Pessimism, cosmic

In chapter three, I backtrack to the Pauline corpus, which I present as a significant source for Christian cosmic pessimism, if one can indeed be found. Specifically, I contend that Gnostics borrowed the concept of heimarmene from contemporary debates in Middle Platonism, but they read these debates through the interpretive lens of Pauline exegesis. Paul himself did not use the term heimarmene, but in his undisputed letters he does indeed refer to enslavement to the cosmos —a metaphysical state of bondage that, Paul beheved, Christ Jesus came to rectify. This potent image... 

Just how influential Jonas s idea of cosmic pessimism as essential to Gnosticism was would soon become clear. In 1966, the landmark Messina conference on Gnosticism issued a formal definition of Gnosticism. According to the first part of the definition, Gnosticism was... 

The idea that one could characterize a single distinct and definitive Roman Zeitgeist—and that it was marred by a prevailing cosmic pessimism, particularly characterizing a hazily-defined movement called Gnosticism—was endemic to certain academic circles during the first four decades of the... 

Cosmic Pessimism and the History of Religions School in Germany... 

It is my assertion—and here I diverge from the majority of scholars on the subject—that cosmic pessimism within second to fourth-century Christianity (particularly, though by no means exclusively, Gnostic Christianity) finds its root not just in prevaihng Graeco-Roman conceptions of a malevolent cosmos, but also in later exegeses of the Pauline corpus. Any Christian... 

The development of what some scholars have identified as cosmic pessimism, that is to say, a new and negative evaluation of the cosmos as contaminated by matter and, thus, by evil. 

It must be said, however, that we can indeed find evidence that certain Christians in the second century ascribed to what Cumont had termed cosmic pessimism. An example would be, most clearly, the Gospel of Judas. 

Enslavement to Fate, Cosmic Pessimism and other Explorations of the... 

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