The second century CE saw the rise of the first wave of speculative Christian theologies. Leading thinkers in this group, such as Valentinus, Ptolemaeus, Marcion, and Basilides – working in cultural centers like Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome – sought to address some of the core theological quandaries of their day such as the nature of creation, emergent Christianity’s relationship to its Jewish heritage, and the origin of evil – issues which are all inextricably linked. Unlike their later proto-orthodox rivals who would seek the genesis of wickedness in the movements of the human will, members of the first wave opted for largely metaphysical solutions to the problem of evil. As such, these thinkers had a very different understanding of cosmology and anthropology than their rivals who eventually sidelined them as purveyors of “false gnosis” and heresy.