Carpocration Gnosticism

In this article I would like to investigate one of the more bizarre forms of Gnostic Christianity, Carpocratianism. The early writers against the heresies spoke of them with such contempt that it just about boggles the mind. The Church accused the Carpocratians of such ungodly acts as incest, cannibalism, and obvious contempt for everything decent; many descriptions are marked as simply unspeakable. Consequently, the Carpocratians were considered the most despicable forms of heretic Gnosticism know in its period.

So why did the Orthodox Church leaders hold them in such contempt? What is it about the Carpocratians that so troubled the founders of the Church? Was their disdain warranted? Or were they merely misunderstood? We shall see.

Epiphanius wrote that Carpocrates, the founder of Carpocrationism, taught his believers to carry out every obscenity and undergo every particular sinful endeavor. They believed that the true God did not demonstrate concern in this material world, which was produced by less significant angels; therefore, He had no interest in mankind. This led them to suppose that this world was a chimera and had no true significance.

Carpocratians also taught a belief in reincarnation where the soul, upon death, traveled from body to body. Interestingly though, they also believed that Jesus was an unadulterated human being who was awakened by his baptism. While they did not believe Jesus to be divine, they did pursue his lead, in their point of view. It was understood that to break away from the condition of incarnation into the material was to merge with the True God, and that this is what Jesus was believed to inspire.

Carpocratians had an unusual way of accomplishing this nonetheless. They believed that one must live through everything possible, by way of every experience of the world. This, of course, included every aberrant act and form of debauchery. It is not exactly clear how corrupt they were; nonetheless, it is believed that they had shared wives, and no respect for private property. This would lead one to believe that they lived a most communal life. Perhaps they were simply the first hippies.

It is hard to know for sure what they were like because so much of our information concerning them comes from those who held them in disregard. It is possible that our history of them is based on his-story. It is also unknown to us on which scriptures or texts they based their faith; nevertheless I feel it safe to assume that they probably studied the heretical Gnostic scriptures, which probably led to the Orthodoxies interest and persecution. As we have seen, the term Gnostic is really an umbrella term used, originally by the Orthodox, to describe those they considered to be heretical.