The problem arises when this generic meaning of the term gnosis gets confused with a later and much more specific strain in a very different cosmovision. Gnosticism as it was understood by the church fathers, and continues to be commonly understood today, is a specifically Greek heresy in that it depends upon a Platonic metaphysics of ideal forms and an inherent dualism between matter and spirit. In this complex metaphysical world of archons, emanations, and demiurges, salvation is a matter of freeing the immortal soul from its imprisonment in matter. As the fathers rightly noticed, this is at
...more
