RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Carpenter Carpzov
and of Christ Church, Lancaster Gate (1879-84). He was chaplain to the bishop of London from 1879 to 1884 and canon of Windsor from 1882 to 1884, while he was also honorary chaplain to Queen Victoria in 1879-83, and chaplain in ordinary in 1883-84. In 1884 he was consecrated the bishop of Ripon. He was select preacher at Cambridge in 1875 and 1877, and at Oxford in 1883-84, and was also Hulsean Lecturer at Cambridge in 1878, Bampton Lecturer at Oxford in 1887, Pastoral Lecturer on theology at Cambridge in 1895, and Noble Lecturer at Harvard University in 1904. He has been a clerk of the closet since 1903, and is also a knight of the Prussian Order of the Royal Crown. In addition to numerous volumes of sermons, he has written: Thoughts on Prayer (London, 1871); Narcissus, a Tale of Early Christian Times (1879); The Witness of the Heart to Christ (1879; the Hulsean Lectures for 1878); District Visitor's Companion (1881); My Bible (1884); Nature and M an (1888); Permanent Elements of Religion (Bampton Lectures for 1887, 1889); The Burning Bush (1893); Twilight Dreams (1893); Lectures on Preaching (1895); Thoughts on Reunion (1895); Religious Spirit in the Poets (1900); Popular History of the Church of England (1900); and Witness to the Influence of Christ (Noble Lectures for 1904; 1905). He likewise contributed the notes on Revelation in C. J. Ellicott's New Testament Commentary (London, 1879).
CARPOCRATES, car-pee'ra-tiz, AND THE CAR- POCRATIANS: An Alexandrian Gnostic of the first half of the second century and the sect which he founded. His teachings rested upon a Platonic basis, and were interspersed with Christian ideas. According to Irenseus (Hozr., i. 25), supplemented here and there by Epiphanius (Hasr., xxvii.), he taught that in the beginning was the divine primitive source, " the father of all," " the one beginning " (Gk. arche). Angels, far removed from this source, have created the world. The world-builders have imprisoned in bodies the fallen souls, who originally worked with God, and now have to go through every form of life and every act to regain their freedom. To accomplish this a long series of transmigrations through the bodies is needed. The words of Jesus in Luke xii. 58 (Matt. v. 25) expressed this thought very clearly in Carpocrates's view; the " adversary " is the devil, who drags the souls to the highest of the world-builders; the latter delivers them to another angel, his messenger, to be incarcerated in bodies until they have paid the last farthing, i.e., have won freedom, and can rise to the highest God. During their transmigrations the souls have retained the power of remembering (Gk. anamnesis), though in different degree. The soul of Jesus, son of Joseph, possessed the power of remembering God in greatest purity. Therefore God bestowed upon him power to escape the world-builders and to despise the Jewish customs in which he was brought up. Whosoever thinks and acts like him obtains the same power; whosoever is still more perfect can reach higher. This is the faith and the love through which we are saved; everything else, essentially indifferent, is
good or bad, godless or shameless only according to human conceptions; for by nature nothing is bad. This is the teaching which Jesus himself gave to his disciples, " privately in a mystery," ordering them to disseminate it among the faithful ("the worthy and believing "). The Carpocratians rendered divine honor to Jesus as to the other secular sages (Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle). They claimed for themselves the power of ruling the world-builders: magic arts, exorcism, philters and love-potions, dreams and cures were at their command, and like other secret societies they had a special mark of recognition, which they burned with a hot iron on the back of the lobe of the right ear.
Later writers follow Ireneeus. Clement alone adds new matter in some quotations from a Carpocratian manuscript. He says that Carpocrates had a son, Epiphanes, whose mother was Alexandria of Cephalonia; that this son became an author, died when seventeen years old, and was honored as a god at Same in Cephalonia. This story has been declared mythical (cf. Volkmar in the Monatsschrift des wissenschaftlichen Vereins in Zurich, 1858, pp. 276-277; Lipsius, Zur Quellenkritik des Epiphanius, pp. 161-162, Leipsic, 1865), and it is maintained that traits of the moon-god worshiped at Same (Gk. theos epiphanes) were transferred to Epiphanes, the Gnostic. Though this suggestion is striking, there is hardly reason for making a myth of the entire statement of Clement, so much the more as he has filled out his account by a long extract from a work of Epiphanes " On Righteousness." In this work the young idealist advocated community of goods and women without the intention of preaching general immorality. Even Irenseus had written: " I can hardly believe that all the ungodly, unlawful, and forbidden things of which we read in their books are really done among them." One needs only to reflect how inconsistently highly endowed advocates of similar views think and act nowadays, though of course it must be admitted that such conceptions in earlier times might have caused in immature minds the same troubles as they do to-day. At all events, Carpocratianism can not be called Christianity. It is a specifically ethnic phenomenon, easily explicable from the religious syncretism of the second century. G. Kruger. Bibliography: The sources are accessible in Eng. in ANF, i 350, ii. 382-404, iii. 216, 651, v. 113; NPNF, i. 114, 179 199 Consult also: C. W. F. Walch, Histone der Ketzereien, i. 302-335, Leipsic, 1762; A. Neander Genetische Entwickelung der vornehmsten gnoshschen Systeme, pp 355-360, Berlin, 1818; idem, Christian Church, 1. 292, 399 449-451, 484; W. Moller, Geschichte der Kosmologie, pp 335-343 Halle, 1860; A. Hilgenfeld, Ketzergeschichte des Urchristentums, '< pp. 397-408, Leipsic, 1884; Harnack, Litteratwr, i. 161-162.
CARPZOV: A family of German lawyers and theologians, of which the following are the most important members:
1. Benedikt Carpzov: Lawyer; b. at Wittenberg May 27 1595; d. at Leipsic Aug. 30, 1666. He was educated at Wittenberg, Leipsic, and Jena, and after a tour through Italy, France, and England became a member of the court of sheriffs at Leipsic,
Carpzov Carroll