Sobre el gnosticismo y los gnósticos. A cuarenta años del Congreso de Mesina

Abstract

The paper studies the Gnosticism definitions that the scholars have offered up-to-date, as well as the prejudices that have influenced them, and the critics that this situation recently arose. Besides, it justifies a characterization of Gnosticism considered legitimate based on the use of the term “Gnostic” as it appears both in direct and indirect old sources -ecclesiastical and gentile. The meaning of Gnosis in itself is irreducible and the initiation baptismal rites that its members practice, as well as the mythical stories and the discursive language that yields from this experience, constitute the Gnostic doctrine. Therefore, and taking in account the invectives of the first heresiologists, specially Justin of Rome, against these uses, it is possible recover the Gnostic phenomenon as representative of an esoteric school or current that constituted the first and oldest form of Christian philosophy.