§ 27.7. The Gnosis of the Ophites, described by Irenæus, etc., is distinguished from that of the earlier Naasenes [Naassenes] by its incorporation of Valentinian and dualistic or Saturninian (see § [27, 9]) ideas. From the Bythos who, as the primary being, is also called the first man, Adam Cadmon, emanates the thought, ἔννοια, of himself as the second man or son of man, and from him the Holy Spirit or the Ano-Sophia, who in turn bears the Ano-Christus and Achamoth. The latter, an imperfect being of light, who is also called Προύνικος, which according to Epiphanius means πόρνη, drives about through the dark ocean of chaos, over which the productive mother, the Holy Spirit, broods, in order to found for himself in it an independent world of his own. There dense matter unites with the element of light and darkens it to such a degree that even the consciousness of its own divine origin begins to fade away from it. In this condition of estrangement from God she produces the Demiurge, Jaldabaoth, יַלְדָּא בָּהוּת, son of chaos; and he, a wicked as well as limited being, full of arrogance and pride, determines that he himself alone will be lord and master in the world which he creates. This brings Achamoth to penitent deliberation. By the vigorous exercise of all the powers of light dwelling in her, and strengthened by a gleam of light from above, she succeeds in raising herself from the realm of chaos into the Τόπος τῆς μεσότητος. Nevertheless Jaldabaoth brought forth six star spirits or planets after his own image, and placed himself as the seventh at their head. But they too think of rebelling. Enraged at this Jaldabaoth glances wildly upon the deep-lying slime of the Hyle; his frightfully distorted countenance is mirrored in this refuse of chaos; the image there comes to life and forms Ophiomorphus or Satan. By order of Jaldabaoth the star spirits make man; but they produce only an awkward spiritless being that creeps along the ground. In order to quicken it and make it stand erect the Demiurge breathes into it his own breath, but thereby deprives himself of a great part of that pneumatical element which he had from his mother. The so-called fall, in which Ophiomorphus or the serpent was only the unconscious instrument of Achamoth, is in truth the beginning of the redemption of man, the advance to self-consciousness and moral freedom. But as a punishment for his disobedience Jaldabaoth drove him out of the higher material world, Paradise, into the lower, where he was exposed to the annoyances of Ophiomorphus, who also brought the majority of mankind, the heathens, under his authority, while the Jews served Jaldabaoth, and only a small number of pneumatical natures by the help of Achamoth kept themselves free from both. The prophets whom Jaldabaoth sent to his people, were at the same time unconscious organs of Achamoth, who also sent down the Ano-Christus from the Pleroma upon the Messiah, whose kingdom is yet to spread among all nations. Jaldabaoth now let his own Messiah be crucified, but the Ano-Christus was already withdrawn from him and had set himself unseen at the right hand of the Demiurge, where he deprives him and his angels of all the light element which they still had in them, and gathers round himself the pneumatical from among mankind, in order to lead them into thePleroma.—The latest and at the same time the noblest product of Ophite Gnosticism is the Pistis Sophia,[42] appearing in the middle of the third century, with a strong tincture of Valentinianism. It treats mainly of the fall, repentance, and complaint of Sophia, and of the mysteries that purify for redemption, often approaching very closely the doctrine of the church.

§ 27.8. Antinomian and Libertine Sects.—The later representatives of Alexandrian Gnosticism on account of the antinomian tendency of their system fell for the most part into gross immorality, which excused itself on the ground that the pneumatical men must throw contempt upon the law of the Demiurge, ἀντιτάσσεσθαι, (whence they were also called Antitactes), and that by the practice of fleshly lusts one must weaken and slay the flesh, παραχρῆσθαι τῇ σαρκί, so as to overcome the powers of the Hyle. The four following sects may be mentioned as those which maintained such views.—

  1. The Nicolaitans, who in order to give themselves the sanction of primitive Christianity sought to trace their descent from Nicolaus [Nicolas] the Deacon (Acts vi. 5). But while they have really no connection with him, they are just as little to be identified with the Nicolaitans of the Apocalypse (§ [18, 3]).
  2. In a similar way the Simonians sought to attach themselves to Simon Magus (§ [25, 2]). They gave to the fables associated with the name of Simon a speculative basis borrowed from the central idea of the philosophy of Heraclitus, that the principle of all things (ἡ ἀπέραντος δύναμις) is fire. From it in three syzygies, νοῦς and ἐπίνοια, φωνή and ὄνομα, λογισμός and ἐνθύμησις, proceed the six roots of the supersensible world, and subsequently the corresponding six roots of the sensible world, Heaven and earth, Sun and moon, Air and water, in which unlimited force is present as ὁ ἐστώς, στάς, and στησόμενος. Justin Martyr was already acquainted with this sect, and also Hippolytus, who quotes many passages from their chief treatise, entitled, Ἀπόφασις μεγάλη and reports scandalous things about their foul worship.
  3. The Carpocratians. In the system of their founder Carpocrates, who lived at Alexandria in the first half of the second century, God is the eternal Mould, the unity without distinctions, from whom all being flows and to whom all returns again. From Him the ἄγγελοι κοσμοποιοί revolted. By the creation of the world they established a distinct order of existence apart from God and consolidated it by the law issuing from them and the national religions of Jews and Gentiles founded by them. Thus true religion or the way of return for the human spirit into the One and All consists theoretically in Gnosis, practically in emancipation from the commands of the Demiurge and in a life κατὰ φύσιν. The distinction of good and bad actions rests merely on human opinions. Man is redeemed by faith and love. In order to be able to overcome the powers that created the world, he is in need of magic which is intimately connected with Gnosis. Every human spirit who has not fully attained to this end of all religious endeavour, is subjected, until he reaches it, to the assumption of one bodily form after another. Among the heroes of humanity who with special energy and success have assailed the kingdom of the Demiurge by contempt of his law and spread of the true Gnosis, a particularly conspicuous place is assigned to Jesus, the son of Joseph. What he was for the Jews, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, etc., were for the Gentiles. To the talented son of Carpocrates, named Epiphanes, who died in his seventeenth year, after impressing upon his father’s Gnostic system a boundless communistic and libertine tendency with community of goods and wives, his followers erected a temple at Cephalonia, in which they set up for divine honours the statues of Christ and the Greek philosophers. At the close of their Agapæ, they indulged in Concubitus promiscuus.
  4. The Prodicians flourished about the time of Clement of Alexandria, and were connected, perhaps, through their founder Prodicus, with the Carpocratians. In order to prove their dominion over the sensible world they were wont to appear in their assemblies naked, and hence are also called Adamites. So soon as they succeeded in thus reaching the state of innocence that had preceded the fall, they maintained that as pneumatical king’s sons they were raised above all law and entitled to indulge in unbridled lust.

§ 27.9. Saturninus, or Satornilus of Antioch, according to Irenæus, a disciple of Menander, was one of the oldest Syrian Gnostics, during the age of Hadrian, and the one in whose system of Dualism the most decided traces of Parsee colouring is found. From the θεὸς ἄγνωστος the spirit world of the kingdom of light emanates in successive stages. On the lowest stage stand the seven planet spirits, ἄγγελοι κοσμοκράτορες, at their head the creator of the world and the god of the Jews. But from eternity over against the realm of light stands the Hyle in violent opposition under the rule of Satanas. The seven star spirits think to found therein a kingdom free and independent of the Pleroma, and for this purpose make an inroad upon the kingdom of the Hyle, and seize upon a part of it. Therefore they form the sensible world and create man as keeper thereof after a fair model sent by the good God of which they had a dim vision. But they could not give him the upright form. The supreme God then takes pity upon the wretched creature. He sends down a spark of light σπινθήρ into it which fills it with pneumatical life and makes it stand up. But Satanas set a hylic race of men over against this pneumatical race, and persecuted the latter incessantly by demons. The Jewish god then plans to redeem the persecuted by a Messiah, and inspires prophets to announce his coming. But Satan, too, has his prophets, and the Jewish god is not powerful enough to make his views prevail over his enemy’s. Finally the good God sends to the earth the Aeon [Æon] Νοῦς, in what has the appearance of a body, in order that he as σωτήρ may teach the pneumatical how to escape, by Gnosis and asceticism, abstaining from marriage and the eating of flesh, not only the attacks of Satan, but also the dominion of the Jewish god and his star spirits, how to emancipate themselves from all connection with matter, and to raise themselves into the realm of light.

§ 27.10. Tatian and the Encratites.—The Assyrian Tatian, converted to Christianity at Rome by Justin Martyr, makes his appearance as a zealous apologist of the faith (§ [30, 10]). In his later years, however, just as in the case of Marcion, in consequence of his exaggeration of the Pauline antithesis of flesh and spirit, law and grace, he was led to propound a theory of the dualistic opposition between the god of the law, the Demiurge, and the god of the gospel, which found expression in a Gnostic-ascetic system, completely breaking away from the Catholic church, and reaching its conclusion in the hyperascetic sect of the Encratites that arose in Rome about A.D. 172. He now became head and leader of this sect, which, with its fanatical demand of complete abstinence from marriage, from all eating of flesh and all spirituous liquors, won his approval, and perhaps from him received its first dogmatic Gnostic impress. Of Tatian’s Gnostic writings, Προβλήματα and Περὶ τοῦ κατὰ τὸν σωτῆρα καταρτισμοῦ, only some fragments, with scanty notices of his Gnostic system, are preserved. His dualistic opposition of the god of the Old Testament and the god of the New Testament cannot have meant a thorough hostility, for he makes the Demiurge sitting in darkness address himself to the supreme God in the language of prayer, “Let there be light.” He declares, however, that Adam, as the author of the fall, is incapable of redemption.—His followers were also called Ὑδροπαραστάται, Aquarii, because at the Supper they used water instead of wine. See Lit. at § [30, 10].

§ 27.11. Marcion and the Marcionites.—Marcion of Sinope in Pontus, who died about A.D. 170, was, according to Tertullian, a rich shipmaster who, on his arrival in Rome, in his early enthusiasm for the faith, bestowed upon the Church there a rich present, but was afterwards excommunicated by it as a heretic. According to the Pseudo-Tertullian and others he was the son of a bishop who excommunicated him for incontinence with one under the vow of virginity. The story may possibly be based upon a later misunderstanding of the charge of corrupting the church as the pure bride of Christ. He was a man of a fiery and energetic character, but also rough and eccentric, of a thoroughly practical tendency and with little speculative talent. He was probably driven by the hard inward struggles of his spiritual life, somewhat similar to those through which Paul had passed, to a full and hearty conception of the free grace of God in Christ; but conceived of the opposition between law and gospel, which the Apostle brought into harmony by his theory of the pædogogical office of the law, as purely hostile and irreconcileable. At Rome in A.D. 140, the Syrian Gnostic Cerdo, who already distinguished between the “good” God of Christianity and the “just” God of Judaism, gained an influence over him. He consequently developed for himself a Gnostic system, the dominating idea of which was the irreconcileable opposition of righteousness and grace, law and gospel, Judaism and Christianity. He repudiated the whole of the Old Testament, and set forth the opposition between the two Testaments in a special treatise entitled Antitheses.He acknowledged only Paul as an Apostle, since all the rest had fallen back into Judaism, and of the whole New Testament he admitted only ten Pauline epistles, excluding the Pastoral Epistles and the Epistles to the Hebrews, and admitting the Gospel of Luke only in a mutilated form.[43] Marcion would know nothing of a secret doctrine and tradition and rejected the allegorical interpretation so much favoured by the Gnostics, as well as the theory of emanation and the subordination of Pistis under Gnosis. While other Gnostics formed not churches but only schools of select bands of thinkers, or at most only small gatherings, Marcion, after vainly trying to reform the Catholic church in accordance with his exaggerated Paulinism, set himself to establish a well organised ecclesiastical system, the members of which were arranged as Perfecti or Electi and Catechumeni. Of the former he required a strict asceticism, abstinence from marriage, and restriction in food to the simplest and least possible. He allowed the Catechumens, however, in opposition to the Catholic practice (§ [35, 1]), to take part in all the services, which were conducted in the simplest possible forms. The moral earnestness and the practical tendency of his movement secured him many adherents, of whom many congregations maintained their existence for a much longer time than the members of other Gnostic sects, even down to the seventh century. None of the founders of the old Gnostic sects were more closely connected in life and doctrine to the Catholic Church than Marcion, and yet, or perhaps just for that reason, none of them were opposed by it so often, so eagerly and so bitterly. Even Polycarp, on his arrival in Rome (§ [37, 2]), in reply to Marcion’s question whether he knew him, said: Ἐπιγνώσκω τὸν πρωτότοκον τοῦ Σατανᾶ.—The general scope and character of the System of Marcion have been variously estimated. All older ecclesiastical controversialists, Justin, Rhodon in Eusebius, Tertullian and Irenæus, in their description and refutation of it seem to recognise only two principles (ἀρχαί), which stand in opposition to one another, as θεὸς ἀγαθός and θεὸς δίκαιος. The latter appears as creator of the world, or Demiurge, the god of the Jews, the giver of the law, unable, however, by his law to save the Jews and deter them from breaking it, or to lead back the Gentiles to the observance of it. Then of his free grace the “good” God, previously quite unknown, determined to redeem men from the power of the Demiurge. For this purpose he sends his Logos into the world with the semblance of a body. By way of accommodation he gives himself out as the Messiah of the Jewish god, proclaims the forgiveness of sins through free grace, communicates to all who believe the powers of the divine life, is at the instigation of the angry Demiurge nailed to the cross to suffer death in appearance only, preaches to Gentiles imprisoned in Hades, banishes the Demiurge to Hades, and ordains the Apostle Paul as teacher of believers.—The later heresiologists, however, Hippolytus, in his Elenchus, Epiphanius, Theodoret, and especially the Armenian Esnig (§ [64, 3]), are equally agreed in saying that Marcion recognised three principles (ἀρχαί); that besides the good God and the righteous God he admitted an evil principle, the Hyle concentrated in Satan, so that even the pre-Christian development of the world was viewed from the standpoint of a dualistic conflict between divine powers. The righteous God and the Hyle, as a quasi female principle, united with one another in creating the world, and when the former saw how fair the earth was, he resolved to people it with men created of his own likeness. For this purpose the Hyle at his request afforded him dust, from which he created man, inspiring him with his own spirit. Both divine powers rejoiced over man as parents over a child, and shared in his worship. But the Demiurge sought to gain undivided authority over man, and so commanded Adam, under pain of death, to worship him alone, and the Hyle avenged himself by producing a multitude of idols to whom the majority of Adam’s descendants, falling away from the God of the law, gave reverence.—The harmonizing of these two accounts may be accomplished by assuming that the older Church Fathers, in their conflict with Marcion had willingly restricted themselves to the most important point in the Marcionite system,its characteristic opposition of the Gods of the Old and New Testaments, passing over the points in which it agreed more or less with other Gnostic systems; or by assuming that later Marcionites, such as Prepon (§ [27, 12]), in consequence of the palpable defectiveness and inadequacy of the original system of two principles, were led to give it the further development that has been described.[44]

§ 27.12. The speculative weakness and imperfection of his system led Marcion’s Disciples to expand and remodel it in many ways. Two of these, Lucanus and Marcus, are pre-eminent as remodellers of the system, into which they imported various elements from that of Saturninus. The Assyrian Prepon placed the “righteous” Logos as third principle between the “good” God and the “evil” Demiurge. Of all the more nameful Marcionites, Apelles, who died about A.D. 180, inclined most nearly to the church doctrine. Eusebius tells about a Disputation which took place in Rome between him and Rhodon, a disciple of Tatian. At the head of his essentially monistic system Apelles places the ἀγέννητος θεός as the μία ἀρχή. This God, besides a higher heavenly world, had created an order of angels, of whom the first and most eminent, the so-called Angelus inclytus or gloriosus as Demiurge made the earthly world after the image and to the glory of the supreme God. But another angel, the ἄγγελος πυρετός, corrupted his creation, which was already in itself imperfect, by bringing forth the σὰρξ ἁμαρτίας, with which he clothed the souls enticed down from the upper world. It was he, too, who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, and as the god of the Jews gave the law from Sinai. The Demiurge soon repented of his ill-fated performance, and prayed the supreme God to send his Son as redeemer. Christ appeared, lived, wrought and suffered in a real body. It was not, however, the σὰρξ ἁμαρτίας that he assumed, but a sinless body composed out of the four elements which he gave back to the elements on his ascension to heaven. Towards the close of his life Apelles seems, under the influence of the mystic revelations of a prophetess, Philoumena, whose φανερώσεις he published, to have more and more renounced his Gnostic views. He had already admitted in his Disputation with Rhodon, that even on the Catholic platform one may be saved, for the main thing is faith in the crucified Christ and the doing of his works. He would even have been prepared to subscribe to the Monotheism of the church, had he not been hindered by the opposition between the Old Testament and the New.

§ 27.13. The painter Hermogenes in North Africa, about A.D. 200, whom Tertullian opposed, took offence at the Catholic doctrine of creation as well as at the Gnostic theory of emanation, because it made God the author of evil. He therefore assumed an eternal chaos, from whose striving against the creative and formative influence of God he explained the origin of everything evil and vile.

§ 28. Ebionism and Ebionitic Gnosticism.[45]

The Jewish-Christianity that maintained separation from Gentile-Christianity even after the overthrow of the Holy City and its temple, assumed partly a merely separatist, partly a decidedly heretical character. Both tendencies had in common the assertion of the continued obligation to observe the whole of the Mosaic law. But while the former limited this obligation to the Christians of Jewish descent as the peculiar stem and kernel of the new Messianic community, and allowed the Gentile Christians as Proselytes of the Gate to omit those observances, the latter would tolerate no such concession and outran the Old Testament monotheism by a barren monarchianism that denied the divinity of Christ (§ [33, 1]). At a later period the two parties were distinguished as Nazareans and Ebionites. On the other hand, in the Ebionites described to us by Epiphanius we have a form of Jewish Christianity permeated by Gnostic elements. These Ebionites, settling along with the Essenes (§ [8, 4]) on the eastern shores of the Dead Sea, came to be known under the name of Elkesaites. In the Pseudo-Clementine scheme of doctrine, this Ebionitic Gnosis was carried out in detail and wrought up into a comprehensive and richly developed system.