Gnostĭci
（
Γνοστικοί). A religious sect which flourished in the
first century of the Christian era. In the New Testament,
γνῶσις denotes the profound appreciation of Christian truth; with the Gnostics it
means a sort of transcendental and mystic understanding, which saw and knew the allegories and
subtleties which they professed to find in the sacred writings. They claimed a kinship between
all the religions of the world, and asserted their possession of special traditions from
certain of Christ's disciples, and the gift of prophecy. The sources of Gnosticism were three
—Greek idealism, Oriental pantheism, and Christian revelation, and it was always a
heresy of the learned rather than of the masses whom its subtleties repelled. The four points
upon which nearly all the Gnostics agreed were as follows:
1.
God is incomprehensible;
2.
Matter is eternal and antagonistic to God in that it conditions and limits the divine
efficiency;
3.
Creation is the work of a Demiurgus, either subordinate to God or perhaps actually opposed
to him;
4.
The human nature of Christ was only a deception. See
Aeon.
Gnosticism reached its highest point A.D. 150, after which it rapidly declined. Its
importance is to be found in the fact that its arbitrary treatment of the Scriptures forced
the Church to a more thorough study of the historical tradition, and to establish the
principle that nothing is to be regarded as true Christianity which is not shown to be
derived from Christ and his apostles. See Matter,
Histoire Critique du
Gnosticisme (2d ed. 1883);
King, The Gnostics and their
Remains (1873); and Mansel,
The Gnostic Heresies, edited by
Lightfoot
(1875).
