Gnostic Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Ethics Assignment

Gnostic Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Ethics - Assignment Example For the Gnostics, therefore, the first cause of reality is a transcendental pure spirit that is nothing like what we know, it is a transcendental pure spirit that we can’t conceive with our senses. However, for the Gnostics, unlike many monotheistic religions like Christianity, the first cause of reality, the unknown God, is not a personal being; the first cause is an impersonal pure spirit. To account for the multiplicity of reality, especially the material reality, the Gnostics held that God did not create or fashion reality, the way Christianity teaches, but that the cosmos as we know it emanated from the undefined infinite. The Gnostics, therefore, are in some sense pantheistic, for they hold that everything emanated from the unknown God, and therefore everything has a spark of the pure spirit, unknown God. The Gnostics hold that Aeons, which are deific beings who exist between the pure spirit and human beings, are spiritual realities, and not material. One of the Aeons is the Demiurge, and according to the Gnostics, the material reality was created by the Demiurge and not by the undefined pure spirit directly. To account for how the spiritual Demiurge created the material reality, the Gnostics claimed that, the creation of the material world resulted from a flaw or a sin on the Aeon Demiurge. For the Gnostics, therefore, the material reality is flawed because it res ulted from the flaw or sin on the Demiurge (The Gnostic Worldview, web). For this reason, therefore, Gnostic held that nature is dualistic: the spiritual reality and physical reality. A critical look at the Gnostic Metaphysics shows that the main merit in the Gnostic view of reality lies in the Gnostic scholars attempt to account for the material world. The Gnostics, however, did not give a convincing account of the origin of material reality.