so-called’). The issue for Irenaeus was that the form of know-
ledge against which he was arguing was a false one. Furthermore,
Irenaeus’ use of this term was inseparable from his argument
that the church preserved a pristine orthodoxy that stretched
back to the time of Jesus and the apostles: he lifted the phrase
pseudo ̄ numos gno ̄ sisfrom the deutero-Pauline First Epistle to
Timothy(6.20). Indeed, the formula would be used later more
arbitrarily to designate heresy more generally. When Eusebius
of Caesarea stated that the challenge of heresy would be one
of the cardinal themes of his Ecclesiastical History, the exact
form of words he used to describe it was pseudo ̄ numos gno ̄ sis
(Ecclesiastical History1.1.1).
The word ‘gnostic’ (gno ̄ stikosin Greek, gnosticusin Latin),
which can be either a noun or an adjective, is hardly used with
any greater precision. Whereas Irenaeus used the term in the
specific context of the heretics against which he was writing, we
also know that the third-century pagan Neoplatonic philosopher
Plotinus wrote a tract to which his student and biographer
Porphyry gave the title Against the Gnostics(Porphyry, Life
of Plotinus16).^4 Porphyry states that Plotinus’ enemies were
Christians who developed their particular ideas from reading
philosophy, a charge also found in Irenaeus (Against Heresies
2.14.2). But while Irenaeus’ problem with these people was that
they were perverting scripture, Plotinus’ gripe with them was
that they were abusing philosophy. It is hard to know if Plotinus
and Irenaeus were describing the same group (they were, after
all, writing a hundred years apart) or whether both used the
word ‘Gnostic’ as a general term of abuse. Furthermore, the term
‘Gnostic’ could be used in a positive sense by Christians them-
selves. Such is the case with Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215).
In his Stromateis (Miscellanies), he used not only gno ̄ stikos
but also gno ̄sisto mean an enlightened Christian and the know-
ledge to which that Christian could aspire (e.g. Stromateis6.18).
Clement did not qualify gno ̄ sis with an adjective such as
pseudo ̄ numos, so the knowledge he is describing is not tainted
with any negative connotations. He seems, moreover, to be unique
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