Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/61

 GNOSTICS 53 3re the spiritual and material worlds touch each other. The office of the higher aeons is to people and take care of the spiritual world. 3. Matter is infinitely separated from God, and the material world is the antithesis of the spiritual world. Hyle (vty, matter) is either absolute deadness and emptiness (/c^vw^a), or is a positively evil substance. The creator of this material universe is the Demiurge. He is himself a creature of the lowest of the aeons, Achamoth. He not only creates and rules the terrestrial world, but has equal sovereignty over the planets and stars. He fulfils, or as some say usurps, the functions of the infinite God. He appears in Jewish history as Jehovah. Other names by which he is known are those of Archon and Jaldabaoth, the son of Chaos. The immediate work of the Demiurge is evil, and it takes the world of man and matter fur- ther away from God and the world of light. 4. Man has a threefold nature, of spirit, of body, and of soul. His soul-nature stands between the other two, and forms their connecting bond. Men are divided into three classes, according to the predominance of one or other of these three natures. The first of these classes enjoy a light from the world of aeons ; the second are left wholly to material and hylic influences; while the third are under the direction and in- fluence of the Demiurge, who can save them from utter debasement, but cannot give them spiritual life. Historically, the Christians con- stitute the spiritual world; the pagan world forms the carnal class; and the Jews occupy the intermediate place. But in dividing the Christians of their own time, the Gnostics numbered two classes, the select few of their own number who were admitted to the divine secrets, and the large body of common believ- ers, who were not able to rise above the psychi- cal condition. Some of them maintained that though man as connected with matter is by na- ture sinful, and though the Demiurge wished to create man in his own image, yet unwittingly he reproduced in this work of his breath, not his own image, but a shadow of that divine original which moved before his imagination. Man is better than the intention of his creator. 5. Redemption reaches only the pneumatic and psychic classes; the carnal or hylic class are destined to annihilation when their mate- rial life shall close, and with them such of the psychic class as have not accepted the influence from the Pleroma. The instrument of redemp- tion is the aaon Christ. This aeon came down from the spirit world, assumed bodily shape without being actually united to any material body, and walked among men in Judea as Je- sus of Nazareth, not a real human person, but an optical illusion, the phantasm of a spiritual idea. Some of the Gnostics were willing, in- deed, to speak of the human life of Christ ; but all denied that his body was composed of the elements of corrupt and sinful matter ; it was an ethereal body of more delicate fabric than the common human body. Hunger would not impel him to eat, nor thirst to drink. Yet this ethereal body was too gross for the Pleroma, and was left in the sun at Christ's ascension. The advent of Christ upon the earth was not the birth of a prophet, or the coming merely of a promised Messiah, but a spiritual appari- tion to overthrow the work of the evil spirit " an incarnation of the spirit of the sun." The presence of Christ anywhere made men con- scious of this divine nature. They might doubt of the humanity of Christ, but not of his di- vinity. The process of redemption, in the Gnostic theory, is the communication through the aeon Christ of a divine life to the world of man, the revelation of that life through this mediator. Christ redeems the world as he draws the spiritual in the world toward the heaven of God. His sufferings and death have no influence in the redeeming work, since, in the first place, they were illusory, and in the second place, sufferings do not redeem, but only punish. The manifestation by his acts and words of the spirit of God made Christ the redeemer. Some expressions in Gnostic wri- tings might be interpreted as teaching views of redemption more in harmony with the church creeds; but nowhere was any doctrine of atonement stated, or any stress laid upon the crucifixion as its central point. Marcion ex- tends the redemption into the world of Hades, and maintains that Christ descended into hell to lead back the virtuous and believing heathen to share salvation with the spiritual Chris- tians. In regard to the means of profiting by the redemption of Christ, the Gnostic teachers were not agreed. Marcion taught a doctrine resembling that of Paul, making faith the means of justification and the ground of re- conciliation. But most of the sect held that only " gnosis," the rare superior intelligence and comprehension of divine truth, could enable men to receive the gift of Christ. This spirit- ual knowledge was the evidence of salvation to believers. The actual manner of union be- tween Christ and his redeemed ones is very vaguely described in the Gnostic writings, and their language in speaking of redemption and its issues is confused. 6. Although the Gnos- tics were charged with boasting that they had schools rather than churches, yet they held to a church which should have a twofold life, for the mass of believers, and for the initiated : for the first, common exoteric doctrines, and for the second, spiritual esoteric doctrines, reveal- ed to a secret sacred society within the proper circle of the church. Practically they did lit- tle, and many of them were content to theorize about spiritual truth, while submitting to the recognized ecclesiastical order. Baptism was to them the important rite, since Jesus became Christ at his baptism, and through this rite the higher spirit was imparted to the sensuous soul. It was the sign of their emancipation from demiurgic rule. A few objected to bap- tism as too physical a rite, but most of them celebrated it with great show and solemnity.