Gnostic ideas were rejected by the early church, but a particular Gnostic-like conception of predestination later re-entered Christian theology through Augustine. Some Gnostic systems, particularly the Valentinian Gnostics, incorporated a form of predestination in which certain people possessed a spiritual nature destined for salvation while others were destined for destruction. The elect were understood to possess a spiritual seed and a special gnosis—a divinely given knowledge associated with their spiritual nature and necessary for salvation. In this scheme, salvation was not ultimately dependent upon human choice or moral effort, but upon God awakening and enlightening those who were already destined for salvation. Indeed, one description of Valentinian teaching states that “the elect are saved by knowing that they are saved.”
The early church rejected these teachings, defending God’s good creation, human moral responsibility, the genuine incarnation of Christ, and the bodily resurrection. Early Christian writers specifically opposed the idea that some people were given the capacity to believe while others were excluded from salvation by nature or divine determination. The Gnostic conception of salvation thus involved not merely a predetermined destiny, but a divinely determined distinction between those capable of receiving saving knowledge and those who were incapable of doing so.
Centuries later, however, elements resembling this Valentinian Gnostic conception of predetermined salvation, spiritual inability, and divinely bestowed enlightenment reappeared in Augustine’s theology during his controversy with Pelagius. Ken Johnson argues that Augustine adapted the Valentinian concept of predestination, replacing the Gnostic idea of an inherently incorruptible spiritual nature with the claim that God sovereignly ordained certain Christians for salvation because humanity was totally depraved and unable to respond on its own. Johnson consequently identifies this development with Augustine’s formulation of predestination, total depravity, and bondage of the will.
The parallel becomes especially striking when compared with later Calvinistic theology. Reformed theologians likewise argue that fallen humanity is incapable of coming to Christ without a prior work of divine grace: regeneration precedes faith, God changes [irresistibly] the sinner’s heart and disposition, and the elect are thereby given [forced] the ability and desire to respond to Christ. The theological vocabulary is different, and Augustine was not simply reproducing Valentinian Gnosticism; nevertheless, the structural similarity is difficult to overlook: a predetermined elect, human inability, divine intervention, an inward transformation, and only then the capacity to believe and embrace salvation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Kenneth M. Wilson, The Foundation of Augustinian-Calvinism (Montgomery, TX: Regula Fidei Press, 2019);
- George L. Bryson, The Dark Side of Calvinism: The Calvinist Caste System (Santa Ana, CA: Calvary Chapel Publishing, 2004);
- Ken Johnson, The Gnostic Origins of Calvinism (2013).
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