We'll close today with some of the more interesting heresies of the period (as though Origen's ideas weren't heretical enough). The Gnostics were the first and most serious intellectual threat to early Christianity. They believed that knowledge (gnosis) rather than faith (pistis) is the means to God and salvation. We know much more about them than we once did, thanks to the 1945 discovery of the Nag-Hammadi Library in upper Egypt. This large jar contained a fifth-century Gnostic library with thirteen books, forty-eight writings, and 700 pages of material.

Gnostics saw matter as essentially evil, and the realm of the spirit as good. They were strongly anti-Semitic, though they believed in the supreme being of the Jews. They posited a female deity named "Sophia" (from "wisdom") as the mother goddess, and believed that "eons" separate good from evil. Their system proceeds downward from Depth/Silence to Mind/Truth, thirty "eons" (of whom Christ is the last), Word/Life, Men/Church, and twelve more "eons" (Sophia is the last). Sophia had a miscarriage, resulting in the Demiurgos, and the Demiurgos made the universe. Why hasn't some science fiction writer picked up on this stuff?

The Gnostics were just getting started as the New Testament era was drawing to its close. Their separation of spirit from material and God from mankind was manifested by some in the argument that the earthly Jesus took on the divine Christ spirit at his baptism, and lost him at his crucifixion. Paul apparently is fighting Gnosticism in Colossians 1.15-23, and John in 1 John 1.1-4.

was a second opponent of early Christianity. Arius, a presbyter of the church in Alexandria, denied that the Christian shares God's nature. He taught that Christ is the logos of God, but denied that divinity was incarnate in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This attempt to preserve biblical monotheism at the expense of biblical Christology was rejected by the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325.

(from Pelagius, a monk of British birth who lived in Rome, early 5th century A.D.) insisted on our total freedom of choice. This argument against total depravity was counted effectively by Augustine, as we'll see in the next chapter.

(from the sect of Mani) argued for a metaphysical dualism with God as good but finite, limited by the power of Satan. Satan created the material world, captured man's free spirit, and imprisoned it in the body, there to suffer for sins committed in a previous existence. We can be redeemed only by severely ascetic discipline.

Augustine was right--there is a "God-shaped emptiness" in each of us. The religious philosophers we've surveyed in this chapter have each attempted to fill it. But any jigsaw puzzle solver knows that the wrong piece won't fit into the right hole. Next week we'll find some pieces that still work for our souls today.

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