Gnosticism was an early Greek religious movement of broad proportions that was particularly influential in the second-century church. The word gnosticism comes from the Greek term gnosis, meaning “knowledge.” Gnostics believed that devotees had gained a special kind of spiritual enlightenment, through which they had attained a secret or higher level of knowledge not accessible to the uninitiated (Stanley J. Grenz, David Guretzki, and Cherith Fee Nordling. Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms).
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