Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [40]
In his diatribe against the Gnostics Valentinus, Marcion, Basilides and Saturninus, in particular, Irenaeus recapitulates their diverse beliefs and doctrines:
But according to Marcion, and those like him, neither was the world made by Him; nor did He come to His own things, but to those of another. And, according to certain of the Gnostics, this world was made by angels, and not by the Word of God. But according to the followers of Valentinus, the world was not made by Him, but by the Demiurge.... For they say that he, the Lord and Creator of the plan of creation, by whom they hold that this world was made, was produced from the Mother; while the Gospel affirms plainly, that by the Word, which was in the beginning with God, all things were made, which Word, he says, .was made flesh, and dwelt among us." But, according to these men, neither was the Word made flesh, nor Christ, nor the Saviour (Soter) . . . For they will have it, that the Word and Christ never came into this world; that the Saviour, too, never became incarnate, nor suffered, but that He descended like a dove upon the dispensational Jesus; and that, as soon as He had declared the unknown Father, He did again ascend into the Pleroma.... But according to the opinion of no one of the heretics was the Word of God made flesh.
Other sects, such as the followers of Apelles, held that Christ's body was made of "star stuff," and the Ebionites claimed that Christ was a "type of Solomon" or "type of Jonah," appropriate designations, as we shall see. Obviously, the Gnostics were not uniform in their beliefs and doctrines, despite their attempts at harmonization, mainly because Gnosticism encouraged creativity and freedom of expression. The most disturbing of these heresies, of course, was the denial of Christ's historicity.
In his "Twelve Topics of the Faith," Gregory Thaumaturgus (205-265), head of the Alexandrian school, wrote:
If any one says that the body of Christ is uncreated, and refuses to acknowledge that He, being the uncreated Word (God) of God, took the flesh of created humanity and appeared incarnate, even as it is written, let him be anathema.
As Topic I, this subject was obviously the most important and once again reveals that the fathers were under incessant charges of fraud in presenting Jesus Christ as a historical personage.
Doresse reveals the ultimate "heresy" of the Gnostics, although he is interpreting it as if the history were first:
Firstly, a flood of light is thrown upon the strange figure that the Gnostics made of Jesus. . . . For them, his incarnation was fictitious, and so was his crucifixion.22
In other words, they denied Jesus Christ ever existed; in fact, the earliest Gnostic-Christians were not even aware of the claims that he had. As noted, others were revolted by the concept. Concerning one of the most widespread and influential Gnostic-Christian sects, Manichaeism, Doane relates:
The Manichaean Christian Bishop Faustus expresses himself in the following manner:
"Do you receive the gospel? (ask ye). Undoubtedly I do! Why then, you also admit that Christ was born? Not so; for it by no means follows that believing in the gospel, I should therefore believe that Christ was born! Do you think that he was of the Virgin Mary? Manes hath said, `Far be it that I should ever own that Our Lord Jesus Christ [descended by scandalous birth through a woman[.'"23
Faustus's gospel was apparently the same in concept as Paul's "spiritual gospel" and Marcion's non-historicizing Gospel of the Lord. Like Marcion, Faustus expresses an extreme manifestation of the Gnostic distaste of "flesh" and "matter," i.e., misogyny, the contempt for women, which was reasoned because the word "matter" or "mater," as in "material," was also the word for "mother," and matter was deemed female. Thus, the absolute separation of spirit and matter found within the Christian religion has its roots in Gnosticism,