Gnosticism

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Gnosticism

Gnosticism takes its name from the ancient Greek word gnosis ("to know" in the sense of having personal acquaintance with something or someone). It is a modern academic term that is used to refer to a religious movement that consisted of Gnostic groups that date to approximately the second through the third centuries ce and were situated throughout the Roman and Iranian empires. Gnosticism was not a unified religious tradition, but the various groups were linked through a distinctive mythology.

THE INFLUENCE OF GNOSITICISM

Gnosticism has a unique position in the study of religion. Most scholars agree that there never was a Gnostic church or a clearly defined Gnostic community. Some even have argued that Gnosticism never existed as a distinct, independent religious tradition. However, the ideas, motifs, and ethics associated with Gnosticism have had a profound effect on the development of several major religious traditions. Through its interaction with traditions as diverse as Christianity in the West and Buddhism in the East, Gnosticism has influenced the understanding of a wide array of topics related to sex and gender, including body image, sexual mores, the association of women with evil, and discussions about women's involvement in religious leadership.

THE GNOSTIC MYTH AND GNOSTIC ORIGINS

The definitive Gnostic myth is a creation story that contends that the world is a tragically corrupt product of a fallen or false god and that the original, ideal creation exists before and apart from this world in a spiritual universe ruled by the true, unknown god. According to the myth, humanity belongs to the spiritual universe but has been trapped in this world and imprisoned in physical bodies by the false god. Only those who are aware of the truth of creation and its implications will be able to escape the corrupt realm.

In addition to this distinctive myth a characteristic often associated with Gnostic groups is the belief that salvation is to be found through true knowledge (gnosis) of the divine and of the human condition, a dualistic worldview that leads to antimaterialism and a tendency toward the ethical extremes of asceticism (total denial) and libertinism (total indulgence). These are the defining traits of Gnosticism. However, Gnostic ideas about salvation, dualism, and ethics derive from the unique Gnostic creation story, indicating the centrality of the myth to the expression of Gnostic identity.

The Gnostic myth is also the basis for the connection of Gnosticism to other religious traditions. For example, Gnosticism is paired with Judaism because the Gnostic myth includes characters and imagery usually associated with the book of Genesis from the Hebrew Bible. The Jewish creation story appears in the Gnostic myth as the negative counterpoint to the true creation, and Yahweh, the god of Judaism, is denigrated by being equated with the myth's false god. The hostile treatment of material from Genesis suggests antagonism toward Judaism, but many scholars have interpreted it as a paradoxical proof that Gnosticism originated among a rogue sect of Jews. Kurt Rudolph (1983) has suggested that Gnosticism developed within the apocalyptic Judaism of the last centuries bce as a religion of social protest intent on challenging cultural inequities. The repudiation of the creation of the earth and the antimaterialism embraced by the Gnostics were critiques of Roman society. According to this interpretation, Gnosticism represents a radicalization of Jewish belief.

Another theory about the origins of Gnosticism maintains that the tradition is rooted in early Christian sects, specifically the sects that were labeled heresies by the emerging Christian orthodoxy. In the history of early Christianity, Gnosticism is the foil against which official Christian doctrine and practice was defined. The major schools of Gnosticism also constituted some of the major heretical movements within early Christianity. Denouncing Gnostics and disproving their ideas provided the Church Fathers, as the early leaders of the Christian community were known, with an opportunity to formulate official, or orthodox, Christianity.

One of the first individuals to be identified as a Gnostic heretic by the Church Fathers was Marcion. Originally a second-century Christian theologian, Marcion believed that the god of Christianity was the known god of Gnosticism and that the Jewish god was a false god. He also believed that because everything in the world, including people, was created by the false god, it was all evil. Marcion rejected worldly things and vilified sexuality, claiming that evil could only reproduce evil. In opposition to Marcion, orthodox Christianity insisted that the Christian and Jewish gods were one and the same, the world was not evil, and a more moderate approach to sexuality should be adopted. Although Marcion eventually was excommunicated, he and his followers, the Marcionites, established their own church in Armenia, which would continue to influence Christianity and other religions well into the medieval period.

Another figure who played a major role in the Gnostic heresies in the early Christian period was Valentinus, a Christian theologian from Alexandria, Egypt, who established a popular philosophical school for Christianity in the middle of the second century ce. Influenced by the Gnostic myth, Valentinus believed that the original spiritual universe of the unknown god, also known as the pleroma, was composed entirely of dynamic pairings of masculine and feminine principles. This cosmic ideal was lost when Sophia, one of the spiritual beings, tried to create without her masculine counterpart and produced the false (Jewish) god. The salvation of humanity relies on returning to the cosmic ideal of an androgynous masculine-feminine unity. To that end Valentinus advocated sex and marriage for the enlightened—those capable of knowing the truth of Christianity—but forbade it to those who were too materialistic to grasp the cosmic ideal. Despite Valentinus's Gnostic tendencies and excommunication for heresy, the Valentinian practice of using allegory to explain Christianity became a standard feature of Christian theology.

In the Iranian Empire the Mandaeans, an ethnic and religious community of unclear origins that made its home in the Persian Gulf, incorporated elements of Gnostic mythology—dualism and the notion of a fallen god—into their religious literature. More significantly, Mani, the founder of a religious movement known as the Manichaeans, seems to have shaped his worldview and ethics around the Gnostic myth. Manichaeism sees the world as an impure mixture of the spiritual (good) and the material (evil) created by a fallen god through a bizarre combination of sexual lust and cannibalism. The task of humankind is to help the true god defeat the fallen god by undoing the mixture of the spiritual with the material. These beliefs caused the Manichaeans to practice a strict asceticism that prohibited all forms of sexual activity, killing, and the eating of meat. Manichaeism flourished in the Persian Empire and parts of the Roman Empire during the late third century ce. Eventually it spread eastward throughout central Eurasia all the way to China, where Gnosticism and Manichaean ideas mingled and may have had an effect on Chinese Buddhism. Traces of Manichaean Gnosticism can be found in certain Buddhist sutras.

LATER INFLUENCE

Gnosticism ceased to exist as a religious movement by the fourth or fifth century ce, but Gnostic ideas have reemerged regularly to influence other religious traditions. For example, in Europe during the Middle Ages fringe Christian sects such as the Bogomils and the Cathars professed a strongly Gnostic dualism. It is believed that those groups were influenced by remnants of the Marcionites and other Gnostic communities that took refuge in Armenia during the fifth century ce. Medieval Jewish Kabbalah also is thought to have incorporated Gnostic ideas about the various dual manifestations of the divine through contact with the Marcionites and Manichaeans. Some scholars have suggested that exposure to Gnostic ideas about salvation may have helped shape the Shi'i Islamic notion of the hidden imam.

In the modern period Gnosticism has been affiliated with literary romanticism. The romantic mythology of humanity in need of salvation from a tyrannical god has some similarities to the Gnostic myth, but romanticism lacks the notion of a higher unknown god, suggesting that it is not Gnosticism in the classical sense.

RECENT DISCOVERIES

The most recent development in Gnostic studies was the 1945 discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codex in a cave in Egypt. That codex is a collection of writings dating to the first few centuries ce, many but not all of which have a Gnostic tone. Many of the works found in the Nag Hammadi previously had been known only in fragmentary form or in references from other texts. The writings include literature, poetry, mythology, and philosophical and theological tractates. They share a literary heritage with the New Testament, and this has led to the designation of the Nag Hammadi texts as the Gnostic gospels or scripture. The discovery of those texts has had a strong influence on the study of early Christianity, giving rise to speculations about alternative forms of early Christianity that harbored unorthodox attitudes about the position of women and sex or sexual behavior.

see also Adam and Eve.