GNOSTICISM (nos'ff-sTz'm), (Gr. -yvaats, no'sis, knowing).
(1) The Decline and Fall of Philosophy. In the whole history of the human mind there is not a more instructive chapter, at once strange and sad, interesting to our curiosity and mortify ing tb our pride, than the history of Platonism sinking into Gnosticism, or, in other words, of Greek philosophy merging in Oriental mysticism ; showing, on the one hand, the decline and fall of philosophy, and, on the other, the rise and prog ress of syncretism. According to Dr. Burton, formerly Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, Gnosticism is attributed principally to the writ ings of Plato, as studied at Alexandria.
(2) The Gnosis of Plato. Though the wis dom of Egypt may have influenced the Greeks and Romans through the mysticism of Pythagoras, though the Oriental doctrines of Babylon may have made their way amongst the Jews both of Jerusalem and Alexandria by means of their Cab bala and Talmuds, and though some sects of de clared Gnostics may have gone still more di rectly to the metaphysical, or rather mystical, genealogies of the Eastern Magi, still it is the opinion of Dr. Burton that' it was the Greek writ ings of Plato which gave the extraordinary im pulse of their genius, and, if we may use the word, of their fashion, to the lost writings of the Gnostics, as well as to those which remain to us of Philo and Plotinus; in a word, that Platonist, Philonist, and Gnostic, are but emana tions at different distances from the Gnosis of Plato.
(3) The Gnostic Heresy. The greatest dan ger to which Christianity was exposed, in its very early years, arose from that great Gnostic Heresy, which was long the rival, and too often the corrupter of its purer doctrines. Gnosticism was not by any means a new and distinct phi losophy, but made up of selections front almost every system. Thus we find in it the Platonic doctrine of ideas, and the notion that' every thing in this lower world has a celestial and imma terial archetype. NVe find in it evident traces of that mystical and cabalistic jargon which, after their return from captivity, deformed the religion of the Jews; and many Gnostics adopted the Oriental notion of two independent co-eternal principles, the one the author of good, and the other of evil. Lastly, we find the Gnostic theology full of ideas and terms which must have been taken from the gospel; and Jesus Christ, under some form or other of 'Eon, emanation, or in corporeal phantom, enters into all their systems, and is the means of communicating to them that knowledge which raised them above all other mortals, and entitled them to their peculiar name.
(4) Varied Opinions. The genius and very
soul of Gnosticism was mystery : its end and ob ject was to purify its followers from the corrup tions of matter, and to raise them to a higher scale of being, suited only to those who were to become perfect by knowledge. We have a kcy to many parts of their system, when we know that' they held matter to be intrinsically evil, of which, consequently, God could not be the author. Hence arose their fundamental tenet, that the Creator of the world, or Demiurgus, was not the same with the supreme God, the Author of good, and the Father of Christ. Their system allowed some of them to call the Creator God, but the title most usually given was Demiurgus. Those who embraced the doctrine of two principles supposed the world to have been produced by the evil prin ciple; and in most systems, the Creator of the world, and not the Father of Christ, was looked upon as the God of the Jews, and the author of the Mosaic law. Some, again, believed that angels were employed in creating the world: but all were agreed in maintaining that matter itself was not created; that it was eternal ; and that it remained inactive till the world was formed out of it by the Creator. The supreme God, according to the Gnostics, had dwelt from all eternity in a pleroma of inaccessible light: and beside the name of first Father, or first Principle, they called him also Bythos, as if to denote the unfathomable nature of his perfections. This Being, by an operation purely mental, or by acting upon himself, pro duced two other beings of different sexes, from whom by a.series of descents, more or less numer ous according to different schemes, several pairs of beings were formed, who were called CC071S, from the periods of their existence before time was,. or emanations, from the mode of their pro duction. These successive mons or emanations appear to have been inferior each to the preced ing; and their existence was indispensable to the Gnostic scheme, that they might account for the creation of the world without making God the author of evil. These mons lived through count less ages with their first Father. But the system of emanations seems to have resembled that of concentric circles, and they gradually deteriorated as they approached nearer and nearer to the ex tremity of the pleroma. Beyond this pleroma was matter, inert and powerless, though co-eternal with the supreme God, and, like him, without be ginning. At length one of the mons passed the limits of the pleroma, and, meeting with matter, created the world after the form and model of an ideal world, which existed in the pleroma, or the mind of the supreme God.