2nd–13th centuries

Dualism against the Good Creator: Gnostics, Manichees, Paulicians, Bogomils, Cathars – and the Doctrine of Creation out of Nothing

Second-century Gnosticism, according to González (HCT), comprised syncretistic teachings for which the world is the result of an error by a lower, evil or ignorant being, and salvation is the liberation of the spirit enslaved by matter through secret knowledge. Gnostic systems linked creation with the fall and divided people by nature into spiritual, psychic and material. Against the Platonic co-eternity of God and matter, Theophilus, Clement and Tertullian (Against Hermogenes) affirmed creation out of nothing: nothing is co-eternal with God, He creates by a single act of will. The same dispute recurred with the Manichees (3rd century) and later with the Paulicians, Bogomils and Cathars: Eastern polemicists of the 9th–11th centuries replied that evil is the absence of good, the devil is a creature, and matter and the body are good; the Lateran Council of 1215 condemned the Albigensians.