Gnostic Elements in Roman Catholicism
Gnostic Elements in Roman Catholicism
by Daniel Keeran, MSW
Gnosticism definition: A system of belief common in the early centuries of Christianity in which the material
world was thought to be evil and created by an evil violent Demiurge god of Israel in contrast to a spiritual
reality created by the good God of Jesus Christ who taught love and pacifism. Gnosticism denied the
physicality of Jesus and condemned sexual desire or concupiscence. Gnostic adherents identified themselves
as Christians and held that the secret tradition from the apostles of Christ, is unwritten.
1. Marcion was a gnostic leader in Syria, whose celibate congregations died out.
2. Didache was a church manual from Syria (a centre of gnostic thinking), that omits any reference to the
atonement of Christ in the eucharistic liturgy.
3. The Pistis Sophia was a gnostic writing describing purification by fire after death and describing the
gnostic soul to be “led before the Virgin of Light, and the Virgin of Light is to seal it with the seal of the
Ineffable and cast it down in whatever month into a righteous body which shall find the mysteries of the
Light.”
4. Papias uses unwritten tradition. “The same person, moreover, has set down other things as coming to
him from unwritten tradition, among these some strange parables and instructions of the Saviour, and
some other things of a more fabulous nature.” Here he refers to belief in a millennial reign of Christ on
earth.
5. Origen believed souls who sinned previous to their earthly existence, were punished by being given
physical material bodies. He taught that “Every soul that is born into flesh is soiled by the filth of
wickedness and sin.”
6. Augustine, formerly a Manichaean gnostic, taught that the sin of Adam and Eve is transmitted to all
conceived souls through sexual desire or concupiscence in marriage.
SOUND FAMILIAR?
1. Given that he was sincere, in the Manichaean Church of Augustine (Roman Catholicism and Protestant
offspring), popular Roman definitions prevailed: "unbaptized" infants who die go to hell because they
have been soiled by their birth into flesh, a Virgin of Light* protects you and welcomes you to heaven,
filth of the flesh is burned off in purgatory (See Virgil's Aneid), and sexual desire or concupiscence is
the means of sin transmission from Adam and Eve to all generations.
2. The borrowings from gnosticism (common in Roman society) include a separation of believers into lay
people, clergy, and saints. In gnostic terms, saints are defined and the following classes are described:
3. The hylic (the unconverted?) – lowest order of the three types of human. Unable to be saved since
their thinking is entirely material, incapable of understanding the gnosis.
4. The psychic (clergy?).– "soulful" partially initiated. Matter-dwelling spirits.
5. The pneumatic (saints?) – "spiritual" fully initiated, immaterial souls escaping the doom of the material
world via gnosis or self-awareness.
6. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox classes are the lay, the clergy, and the saints, whereas the New
Testament describes only those who believe and are baptized and those who do not believe.
7. Gnosticism was strongly dualistic: the physical material body is evil and worthless while the spirit or
soul is good, and Jesus was believed to be only spirit and not physical. One can indulge the desires of
the flesh since it is evil and does not exist. In Roman Catholicism, the person holding a perceived holy
office, may be corrupt or immoral while occupying a holy office, whether Pope or priest.
8. Occasionally, one may emerge who opposes such dualism; enter Savonarola and Martin Luther.
9. Mary is elevated first by the gnostics in the first century, then by the Roman Catholics.
10. The gnostic account of the birth of Mary dates from the second century and also informs Roman
Catholic thought concerning the mother of Yeshua.
