Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/676

 GNOSTICISM

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GNOSTICISM

birthplace of the movement. Dositheus, Simon Magus, Menander, Cerinthus, Cerdo, Saturninus Jus- tin, the Bardesanites, Severians, Ebionites, Encra- tites. Ophites, Naassenes, the Gnostics of the "Acts of Tliomas", the Sethians, the Perata>, the Cainites may be said to belong to this school. The more fantastic elements and elaborate genealogies and syzygies of a?ons of the later Gnosis are still absent in these sys- tems. The terminology is some barbarous form of Semitic; Egypt is the symbolic name for the soul's land of bondage. The opposition between the good God and the World-Creator is not eternal or cosmo- gonic, though there is strong ethical opposition to Jehovah the God of the Jews. He is the last of the seven angels who fashioned this world out of eternally pre-existent matter. The demiurgic angels, attempt- ing to create man, created but a miserable worm, to which the Good God, however, gave the .spark of divine life. The rule of the god of the Jewsmust pass away, for the good God calls us to his own immediate service through Christ his Son. We obey the Supreme Deity by abstaining from flesh meat and marriage, and by leading an ascetic life. Such was the system of Saturninus of Ant inch, who taught during the reign of Hadrian (c. A. D. 120). The Naassenes {from Nahas f nj, the Hebrew for serpent) were worshippers of the serpent as a symbol of wisdom, which the God of the Jews tried to hide from men. The Ophites (d(piai>ol, from S01S, serpent), who, when transplanted on Alex- andrian soil, supplied the main ideas of Valentinian- ism, became one of the most widely spread sects of Gnosticism. Though not strictly serpent-worshippers, they recognized the .serpent as symbol of the sujareme emanation, Achamoth or Divine Wisdom. They were styled Chiostics par excellence. The Sethians saw in Scth the father of all spiritual {TyevnaTiKoi) men; in Cain and Abel the father of psychic {\pvx'Koi) and hylic (vXiKol) men. According to the Perata; there exists a trinity of Father, Son, and Hyle (Matter). The Son is the Cosmic Serpent, who freed Eve from the power of the ruler of Hyle. The universe they symbolized by a triangle enclosed in a circle. The number three is the key to all mysteries. There are three supreme principles: the not-generated, the self- generated, the generated. There are three logoi, or gods; the Saviour has a threefold nature, threefold body, threefold power, etc. They are called Pera- tffi (Trep^v) because they have "crossed over" out of Egypt, through the Red Sea of generation. They are the true Hebrews, in fact ("lajJ, to cross over). The Perataj were founded by Euphrates and Celbes (Acem- bes?) and Ademes. This Euphrates, whose name is perhaps connected with the name Peratse itself, is said to be the founder of the Ophites mentioned by Celsus about A. D. 175. The Cainites were so called because they venerated Cain, and Esau, and the Sodomites, and Core, and Judas, because they had all resisted the god of the Jews.

(b) The Hellenistic or Alexandrian School. — These systems were more abstract, and philosophical, and self-consistent than the Syrian. The Semitic nomen- clature was almost entirely replaced by Greek names. The cosmogonic problem had outgrown all propor- tions, the ethical side was less prominent, asceticism less strictly enforced. The two great thinkers of this school were Basilides and Valentinus. Though born at Antioch, in Syria, Basilides founded his school at Alexandria (c. A. D. 130), and was followed by his son Isidorus. His system was the most consistent and sober emanationism that Gnosticism ever produced. His school never spread so widely as the next to be men- tioned, but in Spain it survived for several centuries. Valentinus, who taught first at Alexandria and then at Rome (c. a. d. UiO), elaborated a sy.stem of sexual duality in the process of emanation; a long series of male and female pairs of personified ideas is employed to bridge over the distance from the unknown God to

this present world. His system is more confused than Basilidianism, especially as it is disturbed by the in- trusion of the figure or figures of 2o0/a in the cosmo- gonic process. Being Syrian Ophitism in Egyptian guise, it can claim to be the truest representative of the Gnostic spirit. The reductio ad absurdum of these unbridled speculations can be seen in the Pistis Sophia, in which light-maidens, paralemptores, spheres, Heimarmene, thirteen seons, light-treasures, realms of the midst, realms of the right and of the left, Jalda- baoth, Adamas, Michael, Gabriel, Christ, the Saviour, and mysteries without number whirl past and return like witches in a dance. The impression created on the same reader can only be fitly described in the words of " Jabberwocky": "gyre and gimble on the wabe". We learn from Hippolytus (Atlv. Ha;r., IV, xxxv), TertuUian (Adv. Valent.,iv), and Clemens Alex. (Exc. ex Theod., title) that there were two main schools of Valentinianism, the Italian and the Anatolian or Asiatic. In the Italian school were teachers of note : Secundus, who divided the Ogdoad within the Pleroma into two tetrads. Right and Left; Epiphanes, who described this Tetras as Monotes, Henotes, Monas, and To Hen; and possibly Colorl)asus, unless his name be a misreading of Kol Arba J?3"lX 73 " All Four". But the most important were Ptolemy and Heracleon. Ptol- emy is especially known to fame by his letter to Flora, a noble lady who had written to him as Roman Pres- byter (Texte u. Unters.,_ N. S., XIII, Anal. z. alt. Gesch. d. Chr.) to explain the meaning of the Old Testament.. This Ptolemy split up the names and numbers of the iEons into personified substances outside the deity, as TertuUian relates. He was given to Biblical studies, and was a man of un- bridled imagination. Clemens Alex. (Strom., IV, ix, 7.3) calls Heracleon the most eminent teacher of the Valentinian school. Origen devotes a large part of his commentary on St. John to combatmg Heracle- on 's commentary on the same Evangelist. Heracleon called the source of all being Anthropos, instead of Bythos, and rejected the immortality of the soul — meaning, probably, the merely psychic element. He apparently stood nearer to the Catholic Church than Ptolemy and was a man of better judgment. Tertul- lian mentions two other names (Valent., iv), Theoti- mus and (De Carne Christi, xvii) Alexander. The Anatolian school had as a prominent teacher Axioni- cus (Tertull., Adv. Valent., iv; Hipp., Adv. Hoer., VI, 30) who had his collegium at Antioch about A. D. 220, " tlie master's most faithful disciple". Theodotus is only known to us from the fragment of his writings preserved by Clement of Alexandria. Marcus the Con- juror's system, an elaborate speculation with ciphers and numbers, is given by Irensus (I, 11-12) and also by Hippolytus (VI, 42). Irena;us's account of Marcus was repudiated by the Marcosians, but Hippolytus asserts that they did so without reason. Marcus was probably an Egyptian and a contemporary of Irenteus. A system not uiilike that of the Marcosians was worked out by Monoimus the Arabian, to whom Hippolytus devotes chapters v to viii of Book VIII, and who is men- tioned only by Theodoret besides him. Hippolytus is right in calling these two Gno.stics inferior imitations of Pythagoras rather than Christians. According to the Epistles of Julian the Apostate, Valentinian collegia existed in Asia Minor up to his own times (d. 303).

(c) The Dualislic School. — Some dualism was indeed congenital with Gnosticism, yet but rarely did it over- come the main tendency of Gnosticism, i. e. Panthe- ism. This, however, was certainly the case in the system of Marcion, who distinguished between the God of the New Testament and the God of the Old Testa- ment, as between two eternal principles, the first being Good, d7afl6s; the second merely dUaios, or just; yet even Marcion did not carry this system to its ultimate conse(iuences. He may be considered rather as a forerunner of Mani than a pure Gnostic Three of hia