Gnosticism

A gospel of secret knowledge

The name comes from the Greek gnōsis (γνῶσις), knowledge. It does not describe one church but a family of second-century groups, led by teachers such as Basilides in Alexandria and Valentinus in Rome, which later writers grouped together; scholars today debate how far the label fits them all.

They began from a serious question: why is a world made by a good God so full of evil and suffering? Many Gnostics answered that the material world was the work not of the highest God but of a lower, ignorant maker; that in some people a divine spark from the world above lies imprisoned in the body; and that salvation is awakening to this through secret knowledge, brought by Christ as a messenger from above. Since the body was not to be saved, many taught that Christ only seemed to be human. Texts found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945 let us read some of their writings today (see What about the 'other gospels'?).

The church's answer

The New Testament already warns against currents that many scholars see as early forms of what later grew into Gnosticism:

O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid irreverent, empty chatter and the opposing arguments of so-called “knowledge”

1 Timothy 6:20

The word there is gnōsis. Paul insists that "every creation of God is good" (1 Timothy 4:4), and John that the Spirit of God is known by confessing "that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh" (1 John 4:2). In the third century Origen, commenting on the lawyer who asked Jesus about eternal life and was pointed to the two great commandments of the Law, concluded that "the life which is preached according to God the Creator of the world, and the Scriptures given by Him, is life everlasting" Origen, and aimed the point at the followers of Valentinus, Basilides and Marcion.

The fullest reply came from Irenaeus, who wrote Against Heresies around 180 Irenaeus, Against Heresies. He taught that the one God made the world himself, by his Word and Spirit, so that the material world is good; that the apostles' faith was no secret but had been taught openly in the churches they founded; and that the church's Gospels were four (see canon). When the Apostles' Creed confesses God the Father as "Maker of heaven and earth" Apostles' Creed and believes in the resurrection of the body, many scholars hear echoes of this struggle. The story is told more fully in After the apostles: the apologists and Irenaeus.

Gnosticism and us

The Gnostics asked honestly about evil, but by dividing the Creator from the Saviour and abandoning the body and the world, they fell short of Scripture, and the church judged their teaching heresy. The God of the Bible looked on all he had made and "it was very good" (Genesis 1:31), and the risen Lord said, "Touch Me and see — for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have" (Luke 24:39). Spiritualities that despise the body and the world, or promise secrets known only to the enlightened few, still appear in new forms. The gospel is public news for everyone, and the work of a God who saves us body and soul.