CERINTHUS.- Gnostic; according to Irenaeus (Adv. haer., I, 21; ed. W. Harvey, p. 211; ed. A. Stieren, I, 26, p. 253) C. taught that the world was created by an inferior power that did not know the highest God.
Jesus, begotten of Joseph and Mary, was a man like others, only more righteous and wise. At the Baptism the Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove, and from this moment Jesus begins to preach the unknown Father and to work miracles. At the end Jesus and the Christ separate again: the former suffers, the latter ascends to heaven and remains impassible. In the list of heretics in Irenaeus, C. appears between Carpocrates and the Ebionites. With Carpocrates he teaches the distinction between the highest God and the power that created the world; with the Ebionites he affirms the human nature of Jesus. C., who according to Irenaeus taught in Asia Minor, must be a representative of an ancient Jewish-Christian gnosis. The gnosis is linked to the Baptism in which the Holy Spirit descends, identified with the Christ. The relationship between the Christ and the unknown Father does not become clear in Irenaeus's account, but the contrast between the supreme God and the power that created the world presupposes a polemic against the Jewish idea of a God who is the creator of the world. According to pseudo-Tertullian (Adv. omnes haereses, 3), this creator of the world is an angel, just as angels also gave the law. The descent of the Christ at the Baptism presupposes his passage through the world of the angels, and the ascent to heaven probably occurs when, at the moment of death, the body and the Pneuma-Christ separate. According to Irenaeus, for C. Jesus would have suffered and would have risen; Hippolytus, who generally follows Irenaeus, has (X, 21, 3; ed. Wendland, p. 281, 15) omitted the mention of the Resurrection of Jesus. The report of the Resurrection of Jesus is suspect, because it presupposes a too positive valuation of the body of Jesus. According to Epiphanius (Panar., 28, 6, 1; ed. K. Holl [CB, XXV] p. 318, 4), C. would have denied the Resurrection of Jesus, awaiting it for the day of the general resurrection. For Christian tradition C. has become either the adversary of John, who according to Irenaeus (op. cit., III, 11, 7; ed. W. Harvey, p. 40; ed. A. Stieren, II, 1, p. 462), would have polemicized in his Gospel against C., or the adversary of Paul as an exponent of those Jewish-Christians who were combated by the apostle of the gentiles (Epiphanius, Panar., 28, 2, 3; 28, 3, 4). Epiphanius's theory is untenable because the adversary of the Jewish God (Irenaeus) could not at the same time be the defender of the law against Paul. Epiphanius presupposes an identification of C. with Ebion, which moreover also underlies Caius's assertion according to which C., a Jewish-Christian millenarian, would be the author of the Gospel and of the Apocalypse of John. Even the title of pseudo-apostle given to C. in the so-called Epistle of the Apostles comes from this false identification of C. with the adversaries of St. Paul. According to Irenaeus (op. cit., III, 3, 4; ed. Harvey, p. 13; ed. Stieren, p. 434), C. was a contemporary of John the "disciple of the Lord" (encounter in the bath of Ephesus), but his error would already have been, "multo prius", taught by the Nicolaitans (Irenaeus, op. cit., III, 11, 7; ed. Harvey, p. 40). If Hippolytus, Philastrius, and pseudo-Tertullian make C. a "successor" of Carpocrates, they commit an error. C. was a heretic of the apostolic age.
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Erik Peterson