Christian Gnosticism

Christian Gnosticism

What set them apart?

Upon discovering the Gnostics I was vastly intrigued. Here was a group of early Christians that had a vastly different belief structure to anything I had ever heard of. The intrigue I felt also stemmed from the fact that much of what they believed produced a narrative with fewer plot holes than what we’re given in the Bible and mainstream Christianity.

But why had I never heard of them? It turns out they were instrumental in the creation of the early church in the first few centuries and were listed as Christians right alongside other groups of the time by early historians. But eventually, a schism occurred, they were expelled from the church, and the “proto-orthodox” church destroyed nearly all of their writings. Centuries later the church would lead a crusade against some of the survivors killing an estimated million devotees during the middle ages.

If it weren’t for the writings of critics, and the eventual discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, we wouldn’t even know about these groups, or what they believed.

So what did they believe?

There were numerous different sects with vastly different detailed doctrines, but for the purposes of this article, I’m going to stick to a more broad description.