By the fourth century, Gnosticism was on the decline. Libertine Gnosticism was always a very minor view point, even among Gnostic circles, likely due to people having a hard time taking a religion seriously that was so much fun. Ascetic Gnosticism’s decline also makes since, after all, who in their right mind would want to live a life of celibacy and pain. It seems like it would be very difficult to recruit new members, and like most religious groups, the most effective method of growth is by members having children and indoctrinating them as they grow up. If you’re members don’t have children, the only way for the religion to even maintain is a high rate of conversion that counters those who leave the group and those who move away or die. I don’t know of the actual size of Gnosticism at the start of the fourth century, but at the very least, they had become statistically much less significant.

There were also many, many other heresies they had to compete with. Arianism served as the huge threat to orthodox Christianity in the fourth century. After all, it’s much easier to believe that something is either man or god, than to try to believe something so illogical as something or someone being fully both, besides Arians weren’t celibate.

Other major developments in the forth century was the solidifying of the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome and the gaining of official recognition and support from the Roman Empire. Once Christianity was the state religion, it served the emperor to have his new religion be as unified as possible, so there were many more counsels called specifically to better establish orthodoxy and increased support for the hierarchy. With official status and the emperor’s blessing, enemies of the church became enemies of the state and bishops gained the backing of the army and legal authorities.

For almost three hundred years Christianity had dealt with heretics through wars of words: argumentation, debate, and persuasion. Generally, the most they could do was kick them out of the church if they couldn’t win them over. Now, finally, bishops could silence their critics with the sword. Those who wouldn’t submit to the counsels faced the possibility of being executed and their heretical books burned.

We know surprisingly little about Gnosticism since almost every copy of their texts were destroyed. For centuries the best sources were arguments against the Gnostics. Only a few fragments had survived, very few in the original Greek.

There was one man in Egypt sometime in the mid fourth century who had a collection of Coptic translations of many of the Gnostic texts. I can only imagine the fear that must have been going through his mind as he was being hunted down simply for what he believed. While he most likely either recanted or was killed, he at least wanted to make sure that future generations might have a chance to know what he had believed. So he took his books and buried them. By doing that, after being silenced for 16 centuries, he was able to speak again when they were found in 1946.

The church tried its best to obliterate an idea, but they failed.

This is just a good reminder of what happens when religion has political power. Sure, Christianity is a powerful force in the US today, but it can get much worse. If a specific set of dogma were to gain acceptance by the state, then anybody who deviated from that would be in trouble. We must be constantly vigilant for the encroachment of religion on government.