What is gnosticism in the bible

Save Word. Definition of gnosticism. First Known Use of gnosticism , in the meaning defined above. History and Etymology for gnosticism see gnostic. Learn More About gnosticism. Time Traveler for gnosticism The first known use of gnosticism was in See more words from the same year.

Statistics for gnosticism Look-up Popularity. Style: MLA. Get Word of the Day daily email! This act is the origin of and reason for the Incarnation of Christ, according to Marcion. Irenaeus 1. We are alone in a world that does not lend itself to our quest for unalterable truth, and so we befriend wisdom, which is the way of or manner in which we attain this intuited truth.

According to Marcion, this truth is not to be found in this world—all that is to be found is the desire for this truth, which arises amongst human beings. However, since this desire, on the part of human beings, only produces various philosophies, none of which can hold claim to the absolute truth, Marcion concludes that the noetic beings humans of this realm are capable of nothing more than a shadow of wisdom.

Colossians ff. Moreover, instead of attempting to discover the historical connection between the revelation of Christ and the teachings of the Old Testament, Marcion simply rejected the latter in favor of the former, on the belief that only the Gospel thoughtfully edited by Marcion himself points us toward complete wisdom Irenaeus 1.

While other Christian thinkers of the era were busy allegorizing the Old Testament in order to bring it into line with New Testament teaching, Marcion allowed the New Testament albeit in his own special version to speak to him as a singular voice of authority—and he formulated his doctrine accordingly.

Giovanni Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism , p. The hope of searching for a lost home, or of returning to a home from which one has been turned out, was absent in the doctrine of Marcion. Like Pico della Mirandola, Marcion declared the nature of humankind to be that of an eternally intermediate entity, poised precariously between heaven and earth cp. Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man , 3. The great Christian teacher and philosopher Valentinus ca. Valentinus later went to Rome, where he began his public teaching career, which was so successful that he actually had a serious chance of being elected Bishop of Rome.

He lost the election, however, and with it Gnosticism lost the chance of becoming synonymous with Christianity, and hence a world religion. This is not to say that Valentinus failed to influence the development of Christian theology—he most certainly did, as we shall see below.

It was through Valentinus, perhaps more than any other Christian thinker of his time, that Platonic philosophy, rhetorical elegance, and a deep, interpretive knowledge of scripture became introduced together into the realm of Christian theology.

The achievement of Valentinus remained unmatched for nearly a century, until the incomparable Origen came on the scene. Poimandres 5. However, it is to be assumed that Valentinus did expound an anthropology similar to that of the classical Sophia myth as represented, for example, in the Apocryphon of John ; cf. The account preserved in Irenaeus ends with a description of a somewhat confused doctrine of a heavenly and an earthly Christ, and a brief passage on the role of the Holy Spirit Irenaeus 1.

From this one gets the idea that Valentinus was flirting with a primitive doctrine of the Trinity. Valentinus was certainly the most overtly Christian of the Gnostic philosophers of his era. Valentinus writes, in what is probably a remnant of a sermon:. And you wanted death to be allocated to yourselves so that you might spend it and use it up, and that death might die in you and through you.

For when you nullify the world and are not yourselves annihilated, you are lord over creation and all corruption Valentinus, Fragment F. For Valentinus, then, the individual who is predestined for salvation is also predestined for a sort of divine stewardship that involves an active hand in history, and not a mere repose with God, or even a blissful existence of loving creation, as Basilides held. Like Paul, Valentinus demanded that his hearers recognize their createdness.

The task of Christian hermeneutics after Valentinus was to prove the continuity of the Old and New Testament. In this regard, as well as in the general spirituality of his teaching—not to mention his primitive trinitarian doctrine—Valentinus had an incalculable impact on the development of Christianity. Ptolemy or Ptolemaeus , fl.

We also find, in both the myth and the Epistle , Ptolemy making an attempt to bring Hebrew Scripture into line with Gnostic teaching and New Testament allegorization in a manner heretofore unprecedented among the Gnostics. The purpose of the Pleroma was to exist as a living, collective expression of the intellectual magnitude of the Father, and if any single being within the Pleroma were to attain to the Father, all life would cease. The goal, on this view, is to produce through wisdom, and not simply to attain wisdom as an object or end in itself.

When Sophia desired to know the Father, then, what she was desiring was her own dissolution in favor of an envelopment in that which made her existence possible in the first place. This amounted to a rejection of the gift of the Father—that is, of the gift of individual existence and life. Colossians Salvation, then, in its final form, must imply a sort of spiritual creation on the part of the Gnostics who attain the Pleroma. In his Epistle to Flora in Epiphanius The world religion founded by Mani CE and known to history as Manichaeism has its roots in the East, borrowing elements from Persian dualistic religion Zoroastrianism , Jewish Christianity, Buddhism, and even Mithraism.

The system developed by Mani was self-consciously syncretistic, which was a natural outgrowth of his desire to see his religion reach the ends of the earth. This desire was fulfilled, and until the late Middle Ages, Manichaeism remained a world religion, stretching from China to Western Europe.

It is now completely extinct. The religion began when its founder experienced a series of visions, in which the Holy Spirit supposedly appeared to him, ordering him to preach the revelation of Light to the ends of the earth. Mani came to view himself as the last in a series of great prophets including Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, and Paul Rudolph, p.

His highly complex myth of the origin of the cosmos and of humankind drew on various elements culled from these several traditions and teachings.

Since Manichaeism belongs more to the history of religion than to philosophy proper or even the fringes of philosophy, as does Western Gnosticism , it will suffice to say only a few words about the system, if for no other reason than that the great Christian philosopher Augustine of Hippo had followed the Manichaen religion for several years, before converting to Christianity cf.

Augustine, Confessions III. The main point of distinction between the doctrine of Mani and the Western branch of Gnosticism Basilides, Valentinus, etc. The Manichaean cosmology began with two opposed first principles, as in Zoroastrianism: the God of Light, and the Ruler of Darkness.

This Primal Man possesses a pentadic soul, consisting of fire, water, wind, light, and ether. Surprisingly, the Primal Man is defeated, and his soul scattered throughout the Realm of Darkness. However, the Manichaeans understood this as a plan on the part of the Ruler of Light to sow the seeds of resistance within the Darkness, making possible the eventual overthrow of the chaotic realm.

This process will continue throughout the ages of the world, until all the particles eventually reach their proper home and the salvation of the godhead is complete. It should be clear from this brief exposition that humanity as such does not hold the prime place in the salvific drama of Manichaeism, but rather a part of the godhead itself—that is, the scattered soul of Ohrmazd. The purpose of humanity in this scheme is to aid the particles of light in their ascent to the godhead.

Of course, these particles dwell within every living thing, and so the salvation of these particles is the salvation of humanity, but only by default, as it were; humanity does not hold a privileged position in Manichaeism, as it does in the Western or strictly Christian Gnostic schools. All of this, however, is a long way from philosophy. Now that we have examined one of the non-philosophical directions taken by Gnostic thought, let us proceed to discuss its role in the philosophical development of the era.

For Plato, this did not imply that the cosmos is under the control of a corrupt or ignorant god, as it did for the Gnostics, but simply that this cosmos, like the human soul, possesses a rational and an irrational part, and that it is the task of the rational part to govern the irrational.

Was he declaring that a part of the cosmos is evil? Both of these conjectures flew in the face of everything that the ancient thinkers believed about the cosmos—that is, that it was divine, orderly, and perfect.

Timaeus 37d. Several centuries after Plato, around the time when the great Gnostic thinkers like Valentinus and Ptolemy were developing their systems, we encounter the Platonic philosopher Numenius of Apamea fl. So in virtue of not being in contact with the Intelligible which would mean being turned in upon Himself , by reason of looking towards Matter and taking thought for it, He becomes unregarding aperioptos of Himself.

In this fragment, Numenius is transferring a basic Gnostic anthropological idea into the realm of cosmology. However, neither Platonism nor Gnosticism described such a danger as affecting, in any way, the Demiurge; for the Gnostics declared the Demiurge to be just as much a part of the cosmos as he was its ruler , and the orthodox Platonists located the Demiurge outside the cosmos, declaring the cosmos to be self-sufficient following Timaeus 34b.

Enneads I. Unlike Plotinus, however, who leaves the World-Soul or active part of the Demiurge safely beyond the affective cosmic realm, Numenius posits a Demiurge that is both transcendent and immanent, and arrives at a doctrine of a cosmos that, even on the highest level—the level of the celestial bodies—is not devoid of evil influence, since even the Demiurge, the highest cosmic deity, is infected by the tainting influence of Matter.

Christianity Expert. Jack Zavada is a writer who covers the Bible, theology, and other Christianity topics. Updated September 14, Gnosticism Definition The term Gnosticism is derived from the Greek word gnosis , meaning "to know" or "knowledge. Cite this Article Format. Zavada, Jack. Gnosticism: Definition and Beliefs. Compare Major Beliefs of 7 Christian Denominations. What Is Jansenism? Definition, Principles, and Legacy.

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