Note 77 — Chapter VII · POST-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS

As Hatch, H. L. pp. 274-279, has pointed out, the term όμοοὐσιος, which led to so much shedding of Christian blood, first occurs among the post-Christian Gnostics, and led in turn to most of the wranglings about “substance,” “person,” and the other metaphysical distinctions and their result in “strife and murder, the devastation of fair fields, the flame of fire and sword” (ibid. p. 279). For the possibilities of Greek science, had it not been opposed by the Church, see ibid. p. 26.