A Source Book for Ancient Church History. Joseph Cullen Ayer

more or less according to their earlier philosophical or religious conceptions; e.g., the apologists within the Church used the philosophical Logos doctrine. In this way arose numerous interpretations of Christian teaching and perversions of that teaching, some not at all in harmony with the generally received tradition. These discordant interpretations or perversions [pg 076] are the heretical movements of the second century. They varied in every degree of departure from the generally accepted Christian tradition. Some, like the earlier Gnostics (§ 21), and even the greater Gnostic systems (§ 22), at least in their esoteric teaching, show that their principal inspiration was other than Christian; others, as the Gnosticism of Marcion (§ 23) and the enthusiastic sect of the Montanists (§ 25), seem to have built largely upon exaggerated Christian tenets, contained, indeed, in the New Testament, but not fully appreciated by the majority of Christians; or still others, as the Encratites (§ 24), laid undue stress upon what was generally recognized as an element of Christian morality.

      The principal source materials for the history of Gnosticism and other heresies of this chapter may be found collected and provided with commentary in Hilgenfeld, Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums, Leipsic, 1884.

      § 21. The Earlier Gnostics: Gnosticism in General

      Gnosticism is a generic name for a vast number of syncretistic religious systems prevalent, especially in the East, both before and after the Christian era. For the most part the movement was outside of Christianity, and was already dying out when Christianity appeared. It derived its essential features from Persian and Babylonian sources and was markedly dualistic. As it spread toward the West, it adopted many Western elements, making use of Christian ideas and terms and Greek philosophical concepts. Modified by such new matter, it obtained a renewed lease of life. In proportion as the various schools of Gnosticism became more influenced by Christian elements, they were more easily confused with [pg 077] Christianity, and accordingly more dangerous to it. Among such were the greater schools of Basilides and Valentinus (see next section). The doctrines of Gnosticism were held by many who were nominally within the Church. The tendency of the Gnostics and their adherents was to form little coteries and to keep much of their teaching secret from those who were attracted by their more popular tenets. The esoteric element seems to have been the so-called “systems” in which the fanciful and mythological element in Gnosticism appears. This, as being the most vulnerable part of the Gnostic teaching, was attacked most bitterly by the opponents of heresy. There are no extant writings of the earlier Gnostics, Simon, Menander, or Cerinthus. They are known only from Christian opponents.

      Sources for the history of Gnosticism: The leading sources are the Church Fathers Irenæus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria (all translated in ANF), Origen (in part only translated in ANF), and Epiphanius. The accounts of these bitter enemies must necessarily be used with caution. They contain, however, numerous fragments from Gnostic writings. The fragments in the ante-Nicene Fathers may be found in A. Hilgenfeld, op. cit., in Greek, with commentary. For the literary remains of Gnosticism, see Krüger, §§ 22–31. The more accessible are: Acts of Thomas (best Greek text by Bonnet, Leipsic, 1903, German translation with excellent commentary in E. Hennecke, Neutestamentliche Apokryphen, Tübingen and Leipsic, 1904); Ptolemæus, Epistle to Flora (in Epiphanius, Panarion, Hær. XXXIII); Hymn of the Soul, from the Acts of Thomas (text and English translation by Bevan in Text and Studies, V, 3, Cambridge, 1897, also translated in F. C. Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity, N. Y., 1904).

      (a) Tertullian, De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, 7. (MSL, 2:21.)

       A wide-spread opinion that Gnosticism was fundamentally a perversion of Christianity finds its most striking expression in the phrase of Harnack that it was “the acute secularizing or Hellenizing of Christianity” [pg 078] (History of Dogma, English translation, I, 226). The foundation for this representation is the later Gnosticism, which took over many Christian and Greek elements, and the opinion of Tertullian that Gnosticism and Greek philosophy discussed the same questions and held the same opinions. (Cf. the thesis of Hippolytus in his Philosophumena, or the Refutation of All Heresies; see the Proemium, ANF, V, 9 f., and especially bk. VII.) Tertullian, although retaining unconsciously the impress of his former Stoicism, was violently opposed to philosophy, and in his denunciation of heresy felt that it was a powerful argument against the Gnostics to show similarities between their teaching and the Greek philosophy he so heartily detested. It is a brilliant work and may be taken as a fair specimen of Tertullian's style.

      These are the doctrines of men and of demons born of the spirit of this world's wisdom, for itching ears; and the Lord, calling this foolishness, chose the foolish things of this world to the confusion of philosophy itself. For philosophy is the material of the world's wisdom, the rash interpreter of the nature and dispensation of God. Indeed, heresies themselves are instigated by philosophy. From this source came the eons, and I know not what infinite forms, and the trinity of man in the system of Valentinus; he was of Plato's school. From this source came Marcion's better god with all his tranquillity; he came of the Stoics. Then again the opinion that the soul dies is held by the Epicureans. The denial of the resurrection of the body is taken from the united schools of all philosophers. When matter is made equal to God, you have the teaching of Zeno; and when anything is alleged touching a fiery god, then Heraclitus comes in. The same subject-matter is discussed over and over again by the heretics and the philosophers; the same arguments are involved. Whence and wherefore is evil? Whence and how has come man? Besides these there is the question which Valentinus has very recently proposed, Whence comes God?

      (b) Irenæus, Adv. Hær., I, 23. (MSG, 7:670.)

       Simon Magus. For additional source material, see Justin Martyr, Apol. I, 26, 56, Dial. c. Tryph., 120; Hippolytus, Ref. VI, 72 f. The appearance of Simon in the pseudo-Clementine literature (translated in ANF, VIII), presents an interesting historical problem. The [pg 079] present condition of investigation is given in the article “Clementine Literature” by J. V. Bartlett, in Encyc. Brit., eleventh ed.

      Simon the Samaritan, that magician of whom Luke, the disciple and follower of the Apostles, says: “But there was a certain man, Simon by name,” etc. [Acts 8:9–11, 20, 21, 23.] Since he did not put his faith in God a whit more, he set himself eagerly to contend against the Apostles, in order that he himself might seem to be a wonderful being, and studied with still greater zeal the whole range of magic art, that he might the better bewilder the multitude of men. Such was his procedure in the reign of Claudius Cæsar, by whom also he is said to have been honored with a statue on account of his magic. This man, then, was glorified by many as a god, and he taught that it was he himself who appeared among the Jews as the Son, but descended in Samaria as the Father, while he came to other nations in the character of the Holy Spirit. He represented himself as the loftiest of all powers, that it is he who is over all as the Father, and he allowed himself to be called whatsoever men might name him.

      Now this Simon of Samaria, from whom all heresies derive their origin, has as the material for his sect the following: Having redeemed from slavery at Tyre, a city of Phœnicia, a certain woman named Helena,38 a prostitute, he was in the habit of carrying her about with him, declaring that she was the first conception [Ennœa] of his mind, the mother of all, by whom he conceived in his mind to make the angels and archangels. For this Ennœa, leaping forth from him and comprehending the will of her father, descended to the lower regions and generated angels and powers, by whom, also, he declared this world was made. But after she had generated them she was detained by them through jealousy, because they were unwilling that they should be regarded as the progeny of any other being. As to himself, he was wholly unknown to them, but his Ennœa was detained by those powers and [pg 080] angels who had been produced by her. She suffered all kinds of contumely from them, so that she could not return upward to her father, but was even shut up in a human body and for ages passed in succession from one female body to another, as from one vessel to another vessel. She was in that Helen on whose account the Trojan War was undertaken; wherefore also Stesichorus was struck blind, because he cursed her in his poems; but afterward, when he had repented and written those verses which are called palinodes, in which he sung her praises, he saw once more. Thus passing from body to body and suffering insults in every one of them, she at last became a common prostitute;