Gnosis, the path of knowledge between Pleroma and Demiurge

Gnosis denotes the late antique path of knowledge between the divine Pleroma and the material world of the Demiurge, a dualistic cosmology with a redemptive myth.

Gnosis, Greek gnōsis, knowledge, denotes a late antique religious-philosophical current, at whose centre stands the conviction that a person can be redeemed from their cosmic entanglement through a hidden inner knowledge.

The world is not regarded as the good creation of the highest God, but as the work of an imperfect Demiurge; the true, transmundane God remains beyond, and only the divine spark-soul slumbering within the human being can recall itself to him in knowledge.

Sources and Textual Finds

Until the 20th century, scholars knew the Gnosis almost exclusively from the polemical writings of the Church Fathers Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian and Epiphanius, who combated it as heresy.

In 1945, an Egyptian farmer found 13 Coptic codices at Nag Hammadi containing 52 original Gnostic texts: the Apocryphon of John, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Thunder, Perfect Mind, the Pistis Sophia.

Only this find allowed an inside view of Gnostic self-description.

Core Teachings

Despite considerable diversity, most Gnostic systems share a core complex. At the summit of being stands the ineffable Father, and the Pleroma of Aeons unfolds from him. Through a fall in the lower Sophia the Demiurge arises, often bearing the name Jaldabaoth or Saklas, who creates the material world as a prison.

Human beings carry the divine spark, but are not aware of it. A messenger from the Pleroma, Christ among the Christians, Seth or Sophia herself in other systems, brings the saving knowledge. Whoever receives it frees their spark from the bodily shell and returns to the Pleroma after death.

Schools and Currents

The ancient Gnosis is not a unified movement. The Valentinians around Valentinus (2nd century) develop an elaborate doctrine of Aeons and move close to the great Christian church. The Sethians work with the figure of Seth as bringer of salvation and draw heavily on Jewish writings.

The Manichaeism of Mani (3rd century) becomes an independent world religion that reaches from North Africa to China. The Mandaeans in the south of present-day Iraq are the only Gnostic community surviving to this day; they venerate John the Baptist and regard Jesus as a pseudo-prophet.

Dualism and Its Shadings

Characteristic of the Gnosis is a metaphysical dualism. It ranges from the sharp separation of God and Demiurge, spirit and matter, to the more radical Manichaean teaching of two eternally opposed principles.

These dualistic structures continue to operate in the religious history of the West, among the Bogomils of Bulgaria, the Cathars of southern France (12th and 13th centuries), and in part within the Protestant theology of the depravity of the world.

Modern Reception

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Gnosis was taken up from various quarters. C. G. Jung saw in it a precursor of depth-psychological self-knowledge and commented extensively on the Pistis Sophia.

With Gnosis and the Late Antique Spirit (1934), Hans Jonas presented a standard study in the history of philosophy and highlighted an elective affinity with the existentialist experience of existence in the 20th century.

In esotericism, the Gnosis counts for many modern currents, from the Theosophical Society through Rudolf Steiner to contemporary movements, as a secret European counter-tradition to mainstream Christianity.

Esoteric Reception Today

In the current esotericism scene, Gnosis is often used as a general cipher for “experience-based spiritual knowledge beyond dogmatic religion.” This usage is sympathetic, but historically inaccurate. The ancient Gnosis is very concretely a dualistic doctrine of redemption with its own texts, rites and myths.

Anyone who takes it seriously in historical terms cannot avoid engaging with the original Nag Hammadi texts. Anyone who uses it only as a cipher is free to do so, but should not enlist the term for historical claims.

Distinctions

Gnosis is not identical with Hermeticism (even though both share late antique roots), not with Kabbalah (even though the Qliphoth doctrine sounds dualistic), not with Neoplatonism (which regards the world as the emanative self-communication of the One, not as a Demiurge’s error).

Anyone who reads “Gnostic” on a detail page should check which of the three spheres is meant.

Sources

• Hans Jonas: Gnosis und spätantiker Geist, Göttingen 1934/54 (standard work).
• James M. Robinson (ed.): The Nag Hammadi Library in English, Brill 4th ed. 1996.
• Kurt Rudolph: Die Gnosis. Wesen und Geschichte einer spätantiken Religion, Göttingen 1977.
• Christoph Markschies: Die Gnosis, Beck Wissen, Munich 2001.
• April D. DeConick: The Gnostic New Age, Columbia UP 2016.