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Ought not the existence of the various types of thinking which we have reviewed, each so splendid for certain purposes, yet all conflicting still, and neither one of them able to support a claim of absolute veracity, to awaken a presumption favorable to the pragmatistic view that all our theories are INSTRUMENTAL, are mental modes of ADAPTATION to reality, rather than revelations or gnostic answers to some divinely instituted world-enigma?
Thus influenced by circumstances, the primitive modifications of Christianity were three Judaic Christianity, Gnostic Christianity, African Christianity. Of these, the first consisted of contaminations from Judaism, from which true Christianity disentangled itself with extreme difficulty, at the cost of dissensions among the Apostles themselves.
Its plan of organization and its ethical standards were good. The vogue that Manichæism enjoyed was due, apparently, to its eclectic character: adopting the Persian dualism, it modified and expounded this by a Gnostic doctrine of æons, which was intended to harmonize the goodness of God and the existence of evil, and it added the figure of the highest æon, Christ, the savior of men.
But this was merely the beginning of the evolution of Christianity. The next phase involves its interpretation by the Gnostic movement. Let us see first what this Gnostic movement was before we try to determine its direct and indirect influence upon Christianity. So far as can be made out, Gnosticism was a religious philosophy which grew up in the eastern part of the Roman empire.
The Christians did not attempt a solution, the general problem did not interest them. They claimed the right of freedom exclusively for themselves from a non-Christian government; and it is hardly going too far to suspect that they would have applauded the government if it had suppressed the Gnostic sects whom they hated and calumniated.
She is there in prehistoric Crete with her two lions; with the same lions orientalized in Olympia and Ephesus; in Sparta with her great marsh birds; in Boeotia with her horse. She runs riot in a number of the Gnostic systems both pre-Christian and post-Christian. She forms a divine triad with the Father and the Son: that is ancient and natural.
The neat black harness, relieved merely by a crest, with every strap that could be needed, in its place, and not one buckle or one thong superfluous; the bright steel curbs, with the chains jingling as the horses tossed and pawed impatient for a start; the tapering holly whip; the bear-skins covering the seats; the top-coats spread above them every thing, in a word, without bordering on the slang, was perfectly correct and gnostic.
The idea of a "heretic" took firmer and firmer shape. During the first centuries of Christianity, the search for the divine path was a much more personal matter than it afterwards became. The conflict between the method of the Mysteries and that of the Christian religion acquired a special stamp through the various Gnostic sects and writers.
We trace this thought on the Gnostic gems where Ave see a winged griffin rolling before him a wheel, the emblem of eternity. He sits like a conqueror on horseback, trampling under foot the serpent of old, the spirit of sin and death. His horse is in the form of a ram, with an eagle's head and the crowned asp or basilisk for its tail.
He gave good advice about earthly matters, was a faithful steward of moneys deposited with him, a guardian of widows and orphans, a righteous and loving man. In his practical life, the ascetic and gnostic element comes out strongly enough. The body, with him, was not evil, neither was it good; it was simply nothing why care about it?
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