Note (return) — Chapter IV

The later opponents of Gnosticism preferred to bring out the fantastic details of the Gnostic systems, and thereby created the prejudice that the essence of the matter lay in these. They have thus occasioned modern expounders to speculate about the Gnostic speculations in a manner that is marked by still greater strangeness. Four observations shew how unhistorical and unjust such a view is, at least with regard to the chief systems. (1) The great Gnostic schools, wherever they could, sought to spread their opinions. But it is simply incredible that they should have expected of all their disciples, male and female, an accurate knowledge of the details of their system. On the contrary, it may be shewn that they often contented themselves with imparting consecration, with regulating the practical life of their adherents, and instructing them in the general features of their system.311 (2) We see how in one and the same school, for example, the Valentinian, the details of the religious metaphysic were very various and changing. (3) We hear but little of conflicts between the various schools. On the contrary, we learn that the books of doctrine and edification passed from one school to another.312 (4) The fragments of Gnostic writings which have been preserved, and this is the most important consideration of the four, shew that the Gnostics devoted their main strength to the working out of those religious, moral, philosophical and historical problems, which must engage the thoughtful of all times.313 We only need to read some actual Gnostic document, such as the Epistle of Ptolemæus to Flora, or certain paragraphs of the Pistis Sophia, in order to see that the fantastic details of the philosophic poem can only, in the case of the Gnostics themselves, have had the value of liturgical apparatus, the construction of which was not of course a matter of indifference, but hardly formed the principal interest. The things to be proved, and to be confirmed by the aid of this or that very old religious philosophy, were certain religious and moral fundamental convictions, and a correct conception of God, of the sensible, of the creator of the world, of Christ, of the Old Testament, and the evangelic tradition. Here were actual dogmas. But how the grand fantastic union of all the factors was to be brought about, was, as the Valentinian school shews, a problem whose solution was ever and again subjected to new attempts.314 No one to-day can in all respects distinguish what to those thinkers was image and what reality, or in what degree they were at all able to distinguish image from reality, and in how far the magic formulæ of their mysteries were really objects of their meditation. But the final aim of their endeavours, the faith and knowledge of their own hearts which they instilled into their disciples, the practical rules which they wished to give them, and the view of Christ which they wished to confirm them in, stand out with perfect clearness. Like Plato, they made their explanation of the world start from the contradiction between sense and reason, which the thoughtful man observes in himself. The cheerful asceticism, the powers of the spiritual and the good which were seen in the Christian communities, attracted them and seemed to require the addition of theory to practice. Theory without being followed by practice had long been in existence, but here was the as yet rare phenomenon of a moral practice which seemed to dispense with that which was regarded as indispensable, viz., theory. The philosophic life was already there; how could the philosophic doctrine be wanting, and after what other model could the latent doctrine be reproduced than that of the Greek religious philosophy?315 That the Hellenic spirit in Gnosticism turned with such eagerness to the Christian communities and was ready even to believe in Christ in order to appropriate the moral powers which it saw operative in them, is a convincing proof of the extraordinary impression which these communities made. For what other peculiarities and attractions had they to offer to that spirit than the certainty of their conviction (of eternal life), and the purity of their life? We hear of no similar edifice being erected in the second century on the basis of any other Oriental cult—even the Mithras cult is scarcely to be mentioned here—as the Gnostic was on the foundation of the Christian.316 The Christian communities, however, together with their worship of Christ, formed the real solid basis of the greater number and the most important of the Gnostic systems, and in this fact we have, on the very threshold of the great conflict, a triumph of Christianity over Hellenism. The triumph lay in the recognition of what Christianity had already performed as a moral and social power. This recognition found expression in bringing the highest that one possessed as a gift to be consecrated by the new religion, a philosophy of religion whose end was plain and simple, but whose means were mysterious and complicated.