Appendix 7

Oxford Dictionary of English (2010): “Gnosticism, a prominent heretical movement of the 2nd-century Christian Church, partly of pre-Christian origin. Gnostic doctrine taught that the world was created and ruled by a lesser divinity, the demiurge, and that Christ was an emissary of the remote supreme divine being, esoteric knowledge (gnosis) of whom enabled the redemption of the human spirit.”

Encarta 2007 Encyclopedia: “Gnosticism, esoteric reli­gious move­ment that flourished during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD and pres­ented a major challenge to orthodox Christianity. Most Gnostic sects professed Christianity, but their beliefs sharply diverged from those of the majority of Christians in the early church (see Heresy). The term gnosticism is de­rived from the Greek word gnosis (‘revealed know­ledge’). To its adher­ents, Gnosticism promised a secret knowledge of the divine realm. Sparks or seeds of the Divine Being fell from this tran­scendent realm into the material universe, which is wholly evil, and were impri­soned in human bodies. Reawak­ened by knowledge, the div­ine element in hum­an­ity can re­turn to its proper home in the trans­cendent spiritual realm.” (“Gnosti­cism,” para­graph 1, Encarta 2007)

The term ὁμοούσιος (homoousios) had been used before its adoption by the Nicene theology. The Gnostics were the first theologians to use the word homoousios, while before the Gnostics there is no trace at all of its existence.[3] The early church theologians were probably made aware of this concept, and thus of the doctrine of emanation, by the Gnostics.[4] In Gnostic texts the word homoousios is used with these meanings: (1) identity of substance between generating and generated; (2) identity of substance be­tween things gener­ated of the same sub­stance; (3) identity of substance between the partners of a syzygy. For exam­ple, Basilides, the first known Gnostic thinker to use homoousios in the first half of the 2nd century, speaks of a threefold sonship consub­stantial with the god who is not. [5] The Valentinian Gnostic Ptolemy claims in his letter to Flora that it is the nature of the good God to beget and bring forth only beings similar to, and consubstantial with himself. [6] Homoousios was already in current use by the 2nd-century Gnostics, and through their works it became known to the orthodox heresiologists, though this Gnostic use of the term had no reference to the specific relationship between Father and Son, as is the case in the Nicene Creed.