Cerinthus (; fl. c. 50-100 CE) was an early Gnostic, who was prominent as a heresiarch in the view of the early Church Fathers. Contrary to the Church Fathers, he used the Gospel of Cerinthus, and denied that the Supreme God made the physical world. In Cerinthus' interpretation, the Christ descended upon Jesus at baptism and guided him in ministry and the performing of miracles, but left him at the crucifixion. Similarly to the Ebionites, he maintained that Jesus was not born of a virgin, but was a mere man, the biological son of Mary and Joseph.
Early Christian tradition describes Cerinthus as a contemporary to and opponent of John the Evangelist, who may have written the First Epistle of John and the Second Epistle of John to warn the less mature in faith and doctrine about the changes Cerinthus was making to the original gospel. According to early Christian sources, the Apostle John wrote his gospel specifically to refute the teachings of Cerinthus.
All that is known about Cerinthus comes from the writing of his theological opponents.
Biography
Cerinthus flourished during the second half of the first century, though the date of his birth and his death are unknown. None of Cerinthus' actual writings seem to have survived. Our most detailed understanding of the man Cerinthus' teachings are from the 4th century Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis, a few centuries after his death, though Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 135–202) briefly outlines Cerinthus' beliefs in his five books against Gnosticism. Publication of surviving fragments of Hippolytus of Rome's (c. 170–235) Capita Adversus Caium demonstrate Epiphanius drew heavily from Hippolytus' Refutation of the Thirty-two Heresies.
Irenaeus writes that Cerinthus was educated in the Gnosis of the Egyptians. According to Epiphanius, Cerinthus was the instigator of trouble against the Apostles Paul and Peter at Jerusalem, and had sent out men to Antioch commanding that gentile converts must be circumcised and keep the Law, prompting the convention of the Jerusalem Council (c. 50). After these things, Epiphanius says that Cerinthus founded a school in the Roman province of Asia Minor, which at its height spread into the province of Galatia. According to Galatian tradition, Paul wrote his epistle to the Galatians against Cerinthus' followers who were troubling the church.
In Asia, early Christian writers identify Cerinthus as an adversary of the Apostle John. According to Irenaeus, his teacher Polycarp, himself a student of John, told the story that John rushed out of a bathhouse at Ephesus without bathing when he found out Cerinthus was inside, exclaiming, "Let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is inside!" Irenaeus also relates that John sought by proclamation of his gospel "to remove that error which by Cerinthus had been disseminated among men".
Beliefs
We do not have a fully developed understanding of Cerinthus' teachings. The earliest surviving account of Cerinthus is that in Irenæus' refutation of Gnosticism, Adversus haereses, which was written about 170 AD. According to Irenæus, Cerinthus, a man educated in the wisdom of the Egyptians, claimed angelic inspiration.
The Epistula Apostolorum, a little-known 2nd-century text discovered in 1895, which is roughly contemporary (c. 160–170) with the above work of Irenaeus, was written polemically against the teachings of Cerinthus, beginning with an admonition to those who might follow the teachings of Simon and Cerinthus.
Scripture
Cerinthus utilized a gospel identical to that of the Ebionites, which the early church fathers identify as an unorthodox version of the Gospel of Matthew. Unlike Marcion of Sinope, a 2nd-century Gnostic who was hostile to the God of the Hebrews proclaimed in the Law and prophets, Cerinthus recognized Jewish scripture and professed to follow the God of the Hebrews, though Cerinthus denied that he made the world.
Creation
Cerinthus taught that the visible world and heavens were not made by the supreme being, but by a lesser power (Demiurge) distinct from him. He taught that this power was ignorant of the existence of the Supreme God.
His use of the term demiurge (literally, craftsman) for the creator fits Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, which dominated the learned environment of the eastern Mediterranean, see also Hellenistic Judaism. Unlike true Gnostics that followed him, Cerinthus taught that the demiurge was not evil, more like Philo's logos than the egotistical demiurge taught by Valentinus.