Gnosticism and Christianity The Late Roman era was clearly steeped in Gnosticism, then: a) the world is a prison b) all things human are mere vanity c) life is a dream and a nightmare d) the authentic (what is not a dream) is to be found, ‘elsewhere’, in the ‘inner world’ e) disdain for the body, but salvation for the soul. The Gnostic spirit is not, of course, a phenomenon confined to the Late Roman era. It exists in every age. If it is not an object of interest, that is because it is of a marginal nature. The issue is to see why it was the dominant spiritual position at the time we are examining. It is, for a start, an oversimplified suggestion of an interpretation to ...
