A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

there could follow a train of thought perceptible in various forms in many gnostic documents. First, if the God of the Jews who created the material world said that he was the true and only God, he was either a fool or a liar. At best he can be described in Plato’s term as a ‘demiurge’ (see pp. 32–33), and beyond him there must be a First Cause of all that is real, the true God. Jesus Christ revealed the true God to humanity, so he can have nothing to do with the Creator God of the Jews. Knowledge of the true God is a way to contemplate the original harmony of the cosmos before the disaster represented by the creation of the physical world. That harmony is so distant and distinct from physical creation that it involves a complicated hierarchy of beings or realities (lovingly described in mind-numbing detail and variety in different gnostic systems). Those capable of perceiving this harmony and hierarchy are often said to have been granted that privilege by a fate external to themselves: a predestination. It is these people – gnostics – whom Jesus Christ has come to save. And who is Jesus? If there can be no true union between