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Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary

GNOSTICISM*

Religious thought distinguished by claims to obscure and mystical knowledge, and emphasizing knowledge rather than faith. Until the mid-20th century, Gnosticism was regarded as a Christian heresy that developed through the interweaving of Christian experience and thought with Greek philosophy. More recently, many scholars define the Gnostics more broadly as devotees of a religious view that borrowed ideas from many religious traditions. The meanings of these borrowed terms and practices were shaped into mythological expressions of experiential salvation.

Gnosticism as a Heresy

During the 20th century, many discoveries of Gnostic documents have enabled scholars to define Gnosticism more accurately. Prior to the 20th century, most of the information available concerning the Gnostics came from early Christian writers (heresiologs) who penned treatises against heretics, and in the process described some of their beliefs and practices. These heresiologs, such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus, viewed the Gnostics as distorters of Christianity. The Gnostics developed many misinterpretations of the Bible, especially of the creation account and the Gospel of John. Indeed, the Gnostic writers Heracleon and Ptolemais are the first known commentators on the fourth Gospel. The anger of the Christian apologists is well summarized by Irenaeus when he likens the Gnostic interpreter to one who tears apart a beautiful picture of a king and then restructures it into a picture of a fox.

Apparently a number of Gnostics continued as members of local churches and some served in high offices. Indeed, there is speculation that Valentinus may have been considered as a possible candidate for bishop at Rome. Moreover, Marcion, the fabled Christian heretic, reinterpreted Paul in such a way that the OT God became the god of evil and Christ became the messenger of the good God of grace. Many Gnostic heretical tendencies have been associated with Marcion, who developed his own censored canon of the NT and thereby forced the Christians to counter by clarifying their own canon. The early Christian historian Eusebius (d. AD 339), who excerpted some of the early lost works of heresiologs like Hegesippus, also provides insight into the hostility of Christians against various Gnostics like Marcion, Basilides, Tatian, Satornil, Dositheus, and the so-called father of all heresy, Simon the sorcerer.

Types of Gnostics

1. The Iranian type of Gnostic myth that arose in Mesopotamia is an adaption of Zoroastrianism. The myths are constructed with a horizontal dualism in which the opposing powers of good (light) and evil (darkness) are regarded as fairly equal in strength. In the first stage of the myth, a segment of the light is captured by the jealous darkness when the light transcends itself and reaches into the realm occupied by the darkness. The capture of the light has been viewed by some scholars as the Iranian cosmic “fall.” Since the Gnostics themselves are usually identified with the captured light particles, a major task of their myths is to describe the process by which the light particles (encapsulated within the bodies of Gnostics) are released. The body, or “flesh” in the Greek sense, is merely a worthless covering or tomb, while the spirit—the spark in man linked to the divine—is the part that seeks release and return to the heavenly bliss. In the Iranian system the light forces regroup and make a partially successful counterattack on the forces of darkness. Then, primarily through the work of an alien messenger of strength who has gained a foothold in the world, the good forces are able to challenge the work of the evil captors and supply advice (gnosis) to their devotees. This gnosis leads to salvation or release.

2. The Syrian type of Gnostic myth, which arose primarily in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, is more complex and involves a vertical dualism. In this system there is only one ultimate being or group of divinities (not two as in the horizontal system). Their dualism is usually explained as the result of a flaw, or error, in the good. The error in good, for example, is frequently attributed to the least member in the good pantheon. The guilty deity is usually designated as Sophia (the Greek term for “wisdom,” which indicates the Gnostic’s low opinion of the Greek philosopher’s quest for wisdom). This Gnostic myth details how, instead of being satisfied with her station in life, Wisdom lusts for the Ultimate Depth. Since this ultimate god cannot tolerate distortion and weakness in the godhead, he must exclude Wisdom’s lust from the heavenly realm. This lust is exiled to a lower heaven, is personalized as the Lower Wisdom (sometimes called the demiurge), and becomes the creator of the world. As lesser deities, the creator and subordinate gods (often called fates) are unable to perceive the upper heavenly realm and falsely consider themselves to be ultimate. The upper godhead deviously maneuvers the Lower Wisdom in creating human beings and giving life to them through the process of passing on the breath of life. Unknowingly, in the act of creation, the Lower Wisdom not only gives life to human beings but also passes on the divine light particles. Thus, with the help of a savior—an alien messenger of knowledge sent by the upper godhead and often designated as Jesus—humanity is enabled to perceive even more than the creator and to conquer the spiritual stupor that has come upon him when his spirit was encased by the creator in an earthly body.

As a result of the split within the deity in this system, the biblical Garden of Eden story becomes radically reinterpreted. The creator provides a tree of life (which is a misnomer) and actually offers humanity bondage instead. The lower god also forbids access to the tree of knowledge (gnosis), which appears in his creation without his authorization, being provided by the upper godhead for the purpose of awakening Gnostics to the state from which they have come.

Because only those people who have light particles are capable of being saved, the process of salvation in most Gnostic myths is deterministic. Moreover, salvation really occurs at the end of the Gnostic’s life when he seeks to escape from the created world. Concurrent with the escape, the Gnostic strips off the created elements of the body from his spirit and climbs through the fates to the heavenly realm.

With respect to both systems of Gnosticism, recent discoveries have clarified our understanding of the myths. New primary sources for the Iranian type of Gnosticism became available during the first half of the 20th century and include the publication of a Manichean psalter (1938) and a Manichean book of homilies (1934). New primary sources for the Syrian type of Gnosticism were made available through the publication of the Berlin manuscript in 1955, but more significantly, our knowledge has recently increased through the discovered codices usually designated as the Nag Hammadi manuscripts.

Understanding the Gnostic Purpose

Perhaps one of the greatest problems for the uninitiated readers of Gnosticism is understanding the purpose of the Gnostic myths. The myths often seem so strange that the readers are tempted to scratch their heads and wonder how anyone with any intelligence could believe such wild stories. One must realize, however, that the myth writers were seeking to communicate elements of the unexplained relationships between the human and the divine.

The bondage of evil in the world and its relationship to a good God has stretched the minds of the greatest theologians and philosophers of history. The Gnostics devised their answer to the problem of evil by shifting the blame from this world back to either God himself or to divisions within the divine realm. By compartmentalizing good and evil, it was possible to decide one’s destiny by the alignments one made.

But the role of evil was seen as so strong in this world that the Gnostics, like the Greek philosophers before them, concluded the world was a hopeless context for the victory of the good. Accordingly, they abandoned the world to the evil god and developed a theology that focused on salvation as the process of escape from the world. Their theory also provided a salvation while on earth: Since the Gnostics contained divine light particles, they were in fact immortal, and their spirits, though existing in an evil context, would not ultimately be contaminated. The body and all its lust and lower animal desires would be shed from the spirit as it rose through the realms of the lower godhead to be reunited with the divine spiritual realm after death. Some Gnostics, indeed, carried the idea of noncontamination to ridiculous lengths and devised systems whereby sexual relations with various persons represented divine-human encounters—the more, the better! Others tended to affirm more ascetic tendencies whereby they sought to conform the miserable body to the lifestyle of the incorruptible spirit.

One of the realities the Gnostic interpreters encountered was the fact that not everyone accepted their theories. Accordingly, they devised mythical methods to distinguish between various types of people. Using ideas suggested by Paul in 1 Corinthians 2 and Romans 8, the Gnostics developed a highly sophisticated categorization of people. The pneumatic, or spiritual (i.e., Gnostic), persons were divine in origin, being from light particles. The sarkic, or fleshly, persons were formed totally from the substances made by the creator and could never inherit the divine realm. The Christians whom they saw as struggling to be obedient to the biblical message, however, were a kind of mixture. They needed desperately to work out their salvation, and if they were obedient as psychic people, they might gain some form of acceptance. This elitism of the Gnostics and their distortion of the Christian message clarifies the hostility of the Christians against the Gnostics.

The myths were the methodological formulations the Gnostics used to express their theological constructs. To understand them the reader needs the key of gnosis, or knowledge. Interpretation of the myths was in fact an early type of demythologizing, not unlike the process Rudolf Bultmann, an early-twentieth-century theologian and NT scholar, employed in interpreting the Bible. The Gnostic writers were among the brightest minds of their day. Their creativity is to be admired. Their theology, however, is to be rejected as a distortion of the biblical message. See Nag Hammadi Manuscripts.