Gnosticism was a religious movement that began to make significant inroads within the Christian community in the second century. Combining elements of eastern religion with Greek philosophy, it denied essential elements of apostolic teaching.
There were many varieties of Gnosticism, but all Gnostics believed that a limited number of people were capable of attaining a spiritual gnosis (knowledge) far more important than that resulting from “mere obedience” to God’s moral law. Gnostics tended to deny the goodness of the material world and of physical life. They taught that the body and the rest of the physical world were evil and the source of human corruption. In fact, they believed that most people were “fleshly” and incapable of enlightenment, but a few were “spiritual,” and capable of being freed from the illusions of this evil world system.
Many scholars believe that these first-century struggles with false doctrine in the apostolic church indicate that an early or primitive Gnostic movement already existed in apostolic times. An indication of such influence in the infant church was its need to confront those who denied the resurrection of Christ ( 1 Corinthians 15:12 ; 2 Timothy 2:17, 18 ), claimed that Christians could do anything they wanted without committing sin ( 2 Timothy 3:5,6 ; Titus 1:16 ; 2 Peter 2:12,18 ; Jude 1:4,8,11,19 ; Revelation 2:14-29 ), and denied that Jesus had truly come in the flesh ( 1 John 2:22,23; 4:2,3 ).
