JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

This anti-Christian influence was not a homogeneous system of either religion or
philosophy. Rather it was highly syncretistic. It was an attempt to found a universal religion
which would take advantage of contributions from many sources and thus to "acclimatize
Christianity in a popular religious trend of the day and to show it to be consistent with it and a
fulfillment of it."2
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Gnosticism embraced many widely diversified sects holding opinions drawn from a great
variety of sources such as Greek, Jewish, Parsic (Persia), Indian (India); philosophies (especially
Plato and Philo), religions, theosophies and mysteries. These schools of philosophy were oriental
in general character.
There were two primary features to the teachings of Gnosticism. One is that there is
redemption through Christ, but it was redemption from matter rather than redemption of mankind
from sin. This was so because their teaching of a dualism between the world of the spirit and
the world of matter. The world of the spirit was entirely good and consisted of the heavenly
realm which would include the mind—the psychic and spiritual aspects of man. The world of
matter, however, was entirely evil because it consisted of the earthly, that which belongs to the
flesh, the body, etc.
The other primary feature was that this redemption was accomplished primarily through
knowledge, as the name denotes (Gnosticism comes from the Greek root gnosis which means
"knowledge"), rather than through faith. This knowledge which was essential to "salvation" was
of a kind of which the ordinary believer was incapable of achieving. Only the "enlightened"
could achieve it. Thus Gnosticism belonged to the intellectually and spiritually elite.
The unbiblical dualism engendered five main errors:
1. Man's body is evil since it is made of matter (earthly). This is in contrast to God,
who is purely spirit and therefore good.
2. Salvation or redemption is the escape from the flesh, the body—from physical evil.
The human race is essentially akin to the divine, being a spark of heavenly light
imprisoned in a material body. This escape is made through a special knowledge
rather than faith in Christ.
3. Jesus Christ's true humanity was denied for two reasons:
(1) The Docetists (from the Greek dokeo which means "to seem") taught that Christ
only seemed to have a body, and
(2) The Cerinthianists (named after its most prominent spokesman, Cerinthius) taught
that Christ (the Anointed One) came upon or joined the man Jesus at baptism and left Him just
before He died.