GNOSTICISM

2 name used to embrace a number of sects on the borderland between Christianity and heathen thought. Its root principle was not faith but knowledge (gnosis), which was given to the initiated only. In its speculations it mixed up the Platonic theory of ideas (that everything has a spiritual arc he-type) with an Oriental dualism which made all matter evil. The supreme God was removed from the world and could only communicate with it by a number of sons, in which various principles and ideas were personified. | G. was antagonistic to Judaism, for it held the God of the Q. T. to he the Demiurge, a secondary God. The opposition of spirit and matter is a Gr. idea, but into this is united the idea of a conflict in the present world between forces of good and evil, which is Zoroastrian. Gnosticism was e entially mystical and also sacramental; many sacraments analogous to Christian rites were invented. Like other heretics, Gnostics were charged with immorality, and not without cause, as they tended to oscillate between asceticism and licentiousne , Christianity prevailed against the movement, as it also did against the Ebionites, some of whom leaned to Gnosticism.,