Who is God in Gnosticism?

In many Gnostic systems, God is known as the Monad, the One. God is the high source of the pleroma, the region of light. The various emanations of God are called æons.

What are the Gnostic teachings?

Gnosticism is the belief that human beings contain a piece of God (the highest good or a divine spark) within themselves, which has fallen from the immaterial world into the bodies of humans. All physical matter is subject to decay, rotting, and death.

What is the Gnostic Demiurge?

The term was later adopted by some of the Gnostics, who, in their dualistic worldview, saw the Demiurge as one of the forces of evil, who was responsible for the creation of the despised material world and was wholly alien to the supreme God of goodness.

Is Abrahamic God Demiurge?

Origins of Abrahamic God To Gnostics, the Abrahamic God is called the Demiurge, derived from Greek “demiurgos” (#1217), for a public builder, a craftsman or artisan. The term was first used in Plato’s “Timaeus” to describe the creator of the world.

Who is the father in Gnosticism?

In fact, in his second-century work “Against All Heresies” Irenaeus said that Simon Magus , who was mentioned in the canonical Acts of the Apostles , was the progenitor of all the later Gnostic sects. Menander of Antioch was a disciple of Simon Magus, active in the late 1st century.

What was the goal of the Gnostics?

To Gnostics, this world is a corrupt realm of suffering and evil created by a being who was not the true God but thought he was. Their goal, through Gnosis, was to wake a divine spark within themselves and gain the sacred knowledge needed to be free of this world after death.

What is the word Gnosticism mean?

The adjective gnostic describes something related to mysterious intellectual or spiritual knowledge. Used more broadly gnostic can describe something that has mystical knowledge, especially related to spirituality.

What is the difference between God and Demiurge?

The Demiurge was actually the God of the Jews, while the true God was the Heavenly Father of Jesus and the Christians. Christ, though in reality the Son of the true God, came in the guise of the Messiah of the Jews, the better to spread the truth concerning his Heavenly Father.

What is Gnosticism heresy?

GNOSTICISM: GNOSTICISM AS A CHRISTIAN HERESY. Their orthodox opponents sought to prove that such persons were not Christians on the grounds that Gnostic rites were occasions of immoral behavior, that their myths and doctrines were absurd, and that their intentions were destructive to true worship of God.

Is Zeus the Demiurge?

A demiurge god is defined as “the creator god of the world at the beginning of a set of religious myths.” For example, in the Christian, Egyptian, and Scandinavian religions, Ra, God, and Odin are demiurges. On the other hand, Zeus is not a demiurge because he did not create the Greek Universe.