It is commonly thought that gnostic systems are grounded upon a dualist conception of the origin of the Universe, but this is subject to question. Gnosticism was the source of many religious and philosophical movements in nowise marked by dualism, suffice it to recall Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and later the mediaeval adepts of secret teachings who, through many perversions, were seeking for the one Divine Absolute. Dualistic elements, more or less marked in different gnostic systems, co-existed with a monistic element often predominant.

In Christianity pure dualism, i.e., the essential and primordial opposition between two distinct principles, has existed only within Manicheism which owed its origin to Persian Mazdeism. Before Manes this Persian dualism had only an indirect influence upon the great syncretistic movement of the Hellenic world. Actually this term—dualism— is applicable only there where the principle of evil is considered to be in its origin independent of its opposite—the principle of good. In the gnostic systems the evil principle is the outcome of a slow evolution proceeding from a unique First Principle. These systems are essentially monistic, differing one from another precisely by the way they conceive this creative evolution resulting in an inferior world and its final reintegration into the Godhead. The ancient gnosis, with its multiple systems, was an effort to connect the actuality of the material world with the divine transcendency. Modern Russian thinkers are concerned with the same problems. Gnosticism originated outside Christianity, but borrowed its soteriological doctrine as a basis for speculations closer to pantheism than to dualism, and it is within this pantheist evolution that the idea of Sophia, link between the unknowable and the actual, originated.