Gnostics: The Truth Behind the Secret “Christian” Communities

Nag Hammadi codices discovered in 1945

In one of my earlier posts, I started to talk about the diversity of early Christianity. As it turns out, Christianity was a diverse phenomenon in the ancient world. There were different groups of Christians. They all shared a common belief that Jesus is a path to salvation. But basically, that was the only thing they had in common. Who was Jesus? What was his message? How many Gods are there? How do people gain salvation? Where did we come from? What is the meaning of the resurrection? I could go on and on. These groups differed on almost all crucial theological, anthropological, and soteriological issues. Nevertheless, they all claim to possess the absolute truth. They all thought to be true representatives of Jesus’ teachings. One of these groups was the Gnostics. To be precise, the Gnostics were never a single group but a conglomeration of different communities similar to the philosophical schools of the ancient world. Who were they and what did they believe in? But most importantly, what sources do we have? How do we get our information about them?

Up until the middle of the last century, almost all information about various Gnostic groups came from early Church heresy hunters like Irenaeus and Tertullian. They wrote polemical tractates attacking not just the Gnostics, but various other groups they labeled as heretics. Getting the correct information about other groups from the writings of their fierce enemies is always difficult. It would be like looking at Putin’s writings or speeches and trying to understand the contemporary Ukrainian government policy. However, we got lucky! In 1945 a major archaeological discovery occurred in a small place near Nag Hammadi (Egypt). Local farmers accidentally discovered a pile of old documents. As it turned out, they dug up codices comprising 52 mostly Gnostic treaties dated to the second part of the 4th century AD. Scholars soon found out that these documents were actually copies of originals. Some originals dated to the middle and the end of the 2nd century AD! It is possible that a nearby community of Gnostics buried the codices to save them after the powerful bishop of Alexandria named Athanasius condemned the use of non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of 367 AD. Maybe they got scared and tossed them into the ground. Regardless, this discovery was a major breakthrough because now we could compare these documents with the claims about the Gnostics made by the early Church authors who hated Gnosticism! In other words, we finally got the voice of the oppressed.

Who were the Gnostics and why were they called that?

They were named so because of their claim to possess special knowledge (in Greek: gnosis) necessary for salvation. The Gnostics believed that Jesus was just one of the deities that made up the divine realm. According to their theology, the God of the Old Testament was an inferior, ignorant (and even malicious) divine being who created this world and entrapped people in it. To be precise, the true core of human beings is the divine spark that lies within them. This divine spark originated from the divine realm called Pleroma which was occupied by many divine beings with the Supreme God in charge. Salvation for them was equated with acquiring the knowledge of their true identity. However, not everyone could gain the insight worthy of salvation. Why is that? It is because the Gnostics believed that humanity was divided into three separate classes:

  1. Pneumatikoi – from the Greek word πνεῦμα which means “spirit”.  The highest order of humans. The Gnostics themselves. They were the only ones capable of full salvation because of the divine spark within them. The process of salvation had nothing to do with the physical resurrection. It was envisaged as the escape of the divine essence (or spark) from the shackles of the material world. Their final destination was Pleroma – a divine realm that they originated from in the first place.
  2. Psychics – from the Greek word ψυχή which means “soul”. They represented the “middle class” – individuals who possessed souls, but not the spirit. According to most Gnostic sources, they could attain salvation but only through good works. However, their salvation was never full. They couldn’t get to Pleroma. Only to the divine realm below the Pleroma. Most Gnostic groups believed that psychics were actually proto-orthodox Christians.
  3. Hylics – from the Greek word ὕλη which means matter. They were the lowest order of the three types of humans. Hylics were understood to be pagans. They are entirely made of matter – the lowest substance in the cosmos. The gnosis is absolutely beyond their reach. As such, the Hylics are doomed to be annihilated. No matter how much they try, salvation is something they can’t get!

Gnostics knew perfectly well that Jesus taught the crowds publicly moving from one place to another in the course of his ministry. However, they believed that he reserved the secret teachings that led to salvation only for the elect who were able to act on these. What was the core element of that teaching? The truth about the Supreme God, creation, and the divine spark that lies within the chosen people – the Gnostics themselves. Some of those groups would worship together with the Great (proto-orthodox) Church, but they would also hold their own secret meetings. There, Gnostics would read different sacred texts (both the Old Testament and the Gospels) believing that the careful reading (between the lines) will uncover the true teachings of Jesus. Moreover, various Gnostic groups used other gospel writings. For example, some of them used the Gospel of Judas – a text they believed was written by Judas Iscariot himself! As you can imagine, this gospel presents Judas in a positive light! He was actually saving Jesus by betraying him. An astonishing document that was recovered in Egypt in the late 1970s.

In the end, the proto-orthodox Church won. Already by the middle of the 4th century, Gnostics were pretty much gone. Why? Well, that’s a topic for another time. Let’s just say that the proto-orthodox Church had several crucial advantages from the get-go! For example, unlike the Gnostics, the proto-orthodox Church held that the message of Jesus and salvation is open to everyone, not just to the special minority. Similarly, the proto-orthodox Church had a strong system of organization and hierarchy (bishops, presbyters, and deacons) with a strong sense of trans-local identity. The community in Ephesus, for example, was equally a part of the Church as the community in Rome or Athens. Gnostic groups never had that feature. They were strongly localized communities independent of each other. And sometimes they were even at odds with each other! Needless to say, there were a lot of other reasons for the triumph of the proto-orthodoxy. If you are really bored, you can always look at my Ph.D. dissertation where I talk about these issues at great length.

What would have happened if Gnostics manage to get the dominant position within the early Christian world? I guess our world too would be much different! We will never know for sure.

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