The Canon · No. 033
Gnosticism
The knowers
c.1st – c.5th c. CE (revivals later) · Esoteric / Occult · Extinct · Egypt, Syria, Rome, Gaul
IV. THE CLASSICAL & IMPERIAL WORLD — c.200 BCE – 500 CE
How many
Ancient movement extinct except for Mandaeism (entry 035). Modern revivals are reconstructions.
Who began it
No single founder. Teachers include Valentinus (c.100–160 CE), who nearly became bishop of Rome; Basilides; Marcion (a related but distinct case); and Simon Magus in hostile legend.
What it is for
To wake up. Gnosticism diagnoses the human problem not as sin but as ignorance — you are a divine spark that has forgotten what it is, trapped in a body, in a world that is itself a prison.
What it worships
The true God, utterly transcendent, unknown and unknowable, sometimes called the Monad or the Pleroma's source. Below him a hierarchy of aeons. The world was made not by him but by the Demiurge — a lesser, ignorant, often malevolent craftsman, frequently identified with the God of the Hebrew Bible, who believes himself to be the only god. This identification is what made Gnosticism intolerable to both Jews and orthodox Christians.
What it holds
Salvation by knowledge (gnosis), not faith and not works — and knowledge here means direct experiential recognition, not information. Radical dualism: spirit good, matter evil. The material world is a mistake or a trap. Humanity is divided into the spiritual, who will certainly be saved, the psychic, who may be, and the material, who cannot be. Christ in most Christian Gnostic systems is a revealer who brings the saving knowledge, and often only appears to have a body (docetism) — because a real incarnation in real flesh would be a catastrophe, not a rescue.
What it does
Initiation and secret teaching. Allegorical reading of scripture, systematically inverting it — the serpent in Eden becomes the liberator, since it offered knowledge. Ritual varied widely: some groups were severely ascetic, rejecting marriage and procreation as extending the Demiurge's prison; opponents accused others of libertinism, which may be polemic. Sacraments including a bridal chamber rite whose content is not clearly known.
After death
The spark ascends through the planetary spheres, each ruled by an archon who blocks the way and must be passed with the correct password or seal — knowledge again. It returns to the Pleroma, the fullness, and rejoins the divine. Those without gnosis are reincarnated or dissolve with the material world. No resurrection of the body, which would be a return to prison.
Its texts
Until 1945 known almost entirely through its enemies, chiefly Irenaeus' Against Heresies (c.180). Then the Nag Hammadi library was found in Egypt in December 1945 — thirteen codices, fifty-two texts, including the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Philip, Apocryphon of John, Gospel of Truth and Thunder, Perfect Mind. The Gospel of Judas surfaced separately and was published in 2006.
Its branches
Valentinian, Sethian, Basilidean, Ophite; the related Marcionite and Manichaean movements; the surviving Mandaeans.
Of note
The single most important thing Gnosticism did for orthodox Christianity was force it to define itself — the canon, the creed and the office of bishop all hardened in response.
Its timeline
- c.50–100 CE Proto-gnostic currents; some New Testament letters appear to argue against them.
- c.140 CE Valentinus teaches at Rome.
- c.144 CE Marcion expelled from the Roman church for rejecting the Old Testament and its God; he assembles the first Christian canon, which forces the orthodox to assemble theirs.
- c.180 CE Irenaeus writes Against Heresies.
- c.250–400 CE Gnostic groups decline under imperial Christian pressure.
- 1945 CE Nag Hammadi discovery, which allowed Gnostics to be read in their own words for the first time in sixteen centuries.
- 1979 Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels brings the material to a mass audience.
Sources
Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.