- The history of Christianity
Early heretical movements
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Gnosticism, from the Greek gnōstikos (one who has gnōsis, or “secret knowledge”), was an important movement in the early Christian centuries—especially the 2nd—that offered an alternative to emerging orthodox Christian teaching. Gnostics taught that the world was created by a demiurge or satanic power—which they often associated with the God of the Old Testament—and that there is total opposition between this world and God. Redemption was viewed as liberation from the chaos of a creation derived from either incompetent or malevolent powers, a world in which the elect are alien prisoners. The method of salvation was to discover the kingdom of God within one’s elect soul and to learn how to pass the hostile powers barring the soul’s ascent to bliss. The gnostics held a Docetist Christology, in which Jesus only appeared to assume the flesh. Although not assuming material form according to the gnostics, Jesus nonetheless was the redeemer sent by God to reveal his special gnōsis. St. Irenaeus and other Christian theologians dismissed gnosticism as pretentious but dangerous nonsense.
Along with Irenaeus and others, the writers of the later New Testament books seem to have opposed early gnosticism. The supporters of what would become orthodox Christianity stressed the need to adhere to tradition, which was attested by the churches of apostolic foundation. A more hazardous reply was to appeal to ecstatic prophecy. About 172 ce a quasi-pentecostal movement in Phrygia was led by Montanus with two prophetesses, Prisca and Maximilla, reasserting the imminence of the end of the world. He taught that there was an age of the Father (Old Testament), an age of the Son (New Testament), and an age of the Spirit (heralded by the prophet Montanus). Montanism won its chief convert in Tertullian. Its claim to supplement the New Testament was generally rejected, and the age of prophecy was held to have ended in the time of the Apostles.