Abstract

ALBY, Juan Carlos. El "hombre que viene de lo alto": Elitismo y marginación en la antropología valentiana. Tópicos [online]. 2003, n.11, pp.23-44. ISSN 1666-485X.

The Gnostics of the II century proposed a differentiated conception of the "man", making it dependent on the substance that in every case was his constituent. Under this distinction of natures underlie a cosmology sustained in a colossal myth. The diversity of substances determined a variety of men's species which dignity changed from the most sublime to the lowest level, from the "chosen ones" to the "reprobates", passing for a intermediate level, equidistant of both. Inside the different gnostic families, that of the valentinians was conspicuous, among other things, for the meticulous description of the foundational myth of such anthropology. From this conception arose a fragmented anthropology, which provoked the problem of the historical condition of each human resultant lineages, as well as the question of freedom. The coherence of this doctrine demanded the inevitable creation of a type of spiritual "ghetto" in which they placed one of the human species while at the same time they confined another to an anthropological marginality, relegating freedom and historical consciousness to the intermediate species of men. The reaction of the Christian Church found a leader in Irineo of Lyon, who refuted that anthropology of exclusion claiming the unicity of the human lineage and the dramatic and free condition of all men without exception in the history.

Keywords : gnosticism; anthropology; Ireneus of Lyon.

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