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History of Philosophy
Heretical Systems
by Turner, William (S.T.D.)
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Of the heretical systems which sprang up during the first centuries of
the Christian era, Monarchianism, Arianism, and
Apollinarism belong exclusively to the history of theological
opinions. Gnosticism and Manicheism are of greatest
interest in the history of Patristic philosophy.
Sources. Besides the work entitled Pistis Sophia and a
few fragments, which constitute the entire body of original Gnostic
literature, we have the writings of Irenaeus and
Hippolytus. To these must be added the works of Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, St. Augustine, and the second of the
Enneads of Plotinus. For our knowledge of Manichean
doctrines we are indebted to the writings of St. Augustine.
Gnosticism. Cerinthus, ~~~~ainus, Marcion, Carpocrates,
Basilides, and Valentinus, all of whom flourished during the
second century, were the principal teachers of the Gnostic doctrine.
Dissatisfied with the explanation which the Christian religion had to
offer on such questions as the origin of evil and the nature of man,
the Gnostics turned to pagan philosophy for a solution of these and
other problems. But, while they thus made reason the basis and
criterion of all truth, they were not willing to set aside altogether
the authority of Christ's teaching. They had recourse, therefore, to
the theory that Christ, besides the exoteric doctrines which He
imparted to all His listeners, committed to His chosen disciples a
higher esoteric doctrine, which constitutes the true essence of
Christian teaching. This esoteric doctrine, gnôsis is the
alleged source of all that the Gnostics taught.
In point of fact, the Gnostic teaching is a mixture of the philosophies
of Philo and Plotinus with certain elements of Christianity. The
Gnostics maintained the essential antithesis of the spiritual and the
material; the origin, by emanation from God, of numberless
aeons, the sum of which is the pleroma; and the final
return of all things to God by a universal redemption. They
recognized no mystery in the Christian sense of the word, the gnosis
being the merest subterfuge, and human reason the really ultimate test
of all truth, supernatural as well as natural.
Manicheism. This sect was founded by Manes, a Persian,
who in the third century became a Christian and sought to introduce
into Christian theology and philosophy the Parsee conception of the
dualism of God and Matter. There is no doubt that his followers, in
developing the teachings of the founder of the sect, were influenced to
a large extent by the Gnostic dualism, and laid claim, as the Gnostics
did, to a special gnosis. They concerned themselves chiefly with
the problem of evil, assuming the existence of two eternal
principles, the one essentially good and the other essentially evil,
and deriving from the latter all the evil, physical and moral, which
exists in the world. They maintained that from the good principle there
emanated, in the first place, primeval man, who was the first to enter
into the struggle with evil; in the next place the Spirit of Life, who
rescued primeval man from the powers of darkness; finally the
World-Soul, Christ, the Son of primeval man, who restored to man the
light which he had lost in the struggle with darkness. They
distinguished in man two souls -- the soul that animates the body,
and the soul of light, which is part of the World-Soul, Christ. The
former is the creation of the powers of darkness, the latter is an
emanation from light itself. Thus, man's soul is a battlefield on which
light and darkness are at war, as they are in the universe. Human
action depends on the outcome of the contest: there is no freedom of
choice. All matter is evil and the cause of evil.
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