1. Secret Knowledge : Gnostics taught that they had secret knowledge about the true message of Jesus and of Christianity, and that attaining this secret knowledge is what leads to salvation. The following two points summarize the basic ideas of this secret teaching.

2. Evil Creation : Gnostics taught that the physical world was inherently evil. Today, we recognize Adam and Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit as the point where things went wrong. The gnostics, though, believed that the very moment of creation is where things went wrong. Because physical matter is lower and more base than higher spiritual essences, their contention was that the physical world was a deceptive prison. This led them to teach that the natural order of the outer world was designed to trap people into ignoring the true source of truth, their inner, spiritual self. This idea also led them to deny a future bodily resurrection.

3. God in us : Gnostics taught that each individual person was a fragment of God, each carrying a divine spark inside of them. One’s goal, then, would be to listen to the guidance of this divine spark to recognize and escape the evils of the world. So, in their eyes, the physical world is evil but the spiritual/inner world of people is good.

For the gnostics, this combined into a worldview marked by a few interconnected ideas. They maintained a sharp division between the inward/spiritual and the outward/physical, which led them to define their identity by looking inwardly to their divine spark. They also sought to escape the world as a means of salvation, since the physical world was evil and designed to deceive and trap people with its lies. This also led to elitism, where those who attained this secret knowledge were seen as more enlightened than the rest.

Pay close attention to this divide between the physical and spiritual, as it is fundamental in the overlap between Gnosticism and the modern Western worldview that we will explore. Christians recognize that we are creatures, designed by a good God, who created a good world. As such, God as the Creator is also the one who is the source of ultimate truth and morality, rather than one’s own inward perceptions. This biblical perspective was anathema to ancient gnostics and it remains anathema to the modern gnostics who cannot countenance the idea that anything outside themselves has authority over them.

Having explored these ideas, a foundation has been laid to see how this 2nd century heresy is shockingly present in our own day, which we will explore in part 2.