The Gnostics: What Were Their Most Important Beliefs?

The Gnostics believed that Christ came to teach, not to suffer. We attain salvation not through faith but through knowledge. But, not everyone can receive the teachings. (Personal aside: the Gnostics always seem a little snobbish to me.) The Gnostics say that many are intoxicated, lost in darkness and ignorance, but few can "wake up." The Gnostics used the image of the rooster, the first to see and proclaim the light of day. (Again, I don't imagine Gnostic roosters crow very much.)

Many Gnostic teachers hailed from Alexandria, Egypt, which was a sort of southern California of its day, with quite an assortment of offbeat religions, flakes, fads, and fakers. Many Alexandrian teachers did not read a text literally but read it mythologically, symbolically, to find the spiritual meaning back of the text. Orthodox Christians had trouble with this. When they read Gnostic texts with their lush imagery and wild mythology, they were shocked.

With the Gnostics' distrust of matter and their conviction that there is a higher knowledge that most of us do not see, it is doubtful that they read even their own texts literally. Some Christians today struggle to understand the truth behind the stories of the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of the body, without accepting the literal truth of those events, but there are other Christians who will never accept such speculation.

Gnostic books cannot be read literally. Some books teach that there are two gods or many gods. The creator god of the Old Testament, obviously, is a bad god, because he created all this corrupt matter. And there are other books and more gods, more visions and images and myths that are not literally true but that communicate truths.

Probably the greatest single gift from the Gnostics, which we lost by losing their tradition in the Church, is their view of the role of women. There is a spiritual being in Gnostic thinking called Sophia, the personification of divine wisdom. And Sophia is feminine. So, women are not considered frail, over-emotional, second-rate beings, blamed for eating the primal apple. Instead, Gnostics honored women as the manifestation of Wisdom.

Just as there is some connection between the Christ and the physical person Jesus, so is there a connection between Sophia and Miriam of Magdala (Mary Magdalene). In some Gnostic texts, there is an explicit association of Jesus and Mary. According to the Gospel of Philip, Jesus "used to kiss her often on her mouth."

Gnostics and Gnosticism: A Guide for Teachers and Students:Read it.

Who Were They? Read it.

How Do We Know About Them, and Why Should We Care? Read it.

Who Did They Believe Jesus/Christ Is? Read it.

What Were Their Sources for Authority? Read it.

The Gospel of Thomas: Read it.

Read my articles about variations of Christianity here.