Subtitle: 3 Big Differences

Excerpt: Gnosticism and Christianity differ in beliefs about salvation and the nature of God.

Author: Zack Duncan

In many ways, the two belief systems seem similar.

They both affirm that humans need salvation and believe that Jesus is central in addressing that problem.

But as we dig deeper, we see that the Gnosticism sharply diverges from the regula fidei that defined the orthodox Christian faith for the early Jesus movement.

This week we’ll look at three more differences:

• What happened on the Cross?
• What’s up with the body of Jesus?
• Who is God in the Old Testament?

What Happened on the Cross?

The Christian believes that salvation is an external rescue. It’s a redemption that can only come through God’s grace and faith in Jesus Christ.

The Gnostic says that salvation comes from the inside. It’s through apprehending secret wisdom that the inner divine spark is freed.

That’s why the early Gnostics and Christians saw very different things when they viewed the Cross of Christ.

The Christian View

For the Christian, the Cross was where Jesus completed His earthly ministry and where the eternal salvation plan was made manifest.

In freely dying and then living again, Jesus broke the power of sin, Satan, and death. He did something no one else could do and calls us to believe and follow Him.

And when that happens, a Christian lives into a new identity “in Christ.” Here’s how Paul puts that in his second epistle to the Corinthians:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” [2 Corinthians 5:17]

As a new creation, the Christian then participates in life, continually being remade into the image of Jesus. None of it because of individual merit, but because of Jesus.

For the Gnostic, the Cross didn’t make sense in the same way.

Gnostics on the Cross

The Gnostics believed that spiritual ignorance, not sin, is the problem humans face.

So they don’t believe that Jesus came to cancel the power of sin for humanity.

Instead, they said He came to point the way to divine wisdom. They viewed Jesus as a divine messenger bringing divine knowledge (gnosis) to free the inner spiritual spark trapped within people.

The Gnostics didn’t ignore the Cross from the Gospel narrative. They just dramatically reframed it.

Here’s what two of their early leaders taught about the Cross.

• Basilides taught his followers that Jesus ascended to Heaven before dying. He said that Jesus transformed Simon of Cyrene (the man who carried the Cross) to look like Jesus. Then, Simon was crucified in the place of Jesus while Jesus stood by laughing before He ascended to Heaven.¹ Interestingly, this is very similar to what Muslims believe (see below).²

and for boasting, “We killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.” But they neither killed nor crucified him — it was only made to appear so. Even those who argue for this ˹crucifixion˺ are in doubt. They have no knowledge whatsoever — only making assumptions. They certainly did not kill him. [Surah An-Nisa — 157–158, quran.com]

• Valentinus believed that Jesus was a physical man and that the divine Christ descended upon Him at baptism. This heavenly Christ ascended back into Heaven before the crucifixion, so Christ never experienced death. The crucifixion was the event through which Christ brought gnosis to humanity.³

The Basilidean and Valentinian ideas were different but shared a common core:

They both point to something called “docetism,” a belief common to most of the Gnostics.

Gnosticism is Generally Docetist

The word “docetist” comes from the Greek word dókēsis which means an apparition, an appearance, or a phantom.⁴

Docetists believed that Jesus did not have a physical body that was incarnated, suffered in the flesh, and rose again from the dead.

His was a spiritual body that appeared to be fully human but was not material or corruptible.

Here are some other prominent Gnostic and Gnostic-connected viewpoints and what they believed about the body of Jesus.

• Saturninus had a more radical Docetic view than Valentinus. He taught that Christ was without a birth or a body and only seemed (like a “phantom”) to be a man.⁵
• The Manicheans, who didn’t appear until the third century, had similar views to Saturninus and also denied that Christ had a physical body.
• Cerinthus, a 1st-century Gnostic from Asia Minor, taught Jesus was a man who had the divine “Christ-Aeon” descend on him at his baptism. This Christ-Aeon departed Jesus before the crucifixion, leaving the human Jesus to suffer alone.
• The Gospel of Judas has the same general “adoptionist” idea as Cerinthus.⁶
• The Gospel of Peter was condemned by the Church Fathers for suggesting that Jesus did not suffer on the Cross in the flesh.⁷
• According to Church Fathers like Irenaeus and Ignatius of Antioch, Simon Magus from the book of Acts had Docetist beliefs.

Docetism is incompatible with a regula fidei that emphasizes how Jesus was “made flesh” for our salvation.

Another difference is even more stark: The belief in “one God, the Father Almighty.”

Gnostics Reject the God of the Old Testament

Marcion of Sinope (~85–160 AD) was an early thinker who had much in common with the Gnostics.⁸

Much of what he said superficially sounds similar to the Christian faith. A Marcionite would have said that salvation comes from faith in a loving God revealed by Jesus.

But a closer inspection would disclose that he held a very different view of that God than the Christian.

Because Marcion did not believe Yahweh was the supreme God.

He believed there was a greater Supreme Being who was good. And that this Supreme Being sent Jesus to oppose the “God” of the Old Testament.

Marcion referred to the God of the Old Testament as the Demiurge.

It was a term first used by Plato hundreds of years before to describe his views of the “craftsman” who created the material universe. Unlike Plato’s benevolent Demiurge, the Gnostics believed in a flawed creator who created a flawed material world and wanted to keep humanity trapped in it.

Major themes in the Hebrew Scriptures, like obedience and repentance, were similarly repudiated. For Marcion, salvation meant freedom from all connections to the law.

Gnostic texts like the Testimony of Truth interpret the serpent in the Garden not as evil, but as a benevolent help for humanity.⁹

In fact, it was the God of the Old Testament who was the enemy, according to such a view!

But what sort is this God? First he maliciously refused Adam from eating of the tree of knowledge, and, secondly, he said “Adam, where are you?” God does not have foreknowledge? Would he not know from the beginning? And afterwards, he said, “Let us cast him out of this place, lest he eat of the tree of life and live forever.” Surely, he has shown himself to be a malicious grudger! [The Testimony of Truth, gnosis.org]

Some of the Gnostics believed that this Demiurge was “only” ignorant and not fully evil. Either way, it’s a massive contrast to the Bible. And they all held the same view that the “Old Testament God” was opposed to Jesus.

So it’s not a surprise that the Gnostics had very different holy texts than the Christians.

Marcion proposed a Biblical canon that included a slimmed-down version of the Gospel of Luke and 10 of Paul’s edited epistles. All references to the Old Testament were removed.¹⁰

Gone were all connections to obedience, repentance, and redemption through suffering.

To be fair, there were Gnostics who believed that the Old Testament had some veiled secrets that revealed Gnostic truths.

But these were very different from what an orthodox Christian would see as the truth.

For example, the Orthodox Christian view of Abel and Cain in Genesis 4 shows a righteous servant of God who becomes a victim and the murderous jealous brother who kills him.

The Gnostic view is that these two plus Adam’s other named son, Seth, show the 3 different “types” of humans.

• Abel is rational and righteous
• Cain is irrational and materialistic.
• Seth is spiritual and enlightened (some Gnostics believed that the “divine spark” was only contained in the line of Seth)¹¹

One thing all Gnostics held in common: none believed that Yahweh’s Messianic prophecies were actually pointing to Jesus.

An Early Christian Response to Gnosticism

John the Evangelist pushed back hard against the influence of Gnosticism.

He affirmed the orthodox Christian viewpoint of the Cross in his Gospel account.

The Cross was where Jesus was “lifted up” and made eternal life available to humanity through what He suffered.

14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. [John 3: 14–17]

He rejected Docetism in 1 John.

His words make it clear that there was active debate about whether Jesus truly was fully human.

John writes the “spirit of the antichrist” was behind any denial that Jesus had come with flesh and blood:

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. [1 John 4: 1–3]

And does the same in 2 John:

7 I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. [2 John 1: 7]

And he repudiates the idea that there is any animosity between the God of the Old Testament and Jesus.

On the contrary, he affirms that Jesus is Himself this God:

18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. [John 1:18]

The orthodox Christian, holding to the regula fidei (below), would have found the same confirmation in the Hebrew Scriptures.

…this faith: in one God, the Father Almighty, who made the heaven and the earth and the seas and all the things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was made flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who made known through the prophets the plan of salvation, and the coming, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily ascension into heaven of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and his future appearing from heaven in the glory of the Father to sum up all things and to raise anew all flesh of the whole human race… [Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.X.1]¹²

Wrapping Up

Is humanity’s real problem sin, or is it spiritual ignorance?

If the problem is spiritual ignorance, as the Gnostics claimed, the orthodox Christian view is all backwards.

• The serpent isn’t a deceiver but is good.
• Yahweh isn’t the supreme and good God but the opposite.
• Suffering isn’t something God can redeem but is something to escape.
• Salvation doesn’t come by grace through faith, but through divine knowledge.

We see the same words and stories as Christianity, but they are flipped upside down.

But if we truly can’t save ourselves and need external salvation as the orthodox Christian believes, the Gnostic claims are all wrong.

God is still good. The devil is still the bad guy. Jesus came to save humanity because we can’t save ourselves.

For early Christians like Irenaeus, applying the rule of faith helped sort through the confusion.

And here’s one more bonus tip that flies in the face of Gnosticism: the name of Jesus means Yahweh saves.

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