Volume 1 / Book 1 — CHAPTER IV
Neil Buchanan translation
THE ATTEMPTS OF THE GNOSTICS TO CREATE AN APOSTOLIC DOGMATIC, AND A CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY; OR, THE ACUTE SECULARISING OF CHRISTIANITY.
§ 1. The Conditions for the Rise of Gnosticism.
§ 2. The Nature of Gnosticism.
The name Gnosis, Gnostics, describes excellently the aims of Gnosticism, in so far as its adherents boasted of the absolute knowledge, and faith in the Gospel was transformed into a knowledge of God, nature and history. This knowledge, however, was not regarded as natural, but in the view of the Gnostics was based on revelation, was communicated and guaranteed by holy consecrations, and was accordingly cultivated by reflection supported by fancy. A mythology of ideas was created out of the sensuous mythology of any Oriental religion, by the conversion of concrete forms into speculative and moral ideas, such as "Abyss," "Silence," "Logos," "Wisdom," "Life," while the mutual relation and number of these abstract ideas were determined by the data supplied by the corresponding concretes. Thus arose a philosophic dramatic poem, similar to the Platonic, but much more complicated, and therefore more fantastic, in which mighty powers, the spiritual and good, appear in an unholy union with the material and wicked, but from which the spiritual is finally delivered by the aid of those kindred powers which are too exalted to be ever drawn down into the common. The good and heavenly which has been drawn down into the material, and therefore really non-existing, is the human spirit, and the exalted power who delivers it is Christ. The Evangelic history as handed down is not the history of Christ, but a collection of allegoric representations of the great history of God and the world. Christ has really no history. His appearance in this world of mixture and confusion is his deed, and the enlightenment of the spirit about itself is the result which springs out of that deed. This enlightenment itself is life. But the enlightenment is dependent on revelation, asceticism and surrender to those mysteries which Christ founded, in which one enters into communion with a præsens numen, and which in mysterious ways promote the process of raising the spirit above the sensual. This rising above the sensual is, however, to be actively practised. Abstinence therefore, as a rule, is the watchword. Christianity thus appears here as a speculative philosophy which redeems the spirit by enlightening it, consecrating it, and instructing it in the right conduct of life. The Gnosis is free from the rationalistic interest in the sense of natural religion. Because the riddles about the world which it desires to solve are not properly intellectual, but practical, because it desires to be in the end γνωσις σωτηριας, it removes into the region of the suprarational the powers which are supposed to confer vigour and life on the human spirit. Only a μαθησις, however, united with μυσταγογια, resting on revelation, leads thither, not an exact philosophy. Gnosis starts from the great problem of this world, but occupies itself with a higher world, and does not wish to be an exact philosophy, but a philosophy of religion. Its fundamental philosophic doctrines are the following: (1) The indefinable, infinite nature of the Divine primeval Being exalted above all thought. (2) Matter as opposed to the Divine Being, and therefore having no real being, the ground of evil. (3) The fulness of divine potencies, Æons, which are thought of partly as powers, partly as real ideas, partly as relatively independent beings, presenting in gradation the unfolding and revelation of the Godhead, but at the same time rendering possible the transition of the higher to the lower. (4) The Cosmos as a mixture of matter with divine sparks, which has arisen from a descent of the latter into the former, or, as some say, from the perverse, or, at least, merely permitted undertaking of a subordinate spirit. The Demiurge, therefore, is an evil, intermediate, or weak, but penitent being; the best thing therefore in the world is aspiration. (5) The deliverance of the spiritual element from its union with matter, or the separation of the good from the world of sensuality by the Spirit of Christ which operates through knowledge, asceticism, and holy consecration: thus originates the perfect Gnostic, the man who is free from the world, and master of himself, who lives in God and prepares himself for eternity. All these are ideas for which we find the way prepared in the philosophy of the time, anticipated by Philo, and represented in Neoplatonism as the great final result of Greek philosophy. It lies in the nature of the case that only some men are able to appropriate the Christianity that is comprehended in these ideas, viz., just as many as are capable of entering into this kind of Christianity, those who are spiritual. The others must be considered as non-partakers of the Spirit from the beginning, and therefore excluded from knowledge as the profanum vulgus. Yet some, the Valentinians, for example, made a distinction in this vulgus, which can only be discussed later on, because it is connected with the position of the Gnostics towards Jewish Christian tradition.
§ 3. History of Gnosticism and the forms in which it appeared.
4. The most important Gnostic Doctrines.
(1) Christianity, which is the only true and absolute religion, embraces a revealed system of doctrine (positive).
(2) This doctrine contains mysterious powers, which are communicated to men by initiation (mysteries).
(6) The following may be noted as the main points in the Gnostic conception of the several parts of the regula fidei.
(c) The doctrine of the independence and eternity of matter.
(g) The assertion that Christ revealed a God hitherto unknown.
Literature.—The writings of Justin (his syntagma against heresies has not been preserved), Irenæus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Epiphanius, Philastrius and Theodoret; cf. Volkmar, Die Quellen der Ketzergeschichte, 1885.
Lipsius, Zur Quellenkritik des Epiphanios, 1875; also Die Quellen der ältesten Ketzergeschichte, 1875.
Harnack, Zur Quellenkritik d. Gesch. d. Gnostic, 1873 (continued i. D. Ztschr. f. d. hist. Theol. 1874, and in Der Schrift de Apellis gnosi monarch. 1874).
Of Gnostic writings we possess the book Pistis Sophia, the writings contained in the Coptic Cod. Brucianus, and the Epistle of Ptolemy to Flora; also numerous fragments, in connection with which Hilgenfeld especially deserves thanks, but which still require a more complete selecting and a more thorough discussion (see Grabe, Spicilegium T. I. II. 1700. Heinrici, Die Valentin. Gnosis, u. d. H. Schrift, 1871).
On the (Gnostic) Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, see Zahn, Acta Joh. 1880, and the great work of Lipsius, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten, I. Vol., 1883; II. Vol., 1887. (See also Lipsius, Quellen d. röm. Petrussage, 1872).
Neander, Genet. Entw. d. vornehmsten gnostischen Systeme, 1818.
Matter, Hist. crit. du gnosticisme, 2 Vols., 1828.
Baur, Die Christl. Gnosis, 1835.
Lipsius, Der Gnosticismus, in Ersch. und Gruber's Allg. Encykl. 71 Bd. 1860.
Moeller, Geschichte d. Kosmologie i. d. Griech. K. his auf Origenes. 1860.
King, The Gnostics and their remains, 1873.
Mansel, The Gnostic heresies, 1875.
Jacobi, Art. "Gnosis" in Herzog's Real Encykl. 2nd Edit.
Hilgenfeld, Die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums, 1884, where the more recent, special literature concerning individual Gnostics is quoted.
Lipsius, Art. "Valentinus" in Smith's Dictionary of Christian Biography.
Harnack, Art. "Valentinus" in the Encycl. Brit.
Harnack, Pistis Sophia in the Texte und Unters. VII. 2.
Carl Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache aus dem Codex Brucianus (Texte und Unters. VIII. 1. 2).
Joël, Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte zu Anfang des 2 Christl. Jahrhunderts, 2 parts, 1880, 1883.
Renan, History of the Origins of Christianity. Vols. V. VI. VII.