By Pastor Dave Farmer

Topic #3 Fundamental Errors of Gnosticism

What Is Gnosticism?

This word comes from the Greek word GNOSIS, which means knowledge. They believed that man's greatest problem was ignorance. They explored the big questions; such as the origin of the Universe, the meaning of life, the origin of suffering and the conflict between good and evil.

Their finite minds, although some possessed great genius, could not penetrate the great wall that separates the finite [man] and the infinite [God]. They could talk about eternal matters, but they had no assurance that their thinking was correct; that it lined up with eternal realities. So they would speculate and speculate and speculate, ad nauseam. In fact, they would not be able to recognize the truth even if they stumbled on it.

The Christian Gnostics held that Jesus affected an enormous change, by making a revelation of knowledge available, which advanced their understanding of the great questions they were seeking. Jesus, according to them, came from the other side of the Wall of Separation. The Wall of Separation is a philosophical barrier.

Those who were professing Christians took the 300 years of anthropomorphic philosophical speculation [teachings of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and others] and mixed it with the truth found in the New Testament Canon. This created a kaleidoscope of false doctrines where truth was reduced to a hodgepodge of conflicting ideas. Most everyone who has studied Gnosticism has been frustrated to pin down their views. Dr. Wace articulates that experience when he says:

The zeal of which a learner commences the study of ecclesiastical history is not infrequently dampened at an early stage, when he finds himself acquainted with speculations so wild and so baseless that it is irksome to read them and difficult to believe that time was when acquaintance with them was counted as what alone deserved the name knowledge. ¹

In preparing this lesson, I can truthfully say, "I feel your pain." He goes on to say:

Gnosticism is not being a word which has its own nature definite meaning. There is no problem naming common characteristics of the sects of commonly called Gnostics', though none of them distinctive enough to be the basis of a logical definition.

What are some of the shared characteristics?

1. They trace their doctrines back to the Apostles. Basilides was said to have learned from a companion of St Peter.

Basilides, therefore, and Isidorus, the true son and disciple of Basilides, say that Matthias communicated to them secret discourses, which, being specially instructed, he heard from the Savior. ²

2. They all profess to find their doctrines in the gospels using the allegorical method of interpretation.

Scripture: John 1:27, "he comes after me, and I am not worthy to loose the throngs of His sandals."

Gnostic Interpretation: "The world is the sandal. John the Baptist represents the Demiurge. The Demiurge of the world who is inferior to Christ, acknowledges the fact through these expressions."

Scripture: John 2:12, "after this he descended to Capernaum."

Gnostic Interpretation: Capernaum means, on the one hand, the ends of the world, on the other the material things to which he descended.

Scripture: John 2:13-14, "and Jesus ascended to Jerusalem and he found in the temple those who sold oxen."

Gnostic Interpretation: The ascent to Jerusalem signifies the ascent of the Lord from material things to the psychic place, which is an image of Jerusalem. ³

3. If you possessed the Knowledge, you are spiritual. They claimed superior knowledge. They considered themselves in the “know”, and everyone else was inferior.

4. Man's spirit is imprisoned in matter and needing release. Matter is evil. They gained release [salvation] through the accumulation of knowledge irrespectively of their conduct. The Gnostics wish to flee the world. For any Gnostic, the world is really hell.

"The Gnostic Marcion spoke disparagingly of human existence as engendered in obscenity and brought forth in impurity. He described the body as a sack of excrements which death will turn into a stinking cadaver." ⁴

5. The Gnostic believed that God was spirit and that God was perfect. No matter

what they named Him - God, The Pre-existent One, First Father, The Principle, The Eternal Eon, or the Logos, etc.; He was perfect and free from sin and evil.

Christian Gnosticism was Satan’s greatest attack on the Word of God. It thrived during the First through Third centuries. It took over 300 years to strip out from orthodoxy, everything related to Gnosticism.

II. Summary Of Their Theological Error

The Creation of the Universe

At the time of creation, the physical, material world was brought into existence. Since all matter is evil, that meant God created evil. They go through all kinds of mental contortions to get away from that conclusion.

The Scripture says that when God restored Planet Earth in Genesis 1 and 2, after each day's activities He declared "It was good." A Gnostic refuses to believe that all that was created was good; it is evil. We would say that they are wrong. The materiel world came under a curse at the Fall of Man [Genesis 3: "Thorns and Thistles"]. Paul says that creation groans while under the curse, and it is awaiting a future restoration [ Romans 8:18-22].

Again, humans possess a body, and it is made from the dust of the ground, and therefore the body is evil. On the other hand God breathed into man the breath of lives and this spiritual life or immaterial life, the non-physical part of man’s being, does not partake of this evil. It is inherently good. The body was a prison, and they were looking forward to the day when they would cast it off and enter the PLEROMA, which is equivalent to our concept of heaven.

It was this false view of reality that Paul fought against when he defended the Resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 15, he explained that when you trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior you received eternal life. This decision meant that when you died, you would enter eternity with a physical body. The idea of a physical, bodily resurrection was repugnant to the Greek Christians as well as the Gnostics.

You see, he had been taught all of his life that the body is evil. Now, he is told that he will receive a body, a literal body and that was a stumbling block to him. Paul says to the Corinthians, “Do not fear that which is sown in corruption will be raised incorruptible” [1Cor. 15:42-44]. God solves the problem of evil.

The Incarnation

Their theology would not allow them to associate deity with the body. It was unthinkable that God would be linked to evil. It was a very logical system:

THE BODY WAS EVIL.

CHRIST HAD A BODY

THEREFORE CHRIST WAS EVIL

In contrast, we have a Biblical syllogism:

THE HUMAN BODY OF CHRIST WAS HOLY

CHRIST HAD A REAL HUMAN BODY

THEREFORE CHRIST WAS HOLY.

The reason why our syllogism us correct is because of the Virgin Birth, which they denied. Our Lord’s human nature was “that Holy Thing” that God the Spirit provided for the pre-existent Son of God. The human nature which the Son assumed at birth was perfect and free from sin and evil. He was born minus an Old Sin Nature and without the imputation of Adam’s Sin. It provided our Lord Jesus Christ with a body free of sin and evil or to state this positively; it was Holy. In John's day, Docetic Gnosticism was the heresy that he faced and the reason for which 1 John was written. See the five points of Docetic Gnosticism in endnotes. ⁵

Conclusion:

One of the advantages that grew out of this period was that it sharpened our understanding of the Person and Work of Christ. Their vigorous debate helps shape the doctrinal summaries that appear in our church's constitution. Bible doctrine is the presentation of the Word of God categorically. They saw the necessity of constructing doctrinal statements to define Biblical orthodoxy. In the third century, a movement led by Arius denied the deity of Christ. A great debate began and finally led to a church council to settle the dispute. This false view of the Lord Jesus died out as a result. Fast forward to the 1800s in America when Charles Taz Russell challenged orthodox Christianity by rejecting the deity of Christ. He used the same arguments that Arius used 1500 years earlier. We used the same argument to support the doctrine of the Deity of Christ that was fixed 1500 years ago. Arius was wrong about the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Jehovah Witnesses are wrong about Him today. We had the advantage of a previously worked out theology to defend against this heresy.

ENDNOTES

¹ A dictionary of Christian biography and literature to the end of the sixth century A.D., with an account of the principal sects and heresies by Wace,1836-1924, ed. Piercy, William C. (William Coleman), joint ed.; Smith, William Sir, 1813-1893; J.Murray,London (1911) p.394-397.

² Hippolytus of Rome. (1886). The Refutation of All Heresies. In A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, & A. C. Coxe (Eds.), J. H. MacMahon (Trans.), Fathers of the Third Century: Hippolytus, Cyprian, Novatian, Appendix (Vol. 5, p. 103). Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company.

³ Robert M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1966) p. 197-98.

⁴ Edwin Yamauchi, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (1971),14(1), 32.

⁵ The Phantom Doctrine

They believed that Jesus did not have a real body. He was a Phantom.

The Five Points of Docetism:

1. It denies the incarnation, the virgin birth, the true humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ, the hypostatic union of the two natures of Christ, the doctrine of impeccability, and the sustaining ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of Christ.
2. It distinguishes between the human Jesus and the Heavenly Christ.
3. The Heavenly Christ only appeared to take on human form. The incarnation was not a reality. It just appeared real.
4. They thought they were avoiding the concept that Christ shared in such an inherently evil thing as having a body.
5. They followed one of the main tenets of Gnosticism: all matter is evil, and therefore they denied that the Heavenly Christ had any contact with flesh.