Encratism

Definition

Encratism is the doctrine that abstinence belongs to salvation itself rather than to training. Refusing marriage and certain foods counts, on this view, as deliverance rather than discipline. Irenaeus names its holders the Encratites and traces them to Saturninus and Marcion, and the position follows from treating material creation as a lesser power's work.

Primary source

Springing from Saturninus and Marcion, those who are called Encratites (self-controlled) preached against marriage, thus setting aside the original creation of God, and indirectly blaming Him who made the male and female for the propagation of the human race.

— Against Heresies, I.28.1, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I, Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885). Open-access copy

Deep Understanding

Read the sentence as an argument rather than an accusation and the whole position opens. Irenaeus does not object that continence is excessive. He objects that it sets aside the original creation, which is to say that the Encratite refusal carries a verdict on whoever made the thing refused. He is right about the implication, and the Encratites would have agreed with him about it. What they disagreed about was who made the world.

That is the hinge. If the visible order is the work of a lesser power rather than of the highest God, then declining to take part in it is consistent behaviour, not excess. Marriage continues the arrangement. Animal food participates in it. Irenaeus reports that abstention from animal food travelled with the same movement, and he calls it ingratitude to the God who formed all things, which is exactly the charge the Encratite position is designed to accept.

The word was already in use for something milder. In the moral vocabulary of the period enkráteia names a virtue of self-command, the ordinary ability to govern an appetite. Encratism takes that virtue and promotes it to a doctrine of salvation, and the promotion is the whole difference. Askesis keeps restriction as an instrument with a stated object. Encratism makes the restriction itself the thing that saves.

Set against the other wing of the same century, the shape becomes clear. Irenaeus also reports Valentinians who treated food rules as irrelevant on the grounds that what is carnal is owed to the carnal nature, reasoning from the same low view of the kosmos to the opposite conclusion. Two groups, one premise, opposite kitchens. Neither is a corruption of the other, and the texts that survive argue both.

One caution belongs with every heresiologist. Irenaeus writes to refute, not to describe, and the details he chooses are the ones that make his opponents look worst. The doctrine is well enough attested in his own summary of it. The conduct he attributes to its holders is a prosecutor's account.

Often confused with

Askesis — training with a stated object, where encratism makes the abstinence itself salvific. Apatheia — a condition of the soul the ascetic tradition aims at, not a rule about marriage or food. Kosmos — the arranged world encratism refuses to extend.

In Practice

Take any restriction you keep and ask which of the two it is. Write one sentence: either I do this in order to be able to ___, or I do this because taking part would compromise me. The first is askesis and has a target you can check. The second is the encratite move, and it rests on a judgement about the whole arrangement you are declining. Neither sentence is shameful. The useful part is knowing which one you actually believe, because they answer to different kinds of evidence and they fail in different ways.

In Pleroma's Words

There is a long distance between training for something and refusing to be implicated. The second century argued it out in public and never settled it. Most people who skip a meal for spiritual reasons have not noticed that they are picking a side.

Stefan's Alkimia. (2026, October 30). Encratism. Pleroma Guide. https://pleroma.guide/en/lexicon/encratism

Stefan's Alkimia. “Encratism.” Pleroma Guide, 30 Oct. 2026, pleroma.guide/en/lexicon/encratism.

Stefan's Alkimia. “Encratism.” Pleroma Guide. October 30, 2026. https://pleroma.guide/en/lexicon/encratism.

@online{alkimia2026encratism,
  author = {{Stefan's Alkimia}},
  title = {{Encratism}},
  organization = {{Pleroma Guide}},
  date = {2026-10-30},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://pleroma.guide/en/lexicon/encratism},
  langid = {english}
}