’t as pervasive or thorough as has been imagined. Roman officials who’d been ordered to carry it out, wanted to handle it quickly and efficiently, and as such, they came up with a kind of shortcut in most places: They asked various people who were called to their attention, to hand over for destruction any Christian texts they possessed. As with society overall, most Christians were illiterate and had none. These were generally left alone. Only literate Christians had Christian books or scrolls became official targets, so it was only this minority of the minority who were afflicted.
“Literalist” Christians viewed their books and scrolls as utterly sacred. Some of them refused to hand them over; they were tried and, typically, executed (although some were exiled instead). Gnostic Christians were more ambivalent about their texts, and overall blended more easily into their communities, meaning they were less likely in the first place to be targeted by officials and asked for their texts to be handed over in the first place.
The end of Diocletian’s persecution and then his reign, brought out conflicts over this. People had been killed, or martyred, while others had taken what was seen as a cowardly and profane route, and given the Romans what they’d asked for. Christian congregations around the Empire were torn over it. In northern Africa the conflict grew into an outright schism (i.e. Donatism). In other places it manifested in other ways. But generally, since the Gnostic sects and their adherents had come out of it with fewer losses, “literalist” Christians’ existing hard feelings toward them intensified. Once Constantine and his co-emperor Licinius declared tolerance for Christianity in 313 CE, what had been simple hatred that “literalists” held for Gnostics became a towering rage. At the same time, “literalist” Christendom — which even by then had been trying to coalesce into a single, coherent doctrinal system — was fractured by a schism of its own, to which Gnostics were not a party, i.e. Arianism.
As Christianity came out into the light of the Roman Empire, “literalist” Christians now had the chance to begin policing their own religion, of which the Arian schism was just one facet. Their focus on the sacredness of their own texts caused them to obsess over other texts they viewed as profane or blasphemous. Among these were the various writings of the Gnostic sects, many of which seemed truly strange or perverse in the eyes of the “literalists.” Where they could, they rounded up such texts and destroyed them, ironically in much the same way as Roman officials had during Diocletian’s persecution. In other words, the victims became victimizers.
It was the Arian conflict, initially centered on the all-important city of Alexandria, that caused Emperor Constantine I to convoke a general council of Christianity to be held at Nicaea. He wanted to make Christianity more cohesive — and in turn further bolster his own political fortunes, on the assumption that the Church would be grateful for his intervention, and a unified Church could provide him useful political leverage. He summoned the known Christian bishops of the Empire (some 1,800, reportedly). Only about 300 participated, most from nearby eastern provinces. The identities of only some of the attending bishops are known, and there’s no way to be sure what “master list” of 1,800 bishops the Emperor had worked from. But the bottom line of the Council of Nicaea is that Arianism was declared heretical, its founder Arius was excommunicated; the means of calculating the date of Easter were decided; the Melitian sect (an Egyptian group along the lines of Donatists) was condemned; a list of practices and standards was propounded; and a fundamental creed that all Christians were expected to follow, was composed.
This Council didn’t directly address Gnosticism, however, the Gnostic sects were not involved in it, and the creed it developed contradicted the doctrines most of them had been based on. The Council also didn’t come close to unifying Christendom as Constantine and many of its attending bishops had expected; the Arian “heresy” survived it by centuries, and other rifts such as the Donatist controversy remained in play.
It’s not known if any Gnostic believers attended the Council of Nicaea; perhaps some of the 1,800 “bishops” Constantine had contacted may have been senior members of Gnostic communities, but that can’t be known with any certainty. If any of them were present, there’s no record of it.
What the Council of Nicaea did to Gnosticism, can best be described as freezing it out. Efforts to codify Christianity and its doctrines continued, leading to later ecumenical councils over the next two centuries, but Gnosticism was not part of any of them.
Gnostics themselves were not, so far as we know, bothered by this. They had no interest in unifying Christianity’s teachings, being concerned only with understanding God as they saw him and developing the stages of insights that delivered them from the evils of the physical realm. In all probability, Gnostics dismissed the many “literalist” controversies and heresy-hunting as manifestations of the evils of the world and the Demiurge who still governed it.
At any rate, having been excluded from any say in later conciliar discussions of what Christianity was and what it should be, and to an extent not even being interested in being included, Gnostics found themselves on the outside of Christendom, looking in. Although Gnostics may have dismissed this, though, “literalist” Christians took it increasingly seriously. Their purges of Gnostic texts accelerated as their influence increased over the Roman state. Within a couple generations, the Emperors took part in this, as “literalist” Christians, themselves. By the turn of the 4th century, citizens of Rome were largely expected to adhere to “literalist” Christianity and its accepted forms (as opposed to its heresies), and those who refused could end up being targeted.
Among the main issues “literalists” had with Gnostics was that the latter believed Jesus the Christ had not truly died, but had only appeared to do so. This notion was codified in “literalist” Christianity as Docetism and fiercely condemned as heretical. Where once Gnostic Christianity had fit well within overall Greco-Roman tradition, compared with “literalist” Christianity, that ceased to be the case. The opposite was now true: “Literalist” Christianity dominated the Roman world, and Gnostics were the odd men out.
In spite of the overall classical world now being arrayed against it, Gnosticism didn’t go away at first. It persisted, and occasionally became an issue, during the following decades (e.g. the rise of Priscillianism in Iberia). But prevailing sentiment remained against Gnosticism, and nearly all of these movements didn’t last long. Priscillian himself became the first Christian explicitly executed for being a “heretic,” in 385 CE.
By the early 5th century, mention of Gnosticism and the various Gnostic sects diminishes in the historical record. Even so, it didn’t die out completely; for instance, the quasi-Gnostic Paulician movement arose in Armenia in the 7th century. It was locally influential and remained in place for at least two centuries. For a time, a small Paulician state emerged in the area of Tephrike in Asia Minor. That state was destroyed in the late 9th century but its people dispersed, presumably carrying their religious notions with them.
Gnosticism or something akin to it emerged in the Balkans in the 10th century in the form of Bogomilism, and Catharism in 12th century Italy and southern France. So it persisted in spite of it being generally forbidden. However, Gnosticism remains a “fringe” religious tradition, even though in the place and time when it first arose, it fit quite well into the world around it.
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