What is Gnosticism?

What is Gnosticism?

Ever since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in Egypt in 1945 and the subsequent publication of various non-canonical gospels and other lost ancient texts, there has been an increased interest in the early history and development of Christianity. In particular, there is a growing fascination with these so-called Gnostics and their alternative interpretation of biblical scriptures. But since the study of what is often termed Gnosticism is still very young, there have emerged many different perspectives and interpretations on how this group or groups should be categorized, which texts belong to whom, and how they should be understood. As a result, there are often many misconceptions about this topic and its complexities. There is a tendency to sensationalize and exoticize these things in ways that do not necessarily align with actual scholarship. So, with this in mind, let’s take a moment to look at what the latest scholarship says on this topic and ask ourselves the questions: who were the Gnostics and what is Gnosticism?

The term Gnostic can be and is used in a variety of different ways. The word itself comes from the Greek term “gnosis,” meaning knowledge, or more often, a specific kind of knowledge or insight beyond the conceptual. Gnosis is frequently used to mean a kind of intuitive spiritual knowledge as opposed to everyday information. As such, the words “gnosis” and “Gnostic” have or had positive connotations in many circles in antiquity. The Hermetists, for example, talk about gnosis as opposed to “episteme,” and proto-orthodox Christians like Clement of Alexandria use the word to refer to a superior kind of spiritual or intellectual state. We often see this broad use of the term today in scholarly literature. Various people across history are called “Gnostics” on the basis that they are connected to a super-rational kind of knowledge. For example, Islamic mystics or Sufis are often referred to as Gnostics, with Arabic words like “irfan” and “arif” being possible equivalents.

But when we talk about “the Gnostics” or even “Gnosticism,” we are more often using the word in a specific way as referring to a movement in early Christianity—one that has become famous for its world-neglecting attitudes and very complex metaphysical scheme. The Gnostics represented one tendency among a multitude of interpretations after the Jesus event, one that eventually disappeared after the gradual formation of a Christian Orthodoxy or official church, and which can differ dramatically from the latter. Talking about the Gnostics and Gnosticism can be very difficult since they did not survive beyond a few centuries AD. Accessing sources and information about this topic has been hard. The only sources we had for most of history were those written by the heresiologists—so proto-orthodox Christians or later writers like Irenaeus, for example, who wrote very critically about the Gnostics and wanted to, sort of, deem them as heretics.

But in 1945, the monumental discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in Egypt revolutionized our understanding of these groups. The Coptic texts found in the library contain writings by the so-called Gnostics themselves, some of which had been mentioned in the works of the heresiologists previously. Since then, we have been able to get a much more comprehensive and nuanced understanding about the ideas and practices of various early Christian communities and schools of thought. Despite this, however, there is disagreement among scholars on how this Gnosticism should be categorized. Some have opted for a very universalist approach to Gnosticism, which views Gnosticism as such as a sort of wider religious or spiritual intellectual movement in antiquity, into which many different groups belonged. So, we talk about specifically Christian groups like the Valentinians, or the Marcionites, or the Sethians, for example, as all belonging to this wider category of Gnosticism. These scholars will often want to include other non-Christian movements or traditions as Gnosticism as well, like the Mandaeans or the Manichaeans, and sometimes even the Hermetists.

Many others will argue that there was no such thing as Gnosticism at all. This is just a modern category that we anachronistically apply to a context that was much more complex than that. But many scholars today, including David Brakke in his book “The Gnostics,” argue for a kind of middle position with a much more narrow definition of Gnosticism as a particular school of thought within the diversity of early Christianity. In this exploration, I will be following this more narrow definition of Gnosticism, talking about the Gnostics as, in particular, an expression of early Christianity, and following scholar David Brakke, I will be identifying these Gnostics especially or particularly with the group that is often known as the Sethians, while also touching on other related movements like the Valentinians, of course.

Okay, so who were the Gnostics then? Well, the first thing to have in mind here is the environment of early Christianity. A common way to present the first few centuries after Jesus’s death, including by early Christians like Irenaeus—who is a person who will return a lot in this discussion—is with a single Orthodox Church from which a number of different sects or heresies diverged. But this, as you might imagine, is a very skewed history. It only seems that way from the perspective of a much later established Orthodoxy looking back at its earliest developments. Now, to tell you more about this topic in particular, I’ve turned to my colleague and the religious scholar Andrew Henry from the channel “Religion for Breakfast.” So, here is his perspective to tell you more:

“The discovery of the Nag Hammadi library was so important for historians not only because we discovered previously unknown works of literature, but it also gave us a glimpse into the social dynamics of early Christianity. It shed some light on what anti-heresy writers like Irenaeus were trying to accomplish. To illustrate what I mean, let’s examine the Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius. In 367 CE, Athanasius published a letter to the churches in Egypt instructing them which books they were allowed to read. He is the first Christian author to apply the term ‘canon’ to the same 27 books that most Christians today use in the New Testament. He wrote: ‘In these books alone the teaching of piety is proclaimed. Let no one add to or subtract from them.’ He goes on to attack anyone teaching and preaching from books outside of this canon. What’s interesting is that the Nag Hammadi codices are roughly contemporaneous with Athanasius. Christians right down the road from him were probably reading and copying these so-called Gnostic books. Now, we might be tempted to read Athanasius’s letter as a top-down decree that drove these non-canonical writings into hiding. In fact, some early Christian scholars have argued that. But in a groundbreaking article, the scholar of early Christianity David Brakke argued that rather than writing from a position of strength, Athanasius was writing from a precarious position in a Christian landscape full of different, competing modes of Christianity. His attempt to stipulate what books you are allowed to read reflects more fundamental conflicts between competing modes of Christian authority, spirituality, and social organization. In other words, we are getting a glimpse into competing varieties of how to be Christian, how to do Christianity, during a time when those questions were not yet definitively answered. On one hand, we have varieties of Christianity exemplified by Athanasius who wanted a closed canon of books and who organized their authority around elected bishops and parishes who derived their authority through apostolic succession. And on the other hand, with the Nag Hammadi codices, we see evidence for varieties of Christianity that were disinterested in a closed canon. These were Christians who saw no problem with writing more gospels; Christians who were interested in mystical and philosophical speculation. And when it comes to authority and social organization, we see Christians like the Valentinians that formed study circles around charismatic intellectual leaders. So, when we read anti-Gnostic polemics, we should remember to situate them in this historical context, a time when these groups were still thriving and competing. To use an analogy from David Brakke, these proto-orthodox writers had not yet won the horse race; the race was ongoing. We are not so much seeing a battle between a unified Orthodoxy versus splinter cells of heresies; we are seeing varieties of christianities all attempting to define their own social group, defining the in-group versus the out-group.”

There is perhaps no better example of an anti-Gnostic polemic trying to do this than the Bishop of Cyprus, Epiphanius, in the late 4th Century. He wrote a book called the “Panarion,” which is basically a series of essays attacking several different groups that he labeled as heretics, including the Gnostics. In one passage, he describes a whole mess of disgusting rituals that the Gnostics supposedly practiced. In particular, Epiphanius describes them engaging in ritualized cannibalism. Now, no historian thinks any Gnostic group actually did this, but his polemic is useful in shedding some light on what these heresiologists were trying to do. What Epiphanius is doing is inventing lurid, unthinkable stories to try to socially categorize the Gnostics as the ultimate evil. The history of religions is full of examples like this. As the scholar of early Christianity David Frankfurter argues, accusing your religious rivals of ritualized sex or cannibalism is an effective social-psychological strategy to make your opponents easier to attack, easier to expel, or ostracize from your own group. And these groups did overlap. Many today think of Gnosticism as a secretive or subversive antithesis to Orthodoxy, but these groups and ideas seem to have been out in the open. The Christian writer Tertullian says that Valentinus was almost elected a Bishop of Rome. Irenaeus says that Valentinians were attending church groups in his own social circle. The Nag Hammadi codices themselves suggest that there was a vibrant intellectual culture to copy and disseminate these books and collect them into personal libraries, which was not an inexpensive endeavor. Someone of a reasonably high social standing must have collected them because there were so few Christians at the time. People like Athanasius and Epiphanius were probably acutely aware of their differences and fought back hard against them, trying to define their preferred mode of Christianity. This is why scholars today prefer to call all of these groups labeled under Gnosticism as ‘varieties of early Christianity’ rather than buying into the binary of Orthodoxy versus heresy. ‘Varieties’ highlights the massive diversity of Christianity at the time and highlights the fact that no one was guaranteed victory at the time. Back to you, Philip.

Dr. Henry is a scholar of religions who specializes in early Christianity. He runs the YouTube channel “Religion for Breakfast,” which is one of the best channels on YouTube when it comes to religion, so if you haven’t checked that out, then you should definitely go check out his channel and subscribe to it. He has some excellent material on the Gnostics in particular if you are interested in knowing more about that topic. The model of a single true church from which heresies diverged has long been abandoned by scholars, but neither should we see it as a group of fixed, “schools,” all competing in a race for authority. There wasn’t a unified group of proto-orthodox that remained unchanged and eventually won, but a diverse intermingling of ideas, interpretations, and theological positions. Certainly, certain social groups were formed and clusters of similar interpretations emerged in the early centuries, but all these individuals and schools influenced each other and contributed to the gradual development that resulted in the eventual formation of an orthodox church.

This great diversity is reflected in the corpus of texts found at Nag Hammadi and otherwise, which appear to come from a multitude of different early Christian movements. You have texts that would eventually become part of the orthodox canon, like the four gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, etc. But we also find texts that belong to the Gnostic school of thought, like the “Secret Book of John” and the “Gospel of Judas.” There are texts like the “Gospel of Truth,” which seems to come from the Valentinians, and even treatises like the “Gospel of Thomas,” which appears to come from another Christian movement altogether. In other words, there were many different christianities at this time, most of whom produced many different texts. The Gnostics seem to have been one of the most influential of these movements, and they are mentioned by many other Christians at this time, most prominently in our old friend Irenaeus, a Bishop of Lyon, who very harshly attacks what he considers to be deviant forms of Christianity in his famous treatise “Detection and Overthrow of Gnosis Falsely So-Called,” sometimes known simply as “Against the Heresies,” which was written around the year 180. He calls out the Gnostic heresies, or school of thought, and all those inspired by them, like the Valentinians, as having strayed from true Christianity and created a demonically inspired abomination. He traces all of these false teachings back to a supposed teacher or magician called Simon Magus, or Simon the Magician, and claims that all their claims to “gnosis,” or true knowledge, were, in fact, false. Keep in mind that the word “heresy” simply means a “school of thought” at this time and not necessarily “heresy” as it is used today. In fact, it is due to people like Irenaeus and their writings that that word came to have the meaning that it has today. It’s a very interesting side note. In any case, Irenaeus clearly isn’t a fan of the Gnostics, and yet his writings have been one of the main sources that we’ve had for their teachings and practices for most of history. And when we actually read Irenaeus’s reports, it seems to align pretty well with the writings by the Gnostics themselves, which we now have since the discovery at Nag Hammadi, which show us that even though he was a polemical writer who wanted to discard the Gnostics as heretics, and his whole argument was that they were wrong, basically, it seems that what he wrote wasn’t entirely untrue, and that we can rely to some degree on what he has to say.

So, in spite of his polemical nature and the fact that he was so critical, Irenaeus still remains one of our main sources and most trustworthy sources to this day. Irenaeus himself clearly doesn’t think that this group has access to “gnosis,” since this was a positive term for most people at the time. So, with this in mind, we can be pretty sure that he isn’t the one who gave them this name and that there was a school of thought which appears to have referred to themselves as “the Gnostics.” It also appears that other groups, like the Valentinians, who were actually the main target of Irenaeus’s critique, were not considered as part of this Gnostic school, but were nonetheless, of course, inspired by them. This has led many scholars to argue that this Gnostic school of thought, as such, identified by Irenaeus and others at the time, should be identified specifically with a group that we today often call the “Sethians,” or the “Sethian Gnostics.”

But who were these Gnostics or Sethians, then? What did they believe in? How did they practice? To get to the bottom of these questions, we can look at two primary kinds of sources: those written by other people, like those by Irenaeus, for example, and sources written by the Gnostics themselves. And luckily, due to the discovery at Nag Hammadi, the latter is actually possible today. Out of all the texts found in this collection, there are a few that can, with some certainty, be attributed to the Gnostic school more narrowly defined. Most primary and influential of these is the so-called “Secret Book of John,” sometimes called the “Apocryphon of John,” but there are others like “Zostrianos,” “The Foreigner,” “The Reality of the Rulers,” and the “Book of Zoroaster.” The very famous “Gospel of Judas,” which was actually a later find, not a part of the Nag Hammadi library as such, is also usually considered by scholars to belong to the Gnostics. One of the reasons these texts are grouped together and connected to this specific group is that their cosmic myth is relatively consistent throughout, and it is to this myth that we now turn.

The Gnostic myth has become famous for its complexity and the way it turns some basic concepts of mainstream Christianity and Judaism on its head. The world of the divine is vast; it’s a vast divine world filled with many aeons and their relationship with each other, even, quote-unquote, “before” the creation of the material world, which takes place outside of time, so “before” and “after” has no meaning here. But still, even before the creation of the material world, this complex pleroma of many divine aeons, known together as “the entirety,” existed in harmony. The Gnostics inherited the conception of God and the divine from antiquity and philosophy as a complex realm rather than a stricter monotheism as it later came to be conceived. In any case, at the very top or center of this divine realm, what encompasses the whole affair, is the absolute and ultimate God, which is referred to with many names such as “the Platonic one,” or “monad,” or as “the father of the entirety,” and as “the invisible spirit.” This God is understood in common apophatic ways; it is completely unknowable, it cannot be described or understood in any way, and yet it is the source of everything and, indeed, the reality in which everything takes place.

“The One is the invisible Spirit. We should not think of it as a God or like a God, for it is greater than a God because it has nothing over it and no Lord above it. It does not exist within anything inferior to it, since everything exists within it. For it established itself. It is eternal, since it does not need anything, for it is absolutely complete. It has never lacked anything in order to be completed by it; rather, it is always absolutely complete in light. The One is illimitable, since there is nothing before it to limit it; unfathomable, since there is nothing before it to fathom it; immeasurable, since there was nothing before it to measure it; invisible, since nothing has seen it; eternal, since it exists eternally; unutterable, since nothing could comprehend it to utter it; unnamable, since there is nothing before it to give it a name.”

The invisible spirit is a kind of intellect; in other words, in some way not understandable to us, it thinks about itself and knows itself, and in the process of this thinking, God is devolved into the complex world of aeons, “the entirety” already described. These aeons are kind of like God’s thoughts about himself, thus being both identical to him, but simultaneously also somehow different. In the words of David Brakke, “The aeons that make up the entirety result from the invisible spirit’s knowledge or thought of itself. They are its thinking, or its intellect, in all its complexity. They form also a spiritual realm, the equivalent of Plato’s realm of ideal forms. For the Gnostics, the entirety that the aeons constitute is truly real and eternal. The material world is a flawed imitation of the entirety and destined to perish.”

Now, all these aeons, which are kind of like divine beings or divine lights, are named after certain divine attributes, the faint imitations of which we can find in the material world. The first emanation or aeon that appears from the invisible spirit, sometimes known as the “second principle,” is called “forethought,” or by the name of “Barbelo.” “His, in other words, the invisible spirit, thought became a reality, and she who appeared in his presence in shining light came forth. She is the first power who preceded everything and came forth from his mind as the forethought of the all. Her light shines like the father’s light. She, the perfect power, is the image of the perfect and invisible virgin spirit. She, the first power, the glory of Barbelo, the perfect glory among the aeons, the glory of revelation, she glorified and praised the virgin spirit, for because of the spirit she had come forth. She is the first thought, the image of the spirit. She became the universal womb, for she precedes everything.”

The Barbelo serves as the most central of the aeons from which all others then originate. It is also a feature that all Gnostic sources have in common, whereas everything beyond or after the Barbelo can differ between text and different authors. But this second principle is also very important for its connection to Christianity because it is central to the idea of Christ. In the “Secret Book of John,” the Barbelo together with the invisible spirit begets the “self-originate,” or Christ, thus forming a kind of family triad: Father, the invisible spirit; Mother, the Barbelo; and Son, Christ. We will return more to the role of Christ in the Gnostic myth later. But this self-originate, or Christ, also serves as a transitionary aeon between the Barbelo and the rest of the multitude of aeons that make up the entirety, and he is often described as being the ruler over the rest of the aeons. Around this Christ aeon are four luminaries referred to as Harmozel, Oroiael, Daveithai, and Eleleth, which also contain the archetypal human beings, Adam and his son Seth. From these four luminaries or aeons stem further aeons, and you can see how this system is very complicated and hard to grasp. It is also important to remember that the different Gnostic texts give different accounts on this divine realm and its aeons, so it’s hard to say anything definitive about the details. The aeons are often at 24 in total, and as mentioned earlier, they are named after and represent certain attributes of God or the invisible spirit. There are aeons like “truth,” “mind,” “life,” and perhaps most importantly for the Gnostic myth, “wisdom,” or “Sophia” in Greek. Even though all these aeons are seen as being beyond gender or genderless, they are often thought of as existing in male-female pairs, which complement each other. The aeons are also semi-distinct; in other words, they are all God in a general sense, but make up a more complex kind of divinity than what we are used to today.

Now, the very general and central part of this myth appears with one of the so-called outermost aeons, that is, wisdom or Sophia. In the “Secret Book of John,” it describes how this wisdom aeon or Sophia wanted to create something, a thought of her own, but did so without the consent or knowledge of her male counterpart or asking permission from the great invisible spirit. “She, wisdom, wanted to bring forth something like herself without the consent of the spirit, who had not given approval, without her partner, and without his consideration. The male did not give approval. She did not find her partner, and she considered this without the spirit’s consent and without the knowledge of her partner. Nonetheless, she gave birth.” This resulted in an imperfect creation, a misshapen, pseudo-divine being that stood outside of the divine world of the entirety. “It did not resemble its mother and was misshapen. When Sophia saw what her desire had produced, it changed into the figure of a snake with the face of a lion.” Sophia was immediately very ashamed of her actions and creation and decided to hide it away from the rest of the aeons in a kind of cloud. This being was given the name Yaldabaoth and is sometimes also known by names like Saklas.

Yaldabaoth himself, in his ignorance, thinks that he is the only divinity, having little knowledge of the true divine world. He thus proceeds to create an imperfect and highly flawed world modeled after the dim memory he has of the divine pleroma. This world, the creation of Yaldabaoth, is the material world in which we live, and this is where the Gnostics show their radical departure from what we consider mainstream Christianity and Judaism today. The idea that the material world was created by a divine being lower than the highest God—a demiurge or craftsman, in Platonic language—was taken for granted at this time, even by monotheists. But the idea that this creator or this craftsman was ignorant, in some accounts even evil, was quite radical. This also meant a radical rereading of biblical myths. All of this meant that the God of the whole Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament to Christians—the God described in Genesis as creating Adam and Eve, the God who sent the flood, the God of the Israelites—was not the true ultimate God. It was Yaldabaoth. In the grand scheme of things, the material world becomes something very negative as a result of a grave mistake that must be fixed: a creation by an ignorant, imperfect, foolish creator that is keeping us prisoners.

Indeed, the human being, according to the Gnostic myth, has a dual nature: we are material beings created by Yaldabaoth, but the true divine realm also helped us by tricking Yaldabaoth to, quote, “blow his spirit into Adam,” so famously said in the Bible, which was really a way to infuse the human being with the divine spark from wisdom and from the rest of the aeons. This allowed Adam to stand up straight and to challenge Yaldabaoth and his rulers. In other words, there is a spiritual part of human nature that comes from the true divine realm, which is also our ticket to get out of this lesser material world. After Eve is created, she and Adam have a number of children. The famous Cain and Abel are conceived through a kind of imperfect or impure union when the spirit of Eve leaves her body, and Yaldabaoth actually—well, he actually rapes her—which results in these two children. But Adam and Eve have another son called Seth, who is conceived in a more pure way, and Seth becomes very important for the Gnostics. Seth is seen as the bearer of “gnosis,” or true wisdom, and as the kind of ancestor to the Gnostics themselves. So, as you might know, these Gnostics, at least if we define them as narrowly as I and some other scholars have here, sometimes—or more often, actually—refer to themselves as “the seed of Seth” or are sometimes also known as “the Sethians,” and this is because they trace their lineage back to this character of Seth, who was the sort of true son of Adam and Eve.

In any case, this creation story, of course, differs very dramatically from the one we’re used to from mainstream Christianity. So, to say, for example, the snake or serpent that tempts Eve and Adam to eat from the tree of knowledge, to the Gnostics, is not Satan who tricks them, but is actually the messenger from the divine world of the pleroma, the entirety, who was actually trying to help Adam and Eve to escape from the creation of Yaldabaoth. So this interpretation is completely turned upside down; it’s the exact opposite of the mainstream position. Many argue that this idea of an ignorant false God comes naturally from a reading or comparison between the Old and New Testaments. Even today, many who read these two collections of texts are sometimes struck by the seeming, at least, difference in personality of God in these two testaments or scriptures. In the Old Testament, for example, God seems a lot more harsh, like he orders the execution of groups of people, he sends down thunder, and it’s a lot of nasty stuff. He’s very angry; he’s jealous; all these kind of characteristics. While in the New Testament, he seems to emphasize other things, like love and compassion. And so people like the Gnostics in antiquity, they also noticed this seeming difference, and to them, the only explanation for this weird difference in character must be that these are, in fact, two different gods: one described in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible, which is the false God Yaldabaoth, and the true God who sent Jesus, the invisible spirits of the actual divine world.

Yaldabaoth, in all his ignorance and vanity, wants his creation to worship him only, punishing those who don’t, jealously. He exclaims in the Hebrew Bible, quote, “For my part, I am a jealous God, and there is no other God apart from me,” which, according to the “Secret Book of John,” paradoxically gives away the fact that there is indeed another God. Quote: “For if no other one existed, of whom would he be jealous?” Human beings are caught in the delusional prison that is the material world, but have the potential of escaping to their true home. They need help in order to do so, and this is where Jesus enters the picture. The Gnostics were Christians, after all, and existed as a response to the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, considered to be the Christ, or anointed one, the savior of humanity. Again, the different texts differ on the nature of Christ as the incarnation of the cosmic savior figure. Some, like “The First Thought in Three Forms,” seem to indicate that it is the Barbelo herself who enters into human form as Jesus. Quote: “For my parts, I put on Jesus; I extracted him from the accursed wood, and I made him stand at rest in the dwelling places of his parent.” But we’ve also seen how the “Secret Book of John” describes Christ as a divine aeon in himself, being begotten from the invisible spirit and the Barbelo.

The important part to know is that Jesus is a savior sent by the highest God, the true God, in this case, to save humanity from the prison of the ignorant Yaldabaoth. The Gnostics have a significantly different conception of Jesus from the later orthodox position. They professed a kind of docetism, that is, the idea that Jesus did not actually have a material body; it only seemed like he did, and thus he never suffered on the cross in any real way. And if you know mainstream Christian theology, you’ll know that this goes against some of its very fundamental features. Jesus’s humanity and suffering is a central part of the salvation narrative. But remember, the Gnostics saw the material world in a very negative light as the creation of a foolish pseudo-God, and thus didn’t place the same emphasis on the physical aspect. To the Gnostics, Jesus didn’t save mankind by suffering on the cross; he did so by teaching them about “gnosis,” about the true knowledge of our real identities and our essential home in the divine realm of the entirety. Christ was sent by the great invisible spirit to remind humanity of our true home and thereby help us escape the shackles of material existence. Quite a different version of events from the orthodox narrative.

So this is where the Gnostics find themselves: they are the “seed of Seth,” those who have been given the true teachings of Christ passed down from the apostles. They possess exclusive “gnosis” of the divine reality, which they can impart on the initiate. And this group made up a significant part of the diverse world of early Christianity. The practical aspects of Gnosticism are, of course, connected to these very grand myths and theories, and even here, they differ very dramatically from mainstream Christianity. Our sources suggest that the Gnostics did perform some kind of baptism through water—a practice that was very common in various religious traditions in antiquity. This baptism is supposed to have involved something referred to as “the five seals,” but scholars are unsure what this actually means. It is quite likely that this baptism differed in many ways from the baptism ritual that we know from mainstream Christianity. For example, it seems that the Gnostics would be baptized on multiple occasions, perhaps in connection to reaching different stations or levels on the spiritual path or the path back to the divine pleroma. It’s not entirely certain, and indeed, this seems to be another major characteristic of Gnostic practice: different methods and techniques that help the practitioner ascend into the divine realm of different aeons until reaching the highest aeon of the Barbelo.