Let us begin by granting that various qualifications must be assumed for each mention of a Gnostic tenet. This is because of the variety of doctrine amongst the various Gnostic schools such as the Syrian or Semitic, Hellenistic or Alexandrian, dualistic and antinomian-and phases such as the Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, Docetae and Demiurge.
One of Gnosticism’s tenets is that spirit is good and matter is evil, which is why they believed that Jesus either could not have been a real life person, in the flesh, but was some sort of ethereal entity or that He had manifested in the flesh but was some spiritual being (the aeon soter) that was certainly not the true God of Gnosticism. Since matter, as manifested in our physical bodies, is evil, then for the Gnostic there was a lifestyle choice to be made. They would either neglect, despise and suppress every bodily need and pleasure or they could indulge in every conceivable fleshly excess as mentioned above by Irenaeus.
They hold to an entropy of being whereby the supreme God caused pure spirit beings to emanate (proballei). These, in turn, produced the aeons, the immaterial hypostatic ideas (principle, essence, substance). The emanations and aeons form the pleroma (the immortal realm, from whence comes the material from the immaterial, due to various causes such as an aeon’s sin). Thus, Gnosticism seeks repentance (metanoia) by which they mean an end to material existence and a return to pleroma. Note that each successive emanation was further removed from God until one of them was removed so far from the pure spirit of God that it was able to create matter. This creator emanation was both ignorant of, as well as hostile to, the true God. This evil and ignorant emanation’s name is Yahweh, the God of the Bible. Since matter was manifest in the context of utter ignorance of the ways of God (pure spirit) it is man’s responsibility to seek the hidden knowledge-gnosis.
The National Geographic Society states that Gnostics:
“_believed that everyone has a divine connection with God and that such knowledge can be revealed to a select few by divine inspiration_.Gnostics regarded Jesus as an enlightened teacher whose message could enable an elite group of humans to find the divine spark within their own inner beings and rediscover the connection and become divine themselves, rising above the imperfection of the material world.”1
Moreover, they state:
“The Gnostics ‘believed that there is an ultimate source of goodness, which they thought of as the divine mind, outside the physical universe. Humans carry a spark of that divine power, but they are cut off by the material world all around them’-a flawed world, as the Gnostics saw it, the work of an inferior creator rather than the ultimate God.”2
Succinctly stated, Gnosticism sought to change the message of Christianity from go out into all the world and proclaim the gospel to withdraw and keep these teachings hidden. They rejected the concept of judgment, denied the second coming, they claimed that the Apostles were false teachers and that the Bible is not complete since they were constantly uncovering new knowledge.
Gnostics claim to offer gnosis that they keep hidden while Christianity offers epi-gnosis (liken to epi-center) according to Thayer this world refers to precise and correct knowledge used in the New Testament of the knowledge of things ethical and divine. It is found in texts such as:
“Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, according as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who has called us to glory and virtue” (2nd Peter 1:2-3).
What the Gospel of Judas offers is not gnosis about the reality of what happened between Jesus and Judas. Rather, it is gnosis about how people who lived about a century and a half after the time of Jesus, and after the eyewitnesses had passed away, sought to rewrite history in the image of their peculiar beliefs.
Another favorite Gnostic gospel of the liberal/skeptical clan is The Gospel of Thomas. Far from mystical wisdom, this gospel demonstrates Gnosticism’s peculiar, and in this case, male-chauvinistic doctrines:
v. 114, “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life.’ Jesus said, ‘Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the domain of Heaven.’”
How many women’s rights groups, or civil rights groups, or any liberal groups, or any group of any kind or sort have you heard speaking out against such hate-speech? The correct answer is that only Christians have spoken out against such malicious corruptions of the teachings of Jesus Christ and corruptions of good ‘ol fashion common sense. Yet, this is one of the most beloved gospels of The [anti]Jesus Seminar and their anything but the fact ma’am admirers.
Jesus is such an undeniable personage that virtually all world-views have sought to appropriate Jesus for themselves:
1-To the Hindus Jesus was the an Avatar.
2-To the Buddhists Jesus was a Bodhisattva or the Matreya Buddha.
3-To the Reiki practitioners Jesus was a Reiki Master.
4-To the Taoists Jesus revealed the eternal Tao.
5-To ECKANKAR Jesus was an ECK Master.
6-To the Jews Jesus was a prophet or a Rabbi (or a false prophet).
7-To Islam Jesus was a prophet.
8-To atheist and secularists Jesus demonstrated the highest morals.
9-To the Gnostics Jesus was the revealer of the gnosis, the aeon soter.
10-And to many more Jesus was much more, yet Jesus is who and what He is-the savior, Lord and God.
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