The Gnostic Gospels (Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Books)

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Whose Church Is the “True Church”?

FOR NEARLY 2,000 years, Christian tradition has preserved and revered orthodox writings that denounce the gnostics, while suppressing—and virtually destroying—the gnostic writings themselves. Now, for the first time, certain texts discovered at Nag Hammadi reveal the other side of the coin: how gnostics denounced the orthodox.¹ The Second Treatise of the Great Seth polemicizes against orthodox Christianity, contrasting it with the “true church” of the gnostics. Speaking for those he calls the sons of light, the author says:

… we were hated and persecuted, not only by those who are ignorant [pagans], but also by those who think they are advancing the name of Christ, since they were unknowingly empty, not knowing who they are, like dumb animals.²

The Savior explains that such persons made an imitation of the true church, “having proclaimed a doctrine of a dead man and lies, so as to resemble the freedom and purity of the perfect church (ekklesia)”³ Such teaching, he charges, reconciles its adherents to fear and slavery, encouraging them to subject themselves to the earthly representatives of the world creator, who, in his “empty glory,” declares, “I am God, and there is no other beside me.”⁴ Such persons persecute those who have achieved liberation through gnosis, attempting to lead them astray from “the truth of their freedom.”⁵

The Apocalypse of Peter describes, as noted before, catholic Christians as those who have fallen “into an erroneous name and into the hand of an evil, cunning man, with a teaching in a multiplicity of forms,”⁶ allowing themselves to be ruled heretically. For, the author adds, they

blaspheme the truth and proclaim evil teaching. And they will say evil things against each other.… many others … who oppose the truth and are the messengers of error … set up their error … against these pure thoughts of mine …⁷

The author takes each of the characteristics of the catholic church as evidence that this is only an imitation church, a counterfeit, a “sisterhood” that mimics the true Christian brotherhood. Such Christians, in their blind arrogance, claim exclusive legitimacy: “Some who do not understand mystery speak of things which they do not understand, but they will boast that the mystery of the truth belongs to them alone.”⁸ Their obedience to bishops and deacons indicates that they “bow to the judgment of the leaders.”⁹ They oppress their brethren, and slander those who attain gnosis.

The Testimony of Truth attacks ecclesiastical Christians as those who say “we are Christians,” but “who [do not know who] Christ is.”¹⁰ But this same author goes on to attack other gnostics as well, including the followers of Valentinus, Basilides, and Simon, as brethren who are still immature. Another of the Nag Hammadi texts, the Authoritative Teaching, intends to demolish all teaching, especially orthodox teaching, that the author considers unauthoritative. Like Irenaeus—but diametrically opposed—he says of “those who contend with us, being adversaries,”¹¹ that they are “dealers in bodies,”¹² senseless, ignorant, worse than pagans, because they have no excuse for their error.

The bitterness of these attacks on the “imitation church” probably indicates a late stage of the controversy. By the year 200, the battle lines had been drawn: both orthodox and gnostic Christians claimed to represent the true church and accused one another of being outsiders, false brethren, and hypocrites.

How was a believer to tell true Christians from false ones? Orthodox and gnostic Christians offered different answers, as each group attempted to define the church in ways that excluded the other. Gnostic Christians, claiming to represent only “the few,” pointed to qualitative criteria. In protest against the majority, they insisted that baptism did not make a Christian: according to the Gospel of Philip, many people “go down into the water and come up without having received anything,”¹³ and still they claimed to be Christians. Nor did profession of the creed, or even martyrdom, count as evidence: “anyone can do these things.” Above all, they refused to identify the church with the actual, visible community that, they warned, often only imitated it. Instead, quoting a saying of Jesus (“By their fruits you shall know them”) they required evidence of spiritual maturity to demonstrate that a person belonged to the true church.

But orthodox Christians, by the late second century, had begun to establish objective criteria for church membership. Whoever confessed the creed, accepted the ritual of baptism, participated in worship, and obeyed the clergy was accepted as a fellow Christian. Seeking to unify the diverse churches scattered throughout the world into a single network, the bishops eliminated qualitative criteria for church membership. Evaluating each candidate on the basis of spiritual maturity, insight, or personal holiness, as the gnostics did, would require a far more complex administration. Further, it would tend to exclude many who much needed what the church could give. To become truly catholic—universal—the church rejected all forms of elitism, attempting to include as many as possible within its embrace. In the process, its leaders created a clear and simple framework, consisting of doctrine, ritual, and political structure, that has proven to be an amazingly effective system of organization.

So the orthodox Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, defines the church in terms of the bishop, who represents that system:

Let no one do anything pertaining to the church without the bishop. Let that be considered a valid eucharist which is celebrated by the bishop, or by the person whom he appoints … Wherever the bishop offers [the eucharist], let the congregation be present, just as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church.¹⁴

Lest any “heretic” suggest that Christ may be present even when the bishop is absent, Ignatius sets him straight:

It is not legitimate either to baptize or to hold an agape [cult meal] without the bishop … To join with the bishop is to join the church; to separate oneself from the bishop is to separate oneself not only from the church, but from God himself.¹⁵

Apart from the church hierarchy, he insists, “there is nothing that can be called a church.”¹⁶

Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, agrees with Ignatius that the only true church is that which “preserves the same form of ecclesiastical constitution”:

True gnosis is that which consists in the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient constitution [systema] of the church throughout the whole world, and the character of the body of Christ according to the successions of bishops, by which they have handed down that which exists everywhere.¹⁷

Only this system, Irenaeus says, stands upon the “pillar and ground” of those apostolic writings to which he attributes absolute authority—above all, the gospels of the New Testament. All others are false and unreliable, unapostolic, and probably composed by heretics. The catholic church alone offers a “very complete system of doctrine,”¹⁸ proclaiming, as we have seen, one God, creator and father of Christ, who became incarnate, suffered, died, and rose bodily from the dead. Outside of this church there is no salvation: “she is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers.”¹⁹ As spokesman for the church of God, Irenaeus insists that those he calls heretics stand outside the church. All who reject his version of Christian truth are “false persons, evil seducers, and hypocrites” who “speak to the multitude about those in the church, whom they call catholic, or ecclesiastical.”²⁰ Irenaeus says he longs to “convert them to the church of God”²¹—since he considers them apostates, worse than pagans.

Gnostic Christians, on the contrary, assert that what distinguishes the false from the true church is not its relationship to the clergy, but the level of understanding of its members, and the quality of their relationship with one another. The Apocalypse of Peter declares that “those who are from the life … having been enlightened,”²² discriminate for themselves between what is true and false. Belonging to “the remnant … summoned to knowledge [gnosis],”²³ they neither attempt to dominate others nor do they subject themselves to the bishops and deacons, those “waterless canals.” Instead they participate in “the wisdom of the brotherhood that really exists … the spiritual fellowship with those united in communion.”²⁴

The Second Treatise of the Great Seth similarly declares that what characterizes the true church is the union its members enjoy with God and with one another, “united in the friendship of friends forever, who neither know any hostility, nor evil, but who are united by my gnosis … (in) friendship with one another.”²⁵ Theirs is the intimacy of marriage, a “spiritual wedding,” since they live “in fatherhood and motherhood and rational brotherhood and wisdom”²⁶ as those who love each other as “fellow spirits.”²⁷

Such ethereal visions of the “heavenly church” contrast sharply with the down-to-earth portrait of the church that orthodox sources offer. Why do gnostic authors abandon concreteness and describe the church in fantastic and imaginative terms? Some scholars say that this proves that they understood little, and cared less, about social relationships. Carl Andresen, in his recent, massive study of the early Christian church, calls them “religious solipsists” who concerned themselves only with their own individual spiritual development, indifferent to the community responsibilities of a church.²⁸ But the sources cited above show that these gnostics defined the church precisely in terms of the quality of interrelationships among its members.

Orthodox writers described the church in concrete terms because they accept the status quo; that is, they affirmed that the actual community of those gathered for worship was “the church.” Gnostic Christians dissented. Confronted with those in the churches whom they considered ignorant, arrogant, or self-interested, they refused to agree that the whole community of believers, without further qualification, constituted “the church.” Dividing from the majority over such issues as the value of martyrdom, they intended to discriminate between the mass of believers and those who truly had gnosis, between what they called the imitation, or the counterfeit, and the true church.

Consider, for example, how specific disputes with other Christians drove even Hippolytus and Tertullian, those two fervent opponents of heresy, to redefine the church for themselves. Hippolytus shared his teacher Irenaeus’ view of the church as the sole bearer of truth. Like Irenaeus, Hippolytus defined that truth as what the apostolic succession of bishops guaranteed on the basis of the canon and church doctrine. But when a deacon named Callistus was elected bishop of his church in Rome, Hippolytus protested vehemently. He publicized a scandalous story, slandering Callistus’ integrity:

Callistus was a slave of Carpophorus, a Christian employed in the imperial palace. To Callistus, as being of the faith, Carpophorus entrusted no inconsiderable amount of money, and directed him to bring in profit from banking. He took the money and started business in what is called Fish Market Ward. As time passed, not a few deposits were entrusted to him by widows and brethren … Callistus, however, embezzled the lot, and became financially embarrassed.²⁹

When Carpophorus heard of this, he demanded an accounting, but, Hippolytus says, Callistus absconded and fled: “finding a vessel in the port ready for a voyage, he went on board, intending to sail wherever she happened to be bound for.”³⁰ When his master pursued him onto the ship, Callistus knew he was trapped, and, in desperation, jumped overboard. Rescued against his will by the sailors as the crowd on the shore shouted encouragement, Callistus was handed over to Carpophorus, returned to Rome, and placed in penal servitude. Apparently Hippolytus was trying to explain how Callistus came to be tortured and imprisoned, since many revered him as a martyr; Hippolytus maintained instead that he was a criminal. Hippolytus also objected to Callistus’ views on the Trinity, and found Callistus’ policy of extending forgiveness of sins to cover sexual transgressions shockingly “lax.” And he denounced Callistus, the former slave, for allowing believers to regularize liaisons with their own slaves by recognizing them as valid marriages.

But Hippolytus found himself in the minority. The majority of Roman Christians respected Callistus as a teacher and martyr, endorsed his policies, and elected him bishop. Now that Callistus headed the Roman church, Hippolytus decided to break away from it. In the process, he turned against the bishop the same polemical techniques that Irenaeus had taught him to use against the gnostics. As Irenaeus singled out certain groups of Christians as heretics, and named them according to their teachers (as “Valentinians,” “Simonians,” etc.), so Hippolytus accused Callistus of teaching heresy and characterized his following as “the Callistians”—as if they were a sect separate from “the church,” which Hippolytus himself claimed to represent.

How could Hippolytus justify his claim to represent the church, when he and his few adherents were attacking the great majority of Roman Christians and their bishop? Hippolytus explained that the majority of “self-professed Christians” were incapable of living up to the standard of the true church, which consisted of “the community of those who live in holiness.” Like his gnostic opponents, having refused to identify the church through its official hierarchy, he characterized it instead in terms of the spiritual qualities of its members.

Tertullian presented an even more dramatic case. As long as he identified himself as a “catholic Christian,” Tertullian defined the church as Irenaeus had. Writing his Preemptive Objection against Heretics, Tertullian proclaimed that his church alone bore the apostolic rule of faith, revered the canon of Scriptures, and bore through its ecclesiastical hierarchy the sanction of apostolic succession. Like Irenaeus, Tertullian indicted the heretics for violating each of these boundaries. He complains that they refused simply to accept and believe the rule of faith as others did: instead, they challenged others to raise theological questions, when they themselves claimed no answers,

being ready to say, and sincerely, of certain points of their belief, “This is not so,” and “I take this in a different sense,” and “I do not admit that.”³¹

Tertullian warns that such questioning leads to heresy: “This rule … was taught by Christ, and raises among ourselves no other questions than those which the heresies introduce and which make men heretics!”³² He also charges that the heretics did not restrict themselves to the Scriptures of the New Testament: either they added other writings or they challenged the orthodox interpretation of key texts.³³ Further, as noted already, he condemns the heretics for being “a camp of rebels” who refused to submit to the authority of the bishop. Arguing for a strict order of obedience and submission, he concludes that “evidence of a stricter discipline existing among us is an additional proof of truth.”³⁴

So speaks Tertullian the catholic. But at the end of his life, when his own intense fervor impelled him to break with the orthodox community, he rejected and branded it as the church of mere “psychic” Christians. He joined instead the Montanist movement, whose adherents called it the “new prophecy,” claiming to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. At this time Tertullian began to distinguish sharply between the empirical church and another, spiritual vision of the church. Now he no longer identified the church in terms of its ecclesiastical organization, but only with the spirit that sanctified individual members. He scorns the catholic community as “the church of a number of bishops”:

For the church itself, properly and principally, is spirit, in which there is the trinity of one divinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.… The church congregates where the Lord plans it—a spiritual church for spiritual people—not the church of a number of bishops!³⁵

What impelled dissidents from catholic Christianity to maintain or develop such visionary descriptions of the church? Were their visions “up in the air” because they were interested in theoretical speculation? On the contrary, their motives were sometimes traditional and polemical, but also sometimes political. They were convinced that the “visible church”—the actual network of catholic communities—either had been wrong from the beginning or had gone wrong. The true church, by contrast, was “invisible”: only its members perceived who belonged to it and who did not. Dissidents intended their idea of an invisible church to oppose the claims of those who said they represented the universal church. Martin Luther made the same move 1,300 years later. When his devotion to the Catholic Church changed to criticism, then rejection, he began to insist, with other protestant reformers, that the true church was “invisible”—that is, not identical with Catholicism.

The gnostic author of the Testimony of Truth would have agreed with Luther and gone much further. He rejects as fallacious all the marks of ecclesiastical Christianity. Obedience to the clerical hierarchy requires believers to submit themselves to “blind guides” whose authority comes from the malevolent creator. Conformity to the rule of faith attempts to limit all Christians to an inferior ideology: “They say, ‘[Even if] an [angel] comes from heaven, and preaches to you beyond what we preach to you, let him be accursed!’ ”³⁶ Faith in the sacraments shows naïve and magical thinking: catholic Christians practice baptism as an initiation rite which guarantees them “a hope of salvation,”³⁷ believing that only those who receive baptism are “headed for life.”³⁸

Against such “lies” the gnostic declares that “this, therefore, is the true testimony: when man knows himself, and God who is over the truth, he will be saved.”³⁹ Only those who come to recognize that they have been living in ignorance, and learn to release themselves by discovering who they are, experience enlightenment as a new life, as “the resurrection.” Physical rituals like baptism become irrelevant, for “the baptism of truth is something else; it is by renunciation of [the] world that it is found.”⁴⁰

Against those who claimed exclusive access to truth, those who followed law and authority, and who placed their faith in ritual, this author sets his own vision: “Whoever is able to renounce them [money and sexual intercourse] shows [that] he is [from] the generation of the [Son of Man], and that he has power to accuse [them].”⁴¹ Like Hippolytus and Tertullian, but more radical than either, this teacher praises sexual abstinence and economic renunciation as the marks of the true Christian.

The Authoritative Teaching, another text discovered at Nag Hammadi, also offers vehement attack on catholic Christianity. The author tells the story of the soul, who originally came from heaven, from the “fullness of being,”⁴² but when she “was cast into the body”⁴³ she experienced sensual desire, passions, hatred, and envy. Clearly the allegory refers to the individual soul’s struggle against passions and sin; yet the language of the account suggests a wider, social referent as well. It relates the struggle of those who are spiritual, akin to the soul (with whom the author identifies), against those who are essentially alien to her. The author explains that some who were called “our brothers,” who claimed to be Christians, actually were outsiders. Although “the word has been preached”⁴⁴ to them, and they heard “the call”⁴⁵ and performed acts of worship, these self-professed Christians were “worse than … the pagans,”⁴⁶ who had an excuse for their ignorance.

On what counts does the gnostic accuse these believers? First, that they “do not seek after God.”⁴⁷ The gnostic understands Christ’s message not as offering a set of answers, but as encouragement to engage in a process of searching: “seek and inquire about the ways you should go, since there is nothing else as good as this.”⁴⁸ The rational soul longs to

see with her mind, and perceive her kinsmen, and learn about her root … in order that she might receive what is hers …⁴⁹

What is the result? The author declares that she attains fulfillment:

… the rational soul who wearied herself in seeking—she learned about God. She labored with inquiring, enduring distress in the body, wearing out her feet after the evangelists, learning about the Inscrutable One.… She came to rest in him who is at rest. She reclined in the bride-chamber. She ate of the banquet for which she had hungered.… She found what she had sought.⁵⁰

Those who are gnostics follow her path. But non-gnostic Christians “do not seek”:

… these—the ones who are ignorant—do not seek after God.… they do not inquire about God … the senseless man hears the call, but he is ignorant of the place to which he has been called. And he did not ask, during the preaching, “Where is the temple into which I should go and worship?”⁵¹

Those who merely believe the preaching they hear, without asking questions, and who accept the worship set before them, not only remain ignorant themselves, but “if they find someone else who asks about his salvation,”⁵² they act immediately to censor and silence him.

Second, these “enemies” assert that they themselves are the soul’s “shepherd”:

… They did not realize that she has an invisible, spiritual body; they think “We are her shepherd, who feeds her.” But they did not realize that she knows another way which is hidden from them. This her true shepherd taught her in gnosis.⁵³

Using the common term for bishop (poimen, “shepherd”), the author refers, apparently, to members of the clergy: they did not know that the gnostic Christian had direct access to Christ himself, the soul’s true shepherd, and did not need their guidance. Nor did these would-be shepherds realize that the true church was not the visible one (the community over which they preside), but that “she has an invisible, spiritual body”⁵⁴—that is, she included only those who were spiritual. Only Christ, and they themselves, knew who they were. Furthermore, these “outsiders” indulged themselves in drinking wine, in sexual activity, and they worked at ordinary business, like pagans. To justify their conduct, they oppressed and slandered those who had attained gnosis, and who practiced total renunciation. The gnostic declares:

… we take no interest in them when they [malign] us. And we ignore them when they curse us. When they cast shame in our face, we look at them, and do not speak. For they work at their business, but we go around in hunger and thirst …⁵⁵

These “enemies,” I submit, were following the kind of advice that orthodox leaders like Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus prescribed for dealing with heretics. In the first place, they refused to question the rule of faith and common doctrine. Tertullian warns that “the heretics and the philosophers” both ask the same questions, and urges believers to dismiss them all:

Away with all attempts to produce a mixed Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, or dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquiring after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief.⁵⁶

He complains that heretics welcome anyone to join with them, “for they do not care how differently they treat topics,” so long as they meet together to approach “the city of the one sole truth.”⁵⁷ Yet their metaphor indicates that the gnostics were neither relativists nor skeptics. Like the orthodox, they sought the “one sole truth.” But gnostics tended to regard all doctrines, speculations, and myths—their own as well as others’—only as approaches to truth. The orthodox, by contrast, were coming to identify their own doctrine as itself the truth—the sole legitimate form of Christian faith. Tertullian admits that the heretics claimed to follow Jesus’ counsel (“Seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you”).⁵⁸ But this means, he says, that Christ taught “one definite thing”—what the rule of faith contains. Once having found and believed this, the Christian has nothing further to seek:

Away with the person who is seeking where he never finds; for he seeks where nothing can be found. Away with him who is always knocking; because it will never be opened to him, for he knocks where there is no one to open. Away with the one who is always asking, because he will never be heard, for he asks of one who does not hear.⁵⁹

Irenaeus agrees: “According to this course of procedure, one would be always inquiring, but never finding, because he has rejected the very method of discovery.”⁶⁰ The only safe and accurate course, he says, is to accept in faith what the church teaches, recognizing the limits of human understanding.

As we have seen, these “enemies” of the gnostics followed the church fathers’ advice in asserting the claims of the clergy over gnostic Christians. Also, they treated “unrepentant” gnostics as outsiders to Christian faith; and finally, they affirmed the value of ordinary employment and family life over the demands of radical asceticism.

While catholic Christians and radical gnostics took opposite stands, each claiming to represent the church, and each denouncing the others as heretics, the Valentinians took a mediating position. Resisting the orthodox attempt to label them as outsiders, they identified themselves as fully members of the church. But the Valentinians engaged in vehement debate among themselves over the opposite question—the status of catholic Christians. So serious was their disagreement over this question that the crisis finally split the followers of Valentinus into two different factions.

Were catholic Christians included in the church, the “body of Christ”? The Eastern branch of Valentinians said no. They maintained that Christ’s body, the church, was “purely spiritual,” consisting only of those who were spiritual, who had received gnosis. Theodotus, the great teacher of the Eastern school, defined the church as “the chosen race,”⁶¹ those “chosen before the foundation of the world.”⁶² Their salvation was certain, predestined—and exclusive. Like Tertullian in his later years, Theodotus taught that only those who received direct spiritual inspiration belonged to the “spiritual church.”⁶³

But Ptolemy and Heracleon, the leading teachers of the Western school of Valentinians, disagreed. Against Theodotus, they claimed that “Christ’s body,” the church, consisted of two distinct elements, one spiritual, the other unspiritual. This meant, they explained, that both gnostic and non-gnostic Christians stood within the same church. Citing Jesus’ saying that “many are called, but few are chosen,” they explained that Christians who lacked gnosis—by far the majority—were the many who were called. They themselves, as gnostic Christians, belonged to the few who were chosen. Heracleon taught that God had given them spiritual understanding for the sake of the rest—so that they would be able to teach “the many” and bring them to gnosis.⁶⁴

The gnostic teacher Ptolemy agreed: Christ combined within the church both spiritual and unspiritual Christians so that eventually all may become spiritual.⁶⁵ Meanwhile, both belonged to one church; both were baptized; both shared in the celebration of the mass; both made the same confession. What differentiated them was the level of their understanding. Uninitiated Christians mistakenly worshiped the creator, as if he were God; they believed in Christ as the one who would save them from sin, and who they believed had risen bodily from the dead: they accepted him by faith, but without understanding the mystery of his nature—or their own. But those who had gone on to receive gnosis had come to recognize Christ as the one sent from the Father of Truth, whose coming revealed to them that their own nature was identical with his—and with God’s.

To illustrate their relationship, Heracleon offers a symbolic interpretation of the church as a temple: those who were ordinary Christians, not yet gnostics, worshiped like the Levites, in the temple courtyard, shut out from the mystery. Only those who had gnosis might enter within the “holy of holies,” which signified the place “where those who are spiritual worship God.” Yet one temple—the church—embraced both places of worship.⁶⁶

The Valentinian author of the Interpretation of the Knowledge agrees with this view. He explains that although Jesus came into the world and died for the sake of the “church of mortals,”⁶⁷ now this church, the “place of faith,” was split and divided into factions.⁶⁸ Some members had received spiritual gifts—power to heal, prophecy, above all, gnosis; others had not.

This gnostic teacher expresses concern that this situation often caused hostility and misunderstanding. Those who were spiritually advanced tended to withdraw from those they considered “ignorant” Christians, and hesitated to share their insights with them. Those who lacked spiritual inspiration envied those who spoke out in public at the worship service and who spoke in prophecy, taught, and healed others.⁶⁹

The author addresses the whole community as he attempts to reconcile both gnostic and non-gnostic Christians with one another. Drawing upon a traditional metaphor, he reminds them that all believers are members of the church, the “body of Christ.” First he recalls Paul’s words:

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.… The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”⁷⁰

Then he goes on to preach to those who feel inferior, lacking spiritual powers, who are not yet gnostic initiates:

… Do not accuse your Head [Christ] because it has not made you as an eye, but a finger; and do not be jealous of what has been made an eye or a hand or a foot, but be thankful that you are not outside the body.⁷¹

To those who are spiritual, who have gnosis, and who have received “gifts,” he says:

… Does someone have a prophetic gift? Share it without hesitation. Do not approach your brother with jealousy … How do you know [that someone] is ignorant? … [You] are ignorant when you [hate them] and are jealous of them.⁷²

Like Paul, he urges all members to love one another, to work and suffer together, mature and immature Christians alike, gnostics and ordinary believers, and so “to share in the (true) harmony.”⁷³ According to the Western school of Valentinian gnostics, then, “the church” included the community of catholic Christians, but was not limited to it. Most Christians, they claimed, did not even perceive the most important element of the church, the spiritual element, which consisted of all who had gnosis.

From the bishop’s viewpoint, of course, the gnostic position was outrageous. These heretics challenged his right to define what he considered to be his own church; they had the audacity to debate whether or not catholic Christians participated; and they claimed that their own group formed the essential nucleus, the “spiritual church.” Rejecting such religious elitism, orthodox leaders attempted instead to construct a universal church. Desiring to open that church to everyone, they welcomed members from every social class, every racial or cultural origin, whether educated or illiterate—everyone, that is, who would submit to their system of organization. The bishops drew the line against those who challenged any of the three elements of this system: doctrine, ritual, and clerical hierarchy—and the gnostics challenged them all. Only by suppressing gnosticism did orthodox leaders establish that system of organization which united all believers into a single institutional structure. They allowed no other distinction between first- and second-class members than that between the clergy and the laity, nor did they tolerate any who claimed exemption from doctrinal conformity, from ritual participation, and from obedience to the discipline that priests and bishops administered. Gnostic churches, which rejected that system for more subjective forms of religious affiliation, survived, as churches, for only a few hundred years.