Heretics
 The church did not approve of people turning to
philosophy as a path to understanding faith
 The beliefs that were not consistent with the
Christian orthodox (correct teaching) understanding
of faith were viewed as heresy
 Orthodox means correct teaching
 Heresy: an opinion or doctrine contrary to church
dogma
 Christians (against Gnostics) destroyed Gnostic writings
 In the middle of the 20th century Gnostic writings were
discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt
 Until the discovery of these writings, we had only the
accounts of the early Church Fathers
 Gnostic beliefs caused much
tension within the Christian
community because:
 Tore apart what many Christians saw
as their basic beliefs
 Tossing out the idea that Jesus’ death
leads to salvation
 Overturned the traditional Christian
understanding of the gospel stories
 Change the Christian story into the sort of
myth found in all those mystery religions
 Made the God of the Jews into a being
that was at the very least deluded
 Made creation a bad thing
The Great Heresy: the World and God
 Beyond earth there is the Plenora

The divine realm of spiritual
fullness, and the emanation of the
various aeons that inhabit it
 Sophia:
 The youngest of the aeons
 Was not content
 Did not rebel against God but
Her curiosity and desire led her
to fall away
Sophia & Eve
 Compare to Eve
 Curious
 Ate the forbidden fruit = knowledge
 For Gnostics, Eve did the right
thing
 There was not a garden but a
prison
 The creator God was not a wise, allloving God, but an ignorant, halfmad craftsman
 The fall was not committed by man
and is not a punishment for
disobedience
 Mankind is not cursed with the
burden of original sin but is merely
asleep to its true nature
The Great Heresy: how the God of the
Hebrews came to exist according to
Gnostics
 Sophia conceived and her child is
called Yaldabaoth = demiurge
 Yaldabaoth (Demiurge)
Knew nothing of God - true God
Knew nothing about the Pleroma
above
Knew nothing about his mother
Thinking he was the only god, he
created the material world and
declared it good
 In comparison to the Plenora, it was a
shadow composed of gross matter
 Since the demiurge could
not create life, he trapped
sparks of the divine
 Redeemers: have been sent
from the Pleroma to bring
teachings which illuminate
the situation in which
mankind finds itself (Jesus
was a redeemer)
 These teachings can lead
to direct gnosis with the
Pleroma
Gnosis vs. Faith
 Gnostics emphasized gnosis (knowledge)
rather than faith
 Gnosis: saves, redeems, and provides
liberation
 Jesus was the savior and redeemer by
bringing knowledge of the universe and
humans’ true place within it
 Faith: faith in Christ, in his crucifixion and
resurrection and his status as the son of
God, the savior and redeemer of humanity
 Due to these teachings, the
leaders of the Christian
communities decided they needed
to deal with these issues before
they became more widespread
 Church leaders decided to:
 Choose which of the many
writings about Jesus should
be included in the canon
 Established creeds to ensure
that everyone in the Church
agreed on the basics of faith