How Does Gnosticism Differ From Orthodox Christianity?

Early Christianity typically portrays the world as God’s good creation which has been ruined by human sin and now is being restored by Jesus’ death and resurrection. In contrast, much Gnosticism views the world as the creation of some lesser (even malevolent) being and tries to achieve salvation through the means of secret knowledge (gnosis) that releases a divine spark or piece from within it. In practice, that means that in Christianity Jesus is the savior of humanity while in some forms of Gnosticism he is the revealer of secret knowledge. In some views of matter in the world, Christianity teaches that it is good while in Gnosticism it is corrupt. Finally, the authority in Gnosticism is usually found outside the normal parameters of the community of believers and the Christian scriptures, in secret teachings.

So where do the Gnostic texts start to differ from Christianity? Well, a lot of the Gnostic texts contain long descriptions of various mythical beings (e.g. the Sophia, the pleroma, the archons) but they can give the impression that they’re describing a personal experience or gaining special knowledge in order to be saved. Gnostic Christianity contrasts with orthodox in its understanding of the nature of the Christ event, the role of the Church and the sacraments and in terms of the texts which are regarded as authoritative. A good example of this are the texts found in the Nag Hammadi library. These contrast sharply with the Gospels in terms of how Jesus and his mission are portrayed – reading a single excerpt from the library alongside a Gospel is like being presented with two quite different genres of literature that will aid your journey to spiritual truth.

Christianity has so many different fascinating belief systems in the early centuries. Gnosticism is kind of like a weird, half-forgotten comic book plot twist off the normal Christianity storyline. One of the biggest points of distinction with respect to source of truth and goodness between Orthodox Christianity and Gnosticism is the single benevolent Creator God of Christianity who makes the world intentionally and calls it good, even though it’s been messed up by humanity. In contrast, the majority of Gnostic belief systems portray reality in terms of two separate entities: the transcendent, unknowable, higher Fullness or pleroma, and the lesser creator God, often referred to as the demiurge, of the physical world which is perceived to be fundamentally flawed and even evil. Salvation in Gnosticism typically occurs as a human being attains knowledge of the true nature of reality in order to awake the divine spark or potential that is currently latent and prisoned within the individual. This contrasts with Orthodox Christianity where the source of salvation is the historic events of the life of Jesus the Christ, which bring about reconciliation of humanity to the Creator God through grace which is received by means of faith.

This viewpoint finds clear analogy with the idea that Christ, as the revealer of the Fullness, transmits a secret wisdom that will free the little spark inherent in each human being from the trap of the world. For this reason some Gnostic texts deal above all with the Christic appearance of the Lord, without much attention to the historical facts of his suffering and death (it could even be said that he is portrayed in a docetic light). However, the early Church’s Christology, certainly as expressed in the early Creedal statements, firmly attested to the historicity of Christ’s human nature and his real suffering and death for the salvation of humanity. Also the basis for the different perceptions of authority and of the canon of Scripture are quite clear. On the one hand the early orthodox Churches defined a closed canon of Scripture and set up an institutional Church to safeguard the correct content of the Christian message of salvation; on the other hand the different groups of Gnostics revered their own, often very different, alternative writings and in some cases also esoteric ways of teaching and experience above all else. As is well known, the most famous collection of such alternative Christian writings was discovered in the ‘Nag Hammadi library’ in Egypt.

Historically, Christianity included many Gnostic groups, some of which are more easily compared to Christianity than others (not least because there was considerable diversity between Valentinians, Sethians, etc. and also because the early church fathers were keen to mark out boundaries against them in various ways). So, for example, His Dark Materials is full of a metaphorical ‘lower’ and ‘upper’ worlds. The Matrix is a straightforward ‘reality is not what it seems’ type story. A nice read of early church refutations and denunciations of Gnosticism in combination with some Gnostic texts will show you how these people and their debates contributed to what eventually became the mainstream Christian tradition and continue to have their fascinations within it today.