o correct
the judgment of faith about the world and its relation to God, by an
empiric view of the world. Here again they are by no means
"visionaries", however fantastic the means by which they have expressed
their judgment about the condition of the world, and attempted to
explain that condition. Those, rather are "visionaries" who give
themselves up to the belief that the world is the work of a good and
omnipotent Deity, however apparently reasonable the arguments they
adduce. The Gnostic (Hellenistic) philosophy of religion, at this point,
comes into the sharpest opposition to the central point of the Old
Testament Christian belief, and all else really depends on this.
Gnosticism is antichristian so far as it takes away from Christianity
its Old Testament foundation, and belief in the identity of the creator
of the world with the supreme God. That was immediately felt and noted
by its opponents.]

[Footnote 355: The ecclesiastical opposition was long uncertain on this
point. It is interesting to note that Basilides portrayed the sin
inherent in the child from birth, in a way that makes one feel as though
he were listening to Augustine (see the fragment from the 23rd book of
the [Greek: Exegetika] in Clem., Strom. VI. 12. 83). But it is of great
importance to note how even very special later terminologies, dogmas,
etc., of the Church, were in a certain way anticipated by the Gnostics.
Some samples will be given below; but meanwhile we may here refer to a
fragment from Apelles' Syllogisms in Ambrosius (de Parad. V. 28): "Si
hominem non perfectum fecit deus, unusquisque autcm per industriam
propriam perfectionem sibi virtutis adsciscit: nonne videtur plus sibi
homo adquirere, quam ei deus contulit?" One seems here to be transferred
into the fifth century.]

[Footnote 356: The Gnostic teaching did not meet with a vigorous
resistance even on this point, and could also appeal to the oldest
tradition. The arbitrariness in the number, derivation and designation
of the AEons was contested. The aversion to barbarism also co-operated
here, in so far as Gnosticism delighted in mysterious words borrowed
from the Semites. But the Semitic element attracted as well as repelled
the Greeks and Romans of the second century. The Gnostic terminologies
within the AEon speculations were partly reproduced among the Catholic
theologians of the third century; most important is it that the Gnostics
have already made use of the concept "[Gre