GNOSTICS. The Gnostics claimed to possess a deeper insight and knowledge (gnOsis) than that which was supplied by the faith (pistis) of ordinary Christians. The basis of Gnosticism which flourished in the second century A.D. " was an eclectic philosophy of religion chiefly Hellenic in character, though in union with many Oriental elements, cosmical speculations, and mystic theosophy similar to what we find in Hinduism " (H. B. Workman). It was concerned with two main problems : the nature of the Absolute, and the origin of evil; and " was essentially an esoteric Christianity, which differed widely in its tenets according to its local habitation— Alexandria, Syria, Asia Minor, or Rome—and the degree of admixture of East and West." In Syria one of the earliest Gnostics was Saturninus of Antioch, who flourished in the reign of Trajan. But quite a multitude of sects sprang up on this soil, which had been prepared by Simon Magus. These included the Ophites, Naas senes, and Peratae, which mingled Christianity with snake-worship. Spreading to Alexandria, celebrated forms of Gnosticism came to be associated with the names of Basilides, Valentinus, and Carpocrates. The best known of these is that of Valentinus (fi. 140 A.D.). It is throughout a nuptial Gnosticism in which there are perpetual syzygies, marriages, and generations. In Roman Gnosticism the leader was Marcion. Duchesne (Hist.) thinks that amid the diversity of the various Gnostic systems certain common and fundamental con ceptions are easily discernible. " 1. God, the Creator and Lawgiver of the Old Testament, is not the True God. Above him, at an infinite distance, is the Father God, the supreme First Cause of all being. 2. The God of the Old Testament knew not the True God, and in this ignorance the world shared, until the appearance of Jesus Christ, who did indeed proceed from the True God. 3. Between the True God and creation is inter posed a most complicated series of beings, divine in their origin; at some point or other in this series, occurs a catastrophe, whch destroys the harmony of the whole.
The visible world—often including its creator—originates in this primal disorder. 4. In humanity there are some elements capable of redemption, having come in one way or another from the celestial world above the Demiurge. Jesus Christ came into the world to deliver them from it. 5. As the incarnation could not really amount to a true union between divinity and matter, the accursed, the Gospel story is explained as a moral and transitory union between a divine :eon and the concrete personality of Jesus, or again, by a simple semblance of humanity. 6. Neither the passion nor the resurrection of Christ is therefore real: the future of the predestinate does not permit of the resurrection of the body. 7. The divine element which has strayed into humanity, that is. the predestinated soul, has no solidarity with the flesh which oppresses it. Either the flesh must be annihilated by asceticism (rigorism), or at least the responsibility of the soul for the weaknesses of the flesh must be denied (libertinism)." Gnosticism possessed great vitality. Even when defeated in the Church. it persisted by taking refuge underground. "For a thousand years we find it living a subterranean existence. ever and anon coming to the surface in some new heresy, the roots of which lie deep in the older Gnosticism, or rather in the religions older even than Gnosticism to which Gnosticism was so largely indebted. In the third century it appears in the formidable movement known as Manichaeism, so called from Mani (b. 215), the founder of the sect " (H. B. Workman). See F. W. Bussell.
GOD. According to M. Recejac, the most perfect notion of God which has ever been conceived is " the Being forever communicating Its own essence " (quoted by E. Hermann, Mysticism, 1916). Matthew Arnold's definition of the God of the Bible and of Christianity is " The Eternal, not ourselves, that makes for righteous ness." Another definition is the " Friend behind phenomena " (Bevan).