166
CAINITES
CALIGULA
celestial and terrestrial. The Cainites possessed a fictitious work entitled ' The Gospel of Judas,' and Irenseus says that he had himself collected writ- ings of theirs, where they advocated that the work of Hystera should be dissolved. By Hystera they meant the Maker of Heaven and Earth. They taught, as did Carpocrates, that salvation could be attained only by passing through all experience. Whenever any sin or vile action was performed by them, they asserted that an angel was present whom they invoked, claiming that they Avere ful- filling his operation. Perfect knowledge consisted in going without a tremor into such actions as it is not lawful even to name. Epiphanius (Hcer. 38) characteristically gives a much longer account, in substantial harmony with what Irenaeus says. He appears to have had some source of information independent of Irenseus. He speaks of Abel as de rived from the weaker principle — a statement which bears the marks of authenticity. He also says that J udas forced the Archons, or rulers, against their Avill to slay Christ, and thus assisted us to the salvation of the Cross. Philaster, on the other hand, assigns the action of Judas to his knowledge that Christ intended to destroy the truth — a pur- pose which he frustrated by the betraj^al.
The account given by Irenaeus is unduly curt and the text not quite secure, but it is not difficult to form a general estimate of the sect from it, especi- ally with the assistance of our other sources. Like other Gnostics, the Cainites drew a distinction between the Creator and the Supreme God. Pre- sumably they identified the Creator with the God of the Jews. They viewed Him and those whom He favoured with undisguised hostility ; redemp- tion had for its end the dissolution of His work. They claimed kinship with those to whom He showed antagonism in His book, the Old Testa- ment, and shared themselves in the same hostility. Nevertheless He was the weaker power, who could do them no permanent harm, for Sophia, the Heavenly Wisdom, drew back to herself those elements in their nature which they had derived from her. Presumably, then, they thought of a division of mankind into two classes — the spiritual and the material, the latter belonging to the realm of the Creator and deriving their being from Him, but doomed to dissolution, Avhile the former class contained the spiritual men, imprisoned, it is true, in bodies of flesh, but yet deriving their essential being from the highest Power, opposed by the Creator and His minions, but winning the victory over them as Cain did over Abel. Unfortunately we cannot be sure what view they took of redemp- tion. There is no doubt that they applauded the action of Judas in the betrayal, but our authorities differ as to the motive which prompted him. The view that Judas through his more perfect yvG^ais penetrated the wish of Jesus more successfully than the others, and accomplished it by bringing Him to the Cross through which He effected redemption, is intrinsically the more probable.
So far as the moral character and conduct of the Cainites is concerned, there is no doubt that Irenseus intended to represent them as shrinking from no vileness, but rather as deliberately practis- ing it. Carpocrates, we are told, defended this practice by a theory of transmigration. It was necessary to pass through all expei iences, and hence the soul had to pass from body to body till the wiiole range of experience had been traversed. If, liowever, this could all be crowded into a single lifetime, then the transmigration became unneces- sary. We have no ground to suppose that the Cainites held such a view, but they seem to have professed the belief that this fullness of experience was essential to salvation. We have no substantial justification for doubting the truth of Irenseus'
account, though accusations of immorality urged against heretics should alwaj's be received with caution. G. K. S. Mead [Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, 1900, p. 229) thinks that originally they were ascetics, while N, Lardner [History of Heretics, bk. ii. ch. xiv. [ = Works, 1829, viii. 560]) questions whether a sect guilty of such enormities ever ex- isted. But there is no valid reason to deny the generally accepted view that the Gnostic attitude to matter did lead to quite opposite results. To some it would seem a duty to crush the flesh be- neath the spirit by the severest austerity, but the premiss might lead to a libertine as well as to an ascetic conclusion : if the spirit alone was import- ant, the flesh but contemptible and perishable, what happened to the latter might seem a matter of complete indifference, inasmuch as its degrada- tion could not stain the white purity of the spirit. The principle that the jewel is undimmed though its casket lie in the mire, or that the Gnostic may do what he will for he is saved by grace, probably found quite faithful expression in the attitude of such Gnostics as Carpocrates and the Cainites.
It is held by several scholars that some of the Ophite sects date back into the pre-Christian era, and, if this view is correct, Pfleiderer [Das Urchris- tentum^, Berlin, 1902, vol. ii. pp. 52-54, 82, 97 f. = Primitive Chnstianity, London, 1910, vol. iii, pp. 72-74, 114, 136 f.) may be right in thinking that the Cainites whom we know from Irenseus were the successors of the people who were attacked by Pliilo in his de Posteritate Caini. Whether the reference in Jude^^ is to the Cainites must be regarded as very doubtful (see JuDE).