Christians, Gnostics and philosophers in Late Antiquity - CS1014

Gnosticism, Christianity and late antique philosophy are often studied separately; when studied together they are too often conflated.

These articles set out to show that we misunderstand all three phenomena if we take either approach.

We cannot interpret, or even identify, Christian Gnosticism without Platonic evidence; we may even discover that Gnosticism throws unexpected light on the Platonic imagination.

At the same time, if we read writers like Origen simply as Christian Platonists, or bring Christians and philosophers together under the porous umbrella of 'monotheism', we ignore fundamental features of both traditions.

To grasp what made Christianity distinctive, we must look at the questions asked in the studies here, not merely what Christians appropriated but how it was appropriated.