gnosticism

Whereas Judaism and Christianity, and almost all pagan systems, hold that the soul attains its proper end by obedience of mind and will to the Supreme Power, i.e. by faith and works, it is markedly peculiar to Gnosticism that it places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge.

In the late 19th and the early 20th century, that view of Gnosticism was replaced with several groupings, and the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts in 1945 greatly enhanced the understanding of Gnosticism.

Whereas Judaism and Christianity, and almost all pagan systems, hold that the soul attains its proper end by obedience of mind and will to the Supreme Power, i.e. by faith and works, it is markedly peculiar to Gnosticism that it places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge.

Scholars have attributed the origins of gnosticism to a number of sources: the Greek mystery cults; Zoroastrianism; the Kabbalah of Judaism; and Egyptian religion.

Gnosticism envisaged the world as a series of emanations from the highest “One”, that produced a series of emanations.

While Gnosticism thus relies on personal religious experience as its primary authority, early “Christian” Gnostics did adopt their own versions of authoritative Scriptures, such as those found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt.

Gnostics were “people who knew”, and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know.

The doctrines of certain pre-Christian pagan, Jewish, and early Christian sects that valued the revealed knowledge of God and of the origin and end of the human race as a means to attain redemption for the spiritual element in humans and that distinguished the Demiurge from the unknowable Divine Being.

Gnostics were “people who knew “, and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know.

Conversion to Islam and the Albigensian Crusade (1209′1229) greatly reduced the remaining number of Gnostics throughout the Middle Ages, though a few isolated communities continue to exist to the present.

Gnostics classified people according to three categories: (1) gnostics, or those certain of salvation, because they were under the influence of the spirit (pneumatikoi); (2) those not fully gnostics, but capable of salvation through knowledge (psychikoi); and (3) those so dominated by matter that they were beyond salvation (hylikoi).

Its population was largely Gnostics and Arian Christians, and were a sanctuary for Jews who were persecuted almost everywhere else in Europe.
He did not create the material universe because it was instead created by an evil or lesser God, sometimes called a “demiurge”.

This century was also a period when Pagan, Jewish and Christian forms of Gnosticism had the most influence on the doctrine and structure of the Christian Church, even though critics treated it a Christian heresy (Crim: 277).

In general, Gnostics taught cosmological dualism, strict asceticism, repudiation of material creation as evil, docetism, and the existence of the divine spark in humans.