GNOSTICS

(From γνώσις , knowledge .) The word Gnostic properly signifies a learned or enlightened person ; and thus Clement of Alexandria uses it to denote the perfect Christian , who is the true Gnostic. But in its more common use, the term signifies a cla of heretics, who pretended to superior knowledge, and mixed up some Christian ideas and terms with systems based on Platonism, Oriental philosophy, or corrupt Judaism. To this cla most of the earliest sects belonged. Simon Magus may be considered as the forerunner of Gnosticism; and in the second century there were many varieties of Gnostics—as the followers of Basilides Saturn in us, Carpocrates, Val ent in us, . Of these the Carpocratians alone are said to have a umed the name. The Gnostic systems held in common a belief in one supreme God, dwelling from eternity in the Pleroma , or fulne of light. From him proceed succe ive generations of spiritual beings—called by Val ent in us Æons . In proportion as these emanations are more remote from the primal source, the likene of his perfections in them is continually fainter. Matter is regarded as eternal, and as inherently evil. Out of it the world was formed, not by the Supreme God , but by the Demiurge —a being who is represented by some heresiarchs as merely a subordinate and unconscious instrument of the Divine will, and by others as positively malignant, and hostile to the Supreme. The Demiurge was the national God of the Jews—the God of the Old Testament; according, therefore, as he is viewed, the Mosaic economy is either recognised as preparatory, or is rejected as evil. The mi ion of Christ was for the purpose of delivering man from the tyranny of the Demiurge. But the Christ of Gnosticism was neither very God nor very man. His spiritual nature, being an emanation from the Supreme God , was nece arily inferior to its original; and, on the other hand, an emanation from God could not dwell in a material, and consequently evil, body. Either, therefore, Jesus was a mere man, on whom the Æon Christ descended at his baptism, to forsake him again before his crucifixion; or the body with which Christ seemed to be clothed was only a phantom, and all his actions were only in appearance. (See Docetæ .) The same view as to the evil nature of matter led the Gnostics to deny the resurrection of the body. They could admit no other than a spiritual resurrection; the object of their philosophy was to emancipate the soul from its gro and material prison at death; the soul of the perfect Gnostic, having already risen in baptism, was to be gathered into the bosom of God , while such souls as yet lacked their full perfection, were to work it out in a series of transmigrations. Since matter was evil, the Gnostic was required to overcome it. But here arose an important practical difference; for, while some sought the victory by a high ascetic abstraction from the things of sense, the baser kind profe ed to show their superiority and indifference by wallowing in impurity and exce .—(See Bardesanists , Basilidians , Carpocratians , Mar cio nites , Ophitæ , Val ent in i ans .)