Focus on Creation: Gnostics

In the first centuries CE various gnostic currents provide an explanation about the questions concerning human existence. A central idea in Gnosis is that man can be redeemed from his earthly existence when he becomes aware of his ultimately divine origin. This awareness enables him to return to the Good from which he comes. Gnostics believed that man was trapped in his earthly existence, and the world according to them was in consequence not created by a good God, but by an evil Demiurge (this was also one of the main controversies with the Christians).

In general it may be said that in the gnostic representation of world and cosmos there is a first divine principle (which in Platonic terms may also be termed 'the Good'), from which aeons or spiritual entities emanate (together they make up the Pleroma, or fullness of being). There is a hierarchy between these aeons, the lower ones not being aware of the higher ones. Although there are various gnostic creation myths in existence, they all share the premise that the material world is not a reflection of the higher world, as it is with the Platonists.

In one of the best known gnostic systems, that of Valentinus, the maker of the material world is again called the Demiurge, and the creation is a consequence of a rift within the aeons. Because one of the aeons, Sophia, longed for the divine primal cause, she brought forth the Demiurge, who in turn fashioned the material world. Particles of light from the spiritual world, however, became trapped in the material world in the process. The Gnostics believed that man, although part of the material world, may nevertheless be redeemed by remembering that there is a divine spark within him and within creation. Overcoming his forgetfulness of the spiritual World enables him to return to the One. A typically gnostic statement is that man is a mortal God, and God an immortal man: in other words, not 'I and thou' (God and man), but 'I am thou' (God is in man).

Until the discovery of Nag Hammadi gnostic works were known mostly because they had survived in the works of the Church Fathers, who quoted gnostic passages in order to refute them. It was not until 1945 that it was possible to study gnostic works integrally, and not only in the (prejudiced) polemical context of the Early Christian authors. These works make clear how important Gnosis, Knowledge, is: 'Consequently if one is a Gnostic, he is from above. If he is called, he is wont to heed, to respond, and to turn to Him who calls him, and go upward to Him' (Evangelium veritatis).

Mani (216-276), the founder of Manichaeism, was even more radical when it came to the problem of evil in the world and the evil world. According to Mani there were two principles, Light and Darkness, and three phases in the cosmological drama. Darkness tries to vanquish Light, but Light will conquer in the end and Darkness is exiled, although both principles continue to exist. The redemption of man begins when Adam awakens through the Redeemer, the son of God, who makes him aware of his divine origin. Manichaeism exerted a strong appeal, amongst others on Augustine, prior to his conversion by Ambrose of Milan.