by Nuvoadam

On January 16, 2004, a regular contributor to alt.religion.gnostic — posting under the handle Nuvoadam — wrote what stands as one of the newsgroup's most sustained pieces of Gnostic historical argument. Beginning from a debate about terminology, the post expands into a full thesis: the early church's condemnation of "false Gnostics" was not an orthodox attack on heresy, but a family quarrel within a Gnostic Christianity that traced its lineage to the Alexandrian College. Clement of Alexandria and Origen were not proto-Catholics — they were Gnostics fighting other Gnostics. The heresy was a schism from Gnostic-Christianity, not from Christianity as such.

Nuvoadam was a prolific presence on alt.religion.gnostic from 2003 to 2004, frequently engaging Kater Moggin (another regular) in extended debates over Gnostic cosmology, the nature of the Demiurge, and the Alexandrian roots of Western Gnosticism. This post represents his clearest statement of the larger historical picture. Original sources cited throughout include Clement's Stromateis, Irenaeus' Adversus Haereses, Epiphanius' Panarion, Hippolytus' Refutation, and the work of modern scholars Bentley Layton and Michael Williams.

Since Clement was calling his students "Gnostic-Christians" and "Christian-Gnostics," this would really indicate that the orthodoxy (straight thinking) being defended was the real Gnostic message of unity rather than the message of separation these pretenders were preaching.

Irenaeus writes "According to Marcion and those like him... but according to certain of the Gnostics... but according to the followers of Valentinus..." (Adv. haer. 3.11.2). This indicates that Irenaeus saw there were "Gnostics" to be distinguished from those he saw as having split off the main Gnostic family.

The heresy was not a split from Christianity, but from Gnostic-Christianity.

Clement supports the real Gnostics, or "they who say that they are knowledgeable (gnostikoi)," calling them "athletes running the learned (gnostikes) road." (Ecl. 28.1-3, as mentioned by Williams).

When we look at they who attacked the false Gnostics, we see them as students of the Alexandrian College. Porphyry gave the title of "Against the Gnostics" to the work of the neo-Platonic student of Ammonius Saccus we know as Plotinus. Ammonius taught at the Alexandrian College at the same time as Clement, taking over for him in the shuffle of instructors which saw his famous student Origen taking the helm as school master at a very young age.

There are Alexandrian students with variations of the name Irenaeus, indicating that this French Bishop might have also attended the same school before setting out. I know of no other college or institution producing Bishops in this era, and one could only be deemed as such by another Bishop (Origen's controversy) or by a body of Presbyters (Marcion's Roman adventures). So if it quacks like a duck, we must at least continue investigating whether Irenaeus can be added to the Alexandrian family affair.

This changes the Gnostic landscape. You have a group of people the Church calls Christian, and yet the Catholic Church refuses to saint Clement nor Origen because they were not really Church Fathers so much as they were Gnostics, fighting for a kind of Gnosticism which historians have ignored.

Now can you begin to see why I say that here we really have Gnostics attacking Gnostics? The contemporary understandings of Western Gnosticism are going to have to expand to include the truth. By the time Epiphanius was compiling his Panarion the truth had all but been forgotten.

The Alexandrian College and the Making of Bishops

When Hippolytus is talking about Gnostics he kind of dances around the issue, recognizing that there were Gnostical sects prior to 100 AD, calling Cerinthus and the Ebionites as "gnostikos." But then we turn to Justin Martyr and find that many of these previous sects were not calling themselves Gnostic but Christian: Marcionites, Valentinians, Basilideans, and Satornilians (Dial. 35).

Epiphanius compares the doctrine of the Valentinians to "falsely so called" Gnostics (Pan. 31.32.7), elsewhere claiming that a Gnostic sect garnered its teachings from earlier men — Simon, Menander, Nicolas, Basilides, Carpocrates — and that this sect was teaching "falsely so called" Gnostic principles (Pan. 25.1.2).

So if our beloved heresiologists were calling the same sects both Gnostic and Christian, then perhaps it is time for some to re-evaluate their Jonasism, throw out the idea that all Gnostics were of one mind, look into why some sects accused of being false Gnostics were accused of being false in the first place. And it all comes down to their "contemptible" behavior (Pan 27.1.2), as well as their ideas of what a Gnostic was.

We see a sort of competition among the members of the Alexandrian College if we look closely:

"A certain other famous teacher of theirs, reaching for a doctrine more lofty and learned (gnostikoteron)..." (Adv. haer. 1.11.3)

"...in order that they might seem more perfect and more learned (gnostikoteroi) than the learned (gnostikon)." (Adv. haer. 1.11.5)

The Schism

Many disparate Gnostic-minded students and teachers gathered at the feet of Theuddas, considered to be one of the last disciples to have studied under the original disciples of Simon Magus and Jesus, among others. A college is created in Alexandria. It is the first college in Christian history.

One problem for Christians, though: the first Bishops were being schooled in what Clement of Alexandria and Origen were calling a "Gnostic Christianity." Valentinus was there, as was Marcion, Leucius, Basilides, and many other famous men and women who would go on to start Gnostic schools.

Because they began to teach a form of Gnosis different from what was being taught by Clement, Origen, Ammonius Saccus and others, they were considered to have broken away from the core Gnostic family.

This is important, because history records that they broke away from Christianity — but the attacks by Origen and Clement were not accusing them of being "false Christians" but of being false Gnostics. The polemic of these fathers is different from that of later heresiologists, because Clement and Origen knew the real story. Later on others came along to build and preserve a fledgling orthodox Catholicism, and not knowing the truth, added to their predecessors' attacks as if their subjects had split from Christianity.

The Libertine Fracture

For Clement, one of the primary departures from true Gnosticism was the libertine and antinomian aspects of they who had split from his family. He speaks of "a certain person" calling himself a Gnostic who argues that lust and desire are not taboo (Strom. 3.30.1).

Here we have the problem in miniature: the splitting apart of those who called themselves Christian-Gnostics was over transcension techniques. Those who followed the Left Path were considered heretics not because of practices kept alive by some group within the fold.

What Was a True Gnostic?

Robinson claims that rethinking the Nag Hammadi texts requires one to admit "that Gnosticism did not consist of the pure but largely undocumented construct that scholarship has postulated" (Jesus from Easter to Valentinus, 31).

Claiming that Gnosticism merely consisted of those exemplified by heresiologists is not being cognizant of the larger landscape from which this surely Alexandrian argument stemmed.

What was a true Gnostic? Determine for yourself. The Hermetics claim to have used the word first, and going by Herodotus among others, the Corpus Hermetica did in fact exist for centuries before any of these later Gnostics tapped into the Greek Mystery system to borrow keywords for a newly inspired movement.

A true Gnostic believes that only by knowledge is one saved, and not by faith. That is a starting point at least. To this I would add that all true Gnostics believe in transmigration, within which are to be found the concepts of reincarnation and rebirth.

The Hermetic Inheritance

At least two of the heresiologists — Origen and Plotinus — were schooled by Ammonius Saccus in Hermetic Gnosticism, pre-existent to Jesus, Simon, and all these other late arrivals.

And what is it about the Hermetic Gnostics that set them apart? Mostly that they saw only meditation — mental tantra — as the way out of dualistic bondage:

"It chanced once on a time my mind was meditating on the things that are, my thought was raised to a great height, the senses of my body being held back — just as men who are weighed down with sleep after a fill of food, or from fatigue of body." (Poemandres, Shepherd of Men)

The same seven powers of wrath that Mary Magdalene mentions are also mentioned by the Hermetics as the seven rulers of fate. The way out is the way in.

"Think things out for yourself, and you will not go astray." (Hermetica Corpus XI.ii fin)

Colophon

Written by Nuvoadam [address removed] on January 16, 2004. Posted to alt.religion.gnostic. Original Message-ID: [email protected].

Nuvoadam was a regular contributor to alt.religion.gnostic in 2003–2004, noted for extensive engagement with the primary sources of Gnostic Christianity. This essay argues that the heresiological attacks on "false Gnostics" originated as a family dispute within the Alexandrian Gnostic school, not as orthodox Christian condemnation of heresy — a reading supported by close attention to Clement's Stromateis, Irenaeus' Adversus Haereses, and the scholarship of Bentley Layton and Michael Williams.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

🌲