GNOSI

GNOSIS. —

I. Terminology and Meaning

Gnosis in all its forms, even in those of a semi-gnosis, has developed its own vocabulary, and this special language is evidence that in gnosis one is dealing with a mentality sui generis, which, however, in its rich use of figurative language reveals more an artistic and subjective spirit than a scientific discipline. Characteristic of gnosis is the use of the word “strange” or “foreign.” “Foreign” is life in the beyond (e.g., among the Mandaeans and Bardesanites), “foreign” is also the divine messenger who comes into this world (in Marcionism a designation for Christ, among the Manicheans for Mani). For this term see H. Jonas, Gnosi und spätantiker Geist, Göttingen 1934, pp. 96 ff., 122 ff.; S. Petrement, Le dualisme chez Platon, Paris 1947, pp. 164 ff.; H. Ch. Puech, Le manichéisme, Paris 1949, p. 153, n. 273). “Foreign” is also the soul that finds itself in this world or that has passed through a series of worlds (seven or twelve), of “aeons” (see H. Jonas, op. cit., p. 99). A distinction is made between Aeons of darkness and Aeons of light. The origin of this term must be sought in the doctrines of the “Chaldeans” (Babylonian astrologers), but the pejorative meaning is characteristic of gnosis. It concerns the world in its spatial and temporal extension (“generations” which gnosis seeks to transcend). The universe thus becomes a “creative cell” (Marcion), a “house” (see Book of Enoch, ch. 90, 28 ff.) that is about to collapse (“house” both for the structure of the universe and for the body), while the soul seeks a dwelling in the region of light, in the sēkhtāṁ, in the “glory” (for “to dwell,” as a technical term, see H. Jonas, op. cit., pp. 101 ff.).

The “foreign” world, this world, is distinguished from the other as light and darkness, a central term in Manichaeism, and in part also in Manichaeanism. The Marcionites distinguished the light of the demiurge of this world from the light of the future world (A. Harnack, Marcione, 2nd ed., Leipzig 1924, pp. 263 ff.). But in reality this world is a mixture of light and “darkness,” of “living water” (cf. John 4:10) and “muddy water,” of “living fire” and “dark fire” (Corpus Hermeticum I, 25, Manichaeism, Manichaeanism). For the interesting distinction (French 2) of two fires see Nyberg, in Journal asiatique, 214 (1929), p. 217; ibid., 219 (1931), p. 222. The idea of black water comes, according to the book of Sankund Gunarik Vica (see P. I. de Menasce, Une apologétique maudienne, Fribourg 1945, p. 183), from Jewish religion. It concerns the primeval water of Genesis when there were only darkness and the abyss. Man is “fallen” into this world, where he finds himself “imprisoned,” “chained,” and full of anxiety (one of the Naassenes, Hippolytus, Refut., V, 10, 2), tormented by nostalgia for the celestial “homeland”; a most beautiful expression of this last idea is the famous Hymn of the Soul in the Acts of Thomas (pp. 108–12; for this theme see H. Jonas, op. cit., pp. 109 ff.). The soul in this world is “stunned,” has lost its consciousness, is intoxicated by a “poison” (on this image see H. Jonas, op. cit., pp. 114, 209; H. Ch. Puech, op. cit., pp. 77 and 169 n. 312). According to Christian literature the poison was found in the tree of knowledge (Apoc. Moisi, ch. 15; Liber graduum, ed. Kmosko, Patrologia syriaca, III, Paris 1926, p. 586). The soul has become “blind” and “deaf,” has “fallen asleep” (see H. Jonas, op. cit., pp. 45, 113–18, 126–34), man behaves in this world like a “drunkard.” Famous is the beginning of treatise VII of the Corpus Hermeticum: “Whither are you being carried, O men, who are drunk, because you have drunk the strong wine of ignorance?” (Hermès Trismégiste, ed. A. D. Nock–A. J. Festugière, I, Paris 1945, p. 81, 3 ff.; see also treatise I, 27: “O peoples, men born of the earth, who have abandoned yourselves to drunkenness and sleep, become sober” [pp. 15, 21]). For the image, see Ed. Norden, Agnostos Theos, Leipzig 1929, pp. 3–7, 132, 139 n. 1, 199 nn. 3–4, 295 ff., and A. J. Festugière, in Harvard Theol. Rev., 31 (1938), p. 4 ff. Man feels in this world “uprooted,” cut off from the “tree,” from the “root,” in another world (see Asclepius, ch. 6, p. 302, 21 ff.; ed. by A. D. Nock–A. J. Festugière). On this important image of the root in Manichaeism see H. Ch. Puech, op. cit., pp. 74, 159 n. 285; among Mandaeans and Bardesanites, G. Widengren, Mesopotamian Elements in Manicheism, Uppsala 1946, p. 15 n. 1.

Reconstructing from an analysis of these images the worldview that underlies them, it is clear that Gnosticism has nothing to do with the worldview as it existed among the Greeks; indeed, it stands in full contrast to II. The Greek felt at home in this world; the Gnostic, by contrast, feels a stranger in II. For the Greek, the universe was an admirable thing; for the Gnostic, it is a prison. The Greeks found light within themselves and in this world (cf. R. Bultmann, in *Philologus*, 97 [Wiesbaden 1948], p. 1 ff.); the Gnostics found it in another world. The soul, which among the Greeks elevated man above the materiality of his body, among the Gnostics becomes itself part of the baseness of this universe. To the disincarnation of man in Greek thought corresponds, in Gnosticism, a flight from the world. Among the Greeks, the divine is part of this universe; in Gnosticism, God is not only separate but actually opposed to the world (Plotinus [*Enneads*, II, 9, 16], as a true Greek, combats the Gnostic assertion). This fact is expressed among the Gnostics in the distinction between a “god of this world” and a higher, unknowable God, an “Unknown.” The “god of this world” can be designated in various ways: either with terms drawn from the vocabulary of astrologers (“archon” or “cosmocrator”), or with words taken from the Old Testament (Iao, Sabach), etc. (cf. H. Jonas, *op. cit.*, p. 229), and finally also with the more general term “demiurge” (craftsman).

The Gnostic demiurge has his collaborators: either the seven planets or the twelve constellations of the zodiac, according to astrological language, or angels according to a Jewish tradition (the plural “Faciamus hominem” in Gen 1:28 is explained by the collaboration of angels in creation). The Gnostic demiurge is not merely an inferior god over against a higher God, a second god; he is an ignorant god, a being who believes himself to be the end, yet perceives the light of the one who is truly God (Irenaeus, *Adv. Haer.*, I, 29, 4, p. 263; *Strom.*, 30, 6, p. 267; Hippolytus, *Refut.*, VII, 35, 3; 26, 1). The basis of the idea that the demiurge saw the light of the higher God lies in an interpretation of Gen 1:4, “et vidit deus lucem” (cf. the already cited work: *Sankund-Gunarik Vicar.*, p. 185, 52; cf. also the Manichees in St. Augustine, *De Genesi contra Manich.*, I, 13 and *Contra Faustum*, XXII, 4). Just as the higher God of Gnosticism is an anti-cosmic god, so too the anthropology of Gnosticism demands a disincarnation of man, a tendency toward the destruction of the body, while the divine *pneuma* assumes the function of an absorption of the human soul, bound to the body and through the body also to the materiality of this world. In other words: in Gnosticism, man does not merely lose his individuality but also his personality; his person has its center beyond this world, and it is the celestial “form,” the “form of God” (ὁμοίωσις Θεοῦ) that the Gnostic seeks to attain. For this reason, the man who does not recognize himself as truly existing must ask himself three questions in order to attain his true existence: a) What were we? What have we become? b) Where were we? Whither have we been cast? c) Whither are we going? From what shall we be freed? (*Excerpta ex Theodoto*, 78, 2nd ed. Sagnard, p. 202 or p. 131, 17 ff., ed. Stählin; for this catechetical formulation cf. from the formal point of view E. Norden, *op. cit.*, p. 103 ff.).

The answer is this: man must realize what he once was before coming into this world and into this body, created by the demiurge; he must understand his present state and know whither his “path” leads him. Thus the two moments of the descent and ascent of man (better to say: man, not soul) into the past and future become very important. The framing of descent and ascent within the schema of space is inevitable, because if evil is sought in the spatial creation of the demiurge, salvation must also be sought in the supra-celestial space (in Manichaeism: the luminous earth) of a god who is not the creator of this world but of another world. If in Manichaeism the doctrine of the three times concerns primarily the problem of the three ages of the world, it must be recognized that this cosmological aspect of Manichaeism is not in contrast with the more anthropological aspect of the *Excerpta ex Theodoto*, precisely because anthropology and cosmology stand in close relation in Gnosticism.

An image of this fact is the doctrine of the two trees. “Man is always rooted in one of the two cosmic trees, either in the evil tree, which roots his existence in the world of the demiurge, or in the good tree, which roots his existence in the higher world.” This rooting depends and does not depend on man’s attitude toward the two trees. It does not depend on his attitude insofar as man, at birth, is already rooted in one of the trees. From this point of view, the idea can arise of people who are “by nature” already “Gnostics” and as such exempt from all moral effort, with the consequence of libertinism (on Gnostic libertinism cf. H. Jonas, *op. cit.*, pp. 204, 215, 234–38; H. Ch. Puech, *op. cit.*, p. 268). On the other hand, there are men who are destined by their “nature” to be rooted in the evil tree. But generally the idea of rooting does not exclude the possibility of a choice between the two trees. It depends on man’s attitude toward one of the two trees where he seeks his roots. This freedom finds expression in the fact that man can acquire Gnosticism. But since Gnosticism is not the knowledge of a fact within the framework of this world, the fact of unconsciousness, of this state of cosmic sleep, of this intoxication of the age, cannot be overcome unless the intellectual act of Gnostic realization is accompanied by an asceticism that becomes an indispensable means, and man disincarnates himself in order to attain this Gnostic attitude of his existence, which allows him to see through to the end the deception of this world of the senses and to arrive at a life of awareness and consciousness.

2. Origin of Gnosticism — The problem of the origin of Gnosticism has been approached in various ways. Some have sought it in Hellenism. For A. Harnack, for example, Gnosticism was “the acute Hellenization of Christianity.” The Church Fathers (especially Hippolytus) compared the doctrines of individual Gnostics with those of Greek philosophers. There is no doubt that some Gnostics made use of ideas and terms from Greek philosophy to make their speculations intelligible to an educated public trained in Hellenistic traditions.

Thus, for example, the doctrine of the soul’s descent has been expressed in Platonic form as the soul’s fall. Yet the fact remains that the gnostic worldview stands in full contrast to that of the Greeks. The Greek philosophical language is therefore merely a means of making itself understood by people of Greek culture. The theory that Gnosticism derives from Babylonian-Persian religion (Anz-Bousset) fails to recognize that the anticosmic character of Gnosticism finds no parallel in astrological chaldeanism, that the pessimism of Gnosticism has no counterpart in Persian religion, nor does Gnostic dualism coincide with Persian dualism (H. Jonas, op. cit., pp. 34 sq., 352). The dualism in Iran is not a theoretical dualism (H. Ch. Puech, op. cit., p. 322 sq.). Reitzenstein’s appeal to Zoroastrian books is highly problematic, since much of this literature was written in the 9th century A.D. and presupposes the activity of Gnostic sects in Iran (cf. H. W. Bailey, *Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth Century Books*, Oxford 1943). The role of Iranian and Babylonian religion in the development of Gnosticism in the East was no different from that of Greek philosophy in the West: it was merely a means of making itself understood, nothing more. The case of Manichaeism is highly significant in this regard, for in the West it employed Greek philosophical terminology in its propaganda, in Iran Zoroastrian religious vocabulary, and elsewhere Chinese or Indian terminology. It would therefore be imprudent to seek the origin of Gnosticism outside the geographical area where the Gnostic movement had its center, namely in western and eastern Syria (Mesopotamia) and in Egypt.

Within the Aramaic-speaking milieu (the liturgical formulas of the Gnostic Marcus, who was active in southern Gaul, are Aramaic; cf. Irenaeus, *Haer.*, I, 14, 2, p. 183 Harvey = 21, 3 St.; likewise the formula of Elxai in Epiphanius, *Panarion*, 19, 4, 3, p. 221, 17 Holl.), Gnosticism developed. This means that, practically speaking, Gnosticism at its inception was the work of Jews or Jewish Christians, and only later did others who had come into contact with Jews and Jewish Christians take up the movement. It is often claimed that the Gnosticism of the *Corpus Hermeticum* is proof of the existence of pagan Gnosticism, but in reality Hermetic Gnosticism shows many evident traces of Jewish Gnosticism (cf. C. H. Dodd, *The Bible and the Greeks*, Cambridge 1935), even though the most recent editors, A. D. Nock and A. J. Festugière, have sought to minimize this Jewish substratum. A study of Gnostic texts readily reveals their dependence, especially on the Pentateuch and in particular on Genesis. It is well known that cosmogony formed part of the secret doctrines among the Jews (Chag. 2, 1; ibid., 13a; cf. Strack-Billerbeck, *Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch*, I, Munich 1922, p. 977; II [1924], pp. 186, 307), and the speculations on the *merkabah* (Ex. 1 and 10) were not taught publicly. When Gnosticism interprets texts from biblical cosmogony, it is clearly bringing to light secret Jewish doctrines. It is highly significant that a Gnostic term such as “black water” derives from a Jewish interpretation of Gen. 1, just as the importance attached to the concept of light in Gnosticism must be linked to Jewish speculation on the “primordial light” (Gen. 1:4; interpreted with reference to the Messiah; cf. Strack-Billerbeck, op. cit., I, 161). Even the doctrine of the creation of successive pairs (συζυγία), which gave rise to much speculation in Gnosticism, stems from the Genesis cosmogonic account, as does the Gnostic’s fantastic portrayal of the primordial Adam as a being lying prostrate, blind upon the earth, who is only “set upright” by the “breath of life.” Finally, Gnostic ideas about the descent or ascent of the primordial man do not derive from a supposed Iranian myth of the “primal man” (Urmensch), but from the biblical account of Adam’s fall and from apocryphal texts that speak of a “liberation” of Adam (cf. E. Peterson, in *Revue biblique*, 55 [1948], pp. 199 ff.).

Yet it may be objected that Gnosticism’s relationship to Judaism is ultimately no different from its relationship to Iranian-Babylonian religion or to Greek philosophy. Gnosticism’s anticosmic stance puts it at odds even with Jewish belief in a good God who created the world; its pessimism and asceticism have nothing in common with Jewish optimism about establishing justice in this world and the positive valuation of natural rights (property, marriage, etc.). Nevertheless, in late Judaism one can observe the existence of an anthropological dualism in the form of the doctrine of the two inclinations within man: the evil inclination (*jézer har-ra’*) and the good inclination (*jézer haṭ-ṭōbh*), which appears to have been the origin of Gnosticism. It is noteworthy that, according to this doctrine, each of these inclinations is presided over by an angel; this means that every person is no longer master of himself but subject either to a good or an evil power. The doctrine of the two *jézer* appears in apocalyptic literature (cf. B. Violet, *Die Apokalypse des Esra und des Baruch*, Leipzig 1924, p. 5, n. 4), in the *Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs*, in New Testament literature, and in the Talmud. This doctrine was also known to early Christian literature, especially to the author of the *Shepherd of Hermas*, and to the Pseudo-Clementine literature. Moreover, the fact that it was not a particular or sectarian idea is proven by the morning prayer of the Jews (*Berakhoth* 60b), which mentions the two *jézer* (cf. Strack-Billerbeck, op. cit., II, 152). It should also be noted that in Jewish doctrine the evil inclination, which is present in every person from birth (the “good inclination,” by contrast, begins only with the obligatory study of the Law at the age of twelve), is linked to concupiscence, and thus

Concupiscence appears as the most characteristic sin of this world (v. 1 Jn 2:16), while it is expected, from the world to come, that it will be uprooted or sealed (v. ESDRA. 8:53 [Vulgate], in the edition by B. Violet, p. 120. On the end of the *jeser har-ra’* in eschatological times V. H. J. Schoeps, *Aus frühchristlicher Zeit*, Tübingen 1950, pp. 49 and 224, n. 4). The evil inclination leads to death; the end of concupiscence in the future world brings with it “life.” From such a starting point, the origin of Jewish gnosis can now be explained. The doctrine of the two inclinations shattered the unity of the human person and led to the consequence that the subsequent distinction between this world of death and the future world of “life” was transformed (as, for example, in the Pseudo-Clementines) into a state of “war” between the rulers of the two aeons. Thus this world is viewed with hostile eyes from the perspective of the other world, and the pessimistic evaluation of this world was further reinforced by the political fate of the Jewish world—the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. It is not by chance that in IV Ezra and in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, which refer to the destruction of Jerusalem, so many important texts are found concerning the doctrine of the two *jeser*; the doctrine itself, however, predates the destruction of Jerusalem. Even the unity of the person of Adam, who stood between the two trees of paradise, was shattered. The problem of Adam’s sin was posed, which instead of being a simple transgression of a divine commandment became identical with concupiscence itself, and thus not only was the present world linked to concupiscence but its creation was also attributed to a power that itself contained some kind of concupiscence. Just as procreation is bound to concupiscence, so too the origin of the material world was attributed to a cosmic concupiscence. The origin of gnosis is therefore not to be explained by an anonymous syncretistic movement of various religions, but is only comprehensible as the logical development of an anthropological dualism that identifies original sin with concupiscence and framed concupiscence, now become a cosmic power, within the scheme of apocalyptic thought. Gnosis predates Christianity; yet the respect for the traditions of the Jewish people, from whom the Church had inherited the sacred book, led to an inflation of Jewish gnostic and chiliastic ideas in the early Christian environment. Remaining, however, faithful to the letter and spirit of the Old Testament and reflecting on the real facts of Jesus’ life (virginal birth and the resurrection of the body of Jesus from the dead), the Church succeeded in freeing itself from those who were “not planted by the Father” (Ignatius, *Ad Trall.* 4:1; *Ad Philad.* 3:1). Yet the clarity to discern the error was not everywhere equal. Thus one can also observe the persistence of a kind of semi-gnosis in some elements of the Church, especially in ascetic circles (e.g., in Encratism or Messalianism). The study of this semi-gnosis is very useful for understanding the great gnosis with its fantastic speculative systems (Valentinianism, Manichaeism), because they clearly show the relationships that exist between Jewish gnosis and the Jewish doctrine of concupiscence. Regarding the problem of the relationship between gnosis and Christian preaching, it must be taken into account that the Church (due to a common fund of ideas: the self-insufficiency of the world, the necessity of salvation) could make use of the gnostic vocabulary, modifying its original sense for purposes of propaganda, while gnosis could not truly assimilate the figure of Christ, since the mystery of the Incarnation transcended the possibilities open to gnosis itself.

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**G. RUSSIAN CONTEMPORARY.** — The gnosis developed by contemporary Russian thinkers aims to be a profound and universal philosophy of natural and revealed truths; an attempt at Christian philosophy; a concrete synthesis rather than an abstract and rational system, claiming to perceive the reality of existence through mystical and intuitive means. Hence, in it the three planes of the metaphysical, the supernatural, and the mystical coincide. It is influenced by Platonism, Origenism, Neoplatonism; by the Protestant mysticism of Jakob Böhme (1575–1624), renewed by Schelling and von Baader, and depends on German idealism.

The principal representatives are V. Solov’ev (1853–1900) and his disciples, first among them Florensky (b. 1881) and Bulgakov (1871–1944), Berdyaev (1874–1948), and Karasavin (b. 1882). Among them, some consider the idea of *vse-edinstvo* (“all-unity,” i.e., of God and the universe) more central: Solov’ev and Karasavin; or the idea of *Sophia* (i.e., uncreated wisdom as prototype, and created wisdom as its image): Solov’ev himself, Florensky, Bulgakov, Karasavin; or the idea of personal and tragic human existence: Berdyaev and Shestov (1866–1938), the two representatives of contemporary Russian existentialism. Shestov, a Jew who approached Christianity without, however, arriving at it, is in his own way a gnostic philosopher in the perspective of the Old Testament. The others, inasmuch as they presuppose the revelation of the New Testament, may be called Christian philosophers, and their thought moves for the most part, especially in Berdyaev, between monism and dualism; they also teach the fall of man and the world (in a more or less Platonic-Origenist sense), their renewal through the redemption of Christ, and the eschatological consummation of human history. Bulgakov and Berdyaev are explicit partisans of Shestov’s *apokatastasis*.

Modern Russian gnosis is rich in elevated and universal aspects, deepens natural and revealed human knowledge, reveals connections, and opens new horizons; it seeks above all the organic connection between nature and supernatural revelation. Nevertheless, it carries with it the danger of pantheism (especially in the doctrine of *Sophia*, conceived as identical with God and with the creature); of gnosticism (*Sophia* appears as an intermediary between God and creature); of illuminism and prophetism (reserved for the gnostic philosopher-seers). It also tends to confuse natural knowledge of God with revealed knowledge, and thus on the one hand to rationalize the mysteries of the Faith (danger of rationalism or at least semi-rationalism) and on the other to undervalue the rational, juridical order of the visible and hierarchical structure of the Church.

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