The Internal Crisis The Gnostic

In the second century the Church passed through an internal crisis even

more trying than the great persecutions of the following centuries and

with results far more momentous. Of the conditions making possible such a

crisis the most important was absence in the Church of norms of faith

universally acknowledged as binding. Then, again, many had embraced

Christianity without grasping the spirit of the new religion. Nearly all
< r /> interpreted the Christian faith more or less according to their earlier

philosophical or religious conceptions; e.g., the apologists within the

Church used the philosophical Logos doctrine. In this way arose numerous

interpretations of Christian teaching and perversions of that teaching,

some not at all in harmony with the generally received tradition. These

discordant interpretations or perversions are the heretical movements of

the second century. They varied in every degree of departure from the

generally accepted Christian tradition. Some, like the earlier Gnostics (§

21), and even the greater Gnostic systems (§ 22), at least in their

esoteric teaching, show that their principal inspiration was other than

Christian; others, as the Gnosticism of Marcion (§ 23) and the

enthusiastic sect of the Montanists (§ 25), seem to have built largely

upon exaggerated Christian tenets, contained, indeed, in the New

Testament, but not fully appreciated by the majority of Christians; or

still others, as the Encratites (§ 24), laid undue stress upon what was

generally recognized as an element of Christian morality.



The principal source materials for the history of Gnosticism and other

heresies of this chapter may be found collected and provided with

commentary in Hilgenfeld, Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums, Leipsic,

1884.