Carpocratians (Gnostic sect)

Carpocratians revered Jesus as a man whose soul had not forgotten its origins in the higher sphere of the perfect God. Believing that Jesus had been a Gnostic,[2] they strove to imitate him, but considered him to have been an ordinary human being, not the son of God. In the Carpocratian world view, Jesus was seen as excellent in holiness and virtue, and possessing a great elasticity of mind that enabled him to remember his (and all other humans') previous existence with the Primal Being.[3] With his extraordinary strength of soul and through the power of contemplation, he obtained divine power to perform miracles which he then used to overturn the evil religion and break free from the control of the Jewish God who had dictated it.[3]

It was taught that anyone could become equal to Jesus with enough effort, and that he could even be excelled by someone with an even purer soul, or who despised the material world even more than he had.[3] Every Carpocratian believer was thought to resemble Jesus to a large degree, and it was claimed that their best believers attained his level of transcendence and rose above the apostles.[3]

The natural-born son of Joseph and Mary, Jesus was known by them to have been raised among Jews, but they held that he detested them.[3] They might have believed that Jesus had studied at the Temple of Isis in Egypt for six years, learning gnosis there, which he then taught to the apostles, ordering them to disseminate it among the 'worthy and believing'.[4] Their founder, Carpocrates, was believed by them to have gained his knowledge of the religion from the apostles.[1]

As Carpocratians taught that biblical laws had been imposed by the evil angels responsible for the material realm, they considered subverting them a religious responsibility. They hoped to achieve transcendence and spiritual freedom by having every possible experience,[2] for which more than one lifetime might be necessary.[2] They backed this claim by quoting the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus preached that '[t]ruly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny' (Matthew 5:26, English Standard Version).[3]

Carpocratians professed that nothing was inherently good or bad, and that questions of right and wrong depended entirely on human opinion. Because of this belief, they were accused by members of other Christian groups of living debauched lives,[3] and given the name of 'libertine Gnostics';[2] however, this accusation is not found in the oldest source on the sect, an account by Irenæus.[3]

Since Carpocrates and his followers rejected private property,[5] they also held that women should be shared by all men of the community for procreation.[3] Epiphanes taught that God's righteousness was a 'communion together with equality', and this ideal would have been offended by privately 'possessing' a woman. Sexuality was seen as part of the material world, and the commandment against adultery a 'joke' by the God of the Jews, who first gave an urge then forbade humans from acting on it. Marriage was seen as this evil god 'forcing what is in common to be individual', taking away something from humans that he allowed all other creatures to have.[5]

Proto-orthodox Christians of the time such as Clement of Alexandria or Theodoret claimed this was merely an excuse for sinning. At the same time as other Christian groups embraced asceticism and celibacy in the 4th and 5th centuries, Carpocratians fostered a more liberal attitude. Their opponents therefore discredited them by accusing them of holding orgies and saying that they hoped to achieve salvation by committing every possible evil deed. Thomas Whitley characterises the Carpocratian movement as a sign of the opposition to the emerging ascetic demands of the early Christian religion.[5]