Note 159 — Chapter VIII · POST-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: THE OPHITES

Giraud, op. cit. p. 95, thinks that in the Naassene teaching matter does not really exist, all things being contained in Adamas. The absolute antagonism of God and matter is, however, too strongly marked a feature of nearly all the sources from which the Ophites can have drawn their doctrine for his theory to be entertained. Berger, Études des Documents nouveaux fournis sur les Ophites par les Philosophumena, Nancy, 1873, p. 25, puts forward the same idea as a mere figure of speech and in order apparently to reconcile the Ophite doctrine with St John’s statement that without the Word “nothing” was made. Later he (ibid. pp. 61, 104, 105) points out that the tendency of the Ophite like all other Gnostic doctrine is to widen rather than to narrow the abyss between Spirit and Matter.