 From
the Christian Research Journal, Fall 1990, page 8. The Editor-in-Chief
of the Christian Research Journal is Elliot Miller.
Popular opinion often comes from obscure sources.
Many conceptions about Jesus now current and credible in New Age circles
are rooted in a movement of spiritual protest which, until recently, was
the concern only of the specialized scholar or the occultist. This ancient
movement -- Gnosticism -- provides much of the form and color for the
New Age portrait of Jesus as the illumined Illuminator: one who serves
as a cosmic catalyst for others' awakening.
Many essentially Gnostic notions received wide attention through the
sagacious persona of the recently deceased Joseph Campbell in the television
series and best-selling book, The Power of Myth. For example, in
discussing the idea that "God was in Christ," Campbell affirmed that "the
basic Gnostic and Buddhist idea is that that is true of you and me as
well." Jesus is an enlightened example who "realized in himself that he
and what he called the Father were one, and he lived out of that knowledge
of the Christhood of his nature." According to Campbell, anyone can likewise
live out his or her Christ nature.[1]
Gnosticism has come to mean just about anything. Calling someone a Gnostic
can make the person either blush, beam, or fume. Whether used as an epithet
for heresy or spiritual snobbery, or as a compliment for spiritual knowledge
and esotericism, Gnosticism remains a cornucopia of controversy.
This is doubly so when Gnosticism is brought into a discussion of Jesus
of Nazareth. Begin to speak of "Christian Gnostics" and some will exclaim,
"No way! That is a contradiction in terms. Heresy is not orthodoxy." Others
will affirm, "No contradiction. Orthodoxy is the heresy. The Gnostics
were edged out of mainstream Christianity for political purposes by the
end of the third century." Speak of the Gnostic Christ or the Gnostic
gospels, and an ancient debate is moved to the theological front burner.
Gnosticism as a philosophy refers to a related body of teachings that
stress the acquisition of "gnosis," or inner knowledge. The knowledge
sought is not strictly intellectual, but mystical; not merely a detached
knowledge of or about something, but a knowing by acquaintance or participation.
This gnosis is the inner and esoteric mystical knowledge of ultimate reality.
It discloses the spark of divinity within, thought to be obscured by ignorance,
convention, and mere exoteric religiosity.
This knowledge is not considered to be the possession of the masses but
of the Gnostics, the Knowers, who are privy to its benefits. While the
orthodox "many" exult in the exoteric religious trappings which stress
dogmatic belief and prescribed behavior, the Gnostic "few" pierce
through the surface to the esoteric spiritual knowledge of God.
The Gnostics claim the Orthodox mistake the shell for the core; the Orthodox
claim the Gnostics dive past the true core into a nonexistent one of their
own esoteric invention.
To adjudicate this ancient acrimony requires that we examine Gnosticism's
perennial allure, expose its philosophical foundations, size up its historical
claims, and square off the Gnostic Jesus with the figure who sustains
the New Testament.
Glossary
aeons: Emanations of Being from the unknowable, ultimate metaphysical
principle or pleroma (see pleroma).
Apostolic rule of faith: The essential teachings of the apostles
that served as the authoritative standard for orthodox doctrine before
the canonization of the New Testament.
Demiurge: According to the Gnostics (as opposed to Plato and others
who had a more positive assessment), an inferior deity who ignorantly
and incompetently fashioned the debased physical world.
esotericism: The teaching that spiritual liberation is found in
a secret or hidden knowledge (sometimes called gnosis) not available in
traditional orthodoxy or exotericism.
exotericism: A pejorative term used by esotericists to describe
the mere outer or popular understanding of spiritual truth which is supposedly
inferior to the esoteric essence.
gnosis: The Greek word for "knowledge" used by the Gnostics to
mean knowledge gained not through intellectual discovery but through personal
experience or acquaintance which initiates one into esoteric mysteries.
The experience of gnosis reveals to the initiated the divine spark within.
"Gnosis" has a very different meaning in the New Testament which excludes
esotericism and self-deification.
Pleroma: The Greek word for "fulness" used by the Gnostics to
mean the highest principle of Being where dwells the unknown and unknowable
God. Used in the New Testament to refer to "fulness in Christ"
(Col. 2:10) who is the known revelation of God in the flesh.
MODERN GNOSTICISM
Gnosticism is experiencing something of a revival, despite its status
within church history as a vanquished Christian heresy. The magazine Gnosis,
which bills itself as a "journal of western inner traditions," began publication
in 1985 with a circulation of 2,500. As of September 1990, it sported
a circulation of 11,000. Gnosis regularly runs articles on Gnosticism
and Gnostic themes such as "Valentinus: A Gnostic for All Seasons."
Some have created institutional forms of this ancient religion. In Palo
Alto, California, priestess Bishop Rosamonde Miller officiates the weekly
gatherings of Ecclesia Gnostica Myteriorum (Church of Gnostic Mysteries),
as she has done for the last eleven years. The chapel holds forty to sixty
participants each Sunday and includes Gnostic readings in its liturgy.
Miller says she knows of twelve organizationally unrelated Gnostic churches
throughout the world.[2] Stephan Hoeller, a frequent contributor to Gnosis,
who since 1967 has been a bishop of Ecclesia Gnostica in Los Angeles,
notes that "Gnostic churches...have sprung up in recent years in increasing
numbers."[3] He refers to an established tradition of "wandering bishops"
who retain allegiance to the symbolic and ritual form of orthodox Christianity
while reinterpreting its essential content.[4]
Of course, these exotic-sounding enclaves of the esoteric are minuscule
when compared to historic Christian denominations. But the real challenge
of Gnosticism is not so much organizational as intellectual. Gnosticism
in its various forms has often appealed to the alienated intellectuals
who yearn for spiritual experience outside the bounds of the ordinary.
The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, a constant source of inspiration for
the New Age, did much to introduce Gnosticism to the modern world by viewing
it as a kind of proto-depth psychology, a key to psychological interpretation.
According to Stephan Hoeller, author of The Gnostic Jung, "it was
Jung's contention that Christianity and Western culture have suffered
grievously because of the repression of the Gnostic approach to religion,
and it was his hope that in time this approach would be reincorporated
in our culture, our Western spirituality."[5]
In his Psychological Types, Jung praised "the intellectual content
of Gnosis" as "vastly superior" to the orthodox church. He also affirmed
that, "in light of our present mental development [Gnosticism] has not
lost but considerably gained in value."[6]
A variety of esoteric groups have roots in Gnostic soil. Madame Helena
P. Blavatsky, who founded Theosophy in 1875, viewed the Gnostics as precursors
of modern occult movements and hailed them for preserving an inner teaching
lost to orthodoxy. Theosophy and its various spin-offs -- such as Rudolf
Steiner's Anthroposophy, Alice Bailey's Arcane School, Guy and Edna Ballard's
I Am movement, and Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant
-- all draw water from this same well; so do various other esoteric groups,
such as the Rosicrucians. These groups share an emphasis on esoteric teaching,
the hidden divinity of humanity, and contact with nonmaterial higher beings
called masters or adepts.
A four-part documentary called "The Gnostics" was released in mid-1989
and shown in one-day screenings across the country along with a lecture
by the producer. This ambitious series charted the history of Gnosticism
through dramatizations and interviews with world-renowned scholars on
Gnosticism such as Gilles Quispel, Hans Jonas, and Elaine Pagels.
A review of the series in a New Age-oriented journal noted: "The series
takes us to the Nag Hammadi find where we learn the beginnings of the
discovery of texts called the Gnostic Gospels that were written around
the same time as the gospels of the New Testament but which were purposely
left out."[7] The review refers to one of the most sensational and significant
archaeological finds of the twentieth century; a discovery seen by some
as overthrowing the orthodox view of Jesus and Christianity forever.
GOLD IN THE JAR
In December 1945, while digging for soil to fertilize crops, an Arab
peasant named Muhammad 'Ali found a red earthenware jar near Nag Hammadi,
a city in upper Egypt. His fear of uncorking an evil spirit or jin
was shortly overcome by the hope of finding gold within. What was found
has been for hundreds of scholars far more precious than gold. Inside
the jar were thirteen leather-bound papyrus books (codices), dating from
approximately A.D. 350. Although several of the texts were burned or thrown
out, fifty-two texts were eventually recovered through many years of intrigue
involving illegal sales, violence, smuggling, and academic rivalry.
Some of the texts were first published singly or in small collections,
but the complete collection was not made available in a popular format
in English until 1977. It was released as The Nag Hammadi Library
and was reissued in revised form in 1988.
Although many of these documents had been referred to and denounced in
the writings of early church theologians such as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus,
most of the texts themselves had been thought to be extinct. Now many
of them have come to light. As Elaine Pagels put it in her best-selling
book, The Gnostic Gospels, "Now for the first time, we have the
opportunity to find out about the earliest Christian heresy; for the first
time, the heretics can speak for themselves."[8]
Pagels's book, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, arguably
did more than any other effort to ingratiate the Gnostics to modern Americans.
She made them accessible and even likeable. Her scholarly expertise coupled
with her ability to relate an ancient religion to contemporary concerns
made for a compelling combination in the minds of many. Her central thesis
was simple: Gnosticism should be considered at least as legitimate as
orthodox Christianity because the "heresy" was simply a competing strain
of early Christianity. Yet, we find that the Nag Hammadi texts present
a Jesus at extreme odds with the one found in the Gospels. Before contrasting
the Gnostic and biblical renditions of Jesus, however, we need a short
briefing on gnosis.
THE GNOSTIC MESSAGE
Gnosticism in general and the Nag Hammadi texts in particular present
a spectrum of beliefs, although a central philosophical core is roughly
discernible, which Gnosticism scholar Kurt Rudolph calls "the central
myth."[9] Gnosticism teaches that something is desperately wrong with
the universe and then delineates the means to explain and rectify the
situation.
The universe, as presently constituted, is not good, nor was it created
by an all-good God. Rather, a lesser god, or demiurge (as he is sometimes
called), fashioned the world in ignorance. The Gospel of Philip
says that "the world came about through a mistake. For he who created
it wanted to create it imperishable and immortal. He fell short of attaining
his desire."[10] The origin of the demiurge or offending creator is variously
explained, but the upshot is that some precosmic disruption in the chain
of beings emanating from the unknowable Father-God resulted in the "fall
out" of a substandard deity with less than impeccable credentials. The
result was a material cosmos soaked with ignorance, pain, decay, and death
-- a botched job, to be sure. This deity, nevertheless, despotically demands
worship and even pretentiously proclaims his supremacy as the one true
God.
This creator-god is not the ultimate reality, but rather a degeneration
of the unknown and unknowable fullness of Being (or pleroma). Yet, human
beings -- or at least some of them -- are in the position potentially
to transcend their imposed limitations, even if the cosmic deck is stacked
against them. Locked within the material shell of the human race is the
spark of this highest spiritual reality which (as one Gnostic theory held)
the inept creator accidently infused into humanity at the creation --
on the order of a drunken jeweler who accidently mixes gold dust into
junk metal. Simply put, spirit is good and desirable; matter is evil and
detestable.
If this spark is fanned into a flame, it can liberate humans from the
maddening matrix of matter and the demands of its obtuse originator. What
has devolved from perfection can ultimately evolve back into
perfection through a process of self-discovery.
Into this basic structure enters the idea of Jesus as a Redeemer of those
ensconced in materiality. He comes as one descended from the spiritual
realm with a message of self-redemption. The body of Gnostic literature,
which is wider than the Nag Hammadi texts, presents various views of this
Redeemer figure. There are, in fact, differing schools of Gnosticism with
differing Christologies. Nevertheless, a basic image emerges.
The Christ comes from the higher levels of intermediary beings (called
aeons) not as a sacrifice for sin but as a Revealer, an emissary from
error-free environs. He is not the personal agent of the creator-god revealed
in the Old Testament. (That metaphysically disheveled deity is what got
the universe into such a royal mess in the first place.) Rather, Jesus
has descended from a more exalted level to be a catalyst for igniting
the gnosis latent within the ignorant. He gives a metaphysical assist
to underachieving deities (i.e., humans) rather than granting ethical
restoration to God's erring creatures through the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
NAG HAMMADI UNVEILED
By inspecting a few of the Nag Hammadi texts, we encounter Gnosticism
in Christian guise: Jesus dispenses gnosis to awaken those trapped in
ignorance; the body is a prison, and the spirit alone is good; and salvation
comes by discovering the "kingdom of God" within the self.
One of the first Nag Hammadi texts to be extricated out of Egypt and
translated into Western tongues was the Gospel of Thomas, comprised
of one hundred and fourteen alleged sayings of Jesus. Although scholars
do not believe it was actually written by the apostle Thomas, it has received
the lion's share of scholarly attention. The sayings of Jesus are given
minimal narrative setting, are not thematically arranged, and have a cryptic,
epigrammatic bite to them. Although Thomas does not articulate
every aspect of a full-blown Gnostic system, some of the teachings attributed
to Jesus fit the Gnostic pattern. (Other sayings closely parallel or duplicate
material found in the synoptic Gospels.)
The text begins: "These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus
spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. And he said, 'Whoever
finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.'"[11]
Already we find the emphasis on secret knowledge (gnosis) as redemptive.
JESUS AND GNOSIS
Unlike the canonical gospels, Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection are
not narrated and neither do any of the hundred and fourteen sayings in
the Gospel of Thomas directly refer to these events. Thomas's Jesus
is a dispenser of wisdom, not the crucified and resurrected Lord.
Jesus speaks of the kingdom: "The kingdom is inside of you, and it is
outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become
known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living
father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and
it is you who are that poverty."[12]
Other Gnostic documents center on the same theme. In the Book of Thomas
the Contender, Jesus speaks "secret words" concerning self-knowledge:
"For he who has not known himself has known nothing, but he who has known
himself has at the same time already achieved knowledge of the depth of
the all."[13]
Pagels observes that many of the Gnostics "shared certain affinities
with contemporary methods of exploring the self through psychotherapeutic
techniques."[14] This includes the premises that, first, many people are
unconscious of their true condition and, second, "that the psyche bears
within itself the potential for liberation or destruction."[15]
Gilles Quispel notes that for Valentinus, a Gnostic teacher of the second
century, Christ is "the Paraclete from the Unknown who reveals...the discovery
of the Self -- the divine spark within you."[16]
The heart of the human problem for the Gnostic is ignorance, sometimes
called "sleep," "intoxication," or "blindness." But Jesus redeems man
from such ignorance. Stephan Hoeller says that in the Valentinian system
"there is no need whatsoever for guilt, for repentance from so-called
sin, neither is there a need for a blind belief in vicarious salvation
by way of the death of Jesus."[17] Rather, Jesus is savior in the sense
of being a "spiritual maker of wholeness" who cures us of our sickness
of ignorance.[18]
Gnosticism on Crucifixion and Resurrection
Those Gnostic texts that discuss Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection
display a variety of views that, nevertheless, reveal some common themes.
James is consoled by Jesus in the First Apocalypse of James: "Never
have I suffered in any way, nor have I been distressed. And this people
has done me no harm."[19]
In the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Jesus says, "I did not
die in reality, but in appearance." Those "in error and blindness....saw
me; they punished me. It was another, their father, who drank the gall
and vinegar; it was not I. They struck me with the reed; it was another,
Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. I was rejoicing in the height
over all....And I was laughing at their ignorance."[20]
John Dart has discerned that the Gnostic stories of Jesus mocking his
executors reverse the accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke where the soldiers
and chief priests (Mark 15:20) mock Jesus.[21] In the biblical Gospels,
Jesus does not deride or mock His tormentors; on the contrary, while
suffering from the cross, He asks the Father to forgive those who
nailed Him there.
In the teaching of Valentinus and followers, the death of Jesus is movingly
recounted, yet without the New Testament significance. Although the Gospel
of Truth says that "his death is life for many," it views this life-giving
in terms of imparting the gnosis, not removing sin.[22] Pagels says that
rather than viewing Christ's death as a sacrificial offering to atone
for guilt and sin, the Gospel of Truth "sees the crucifixion as
the occasion for discovering the divine self within."[23]
A resurrection is enthusiastically affirmed in the Treatise on the
Resurrection: "Do not think the resurrection is an illusion. It is
no illusion, but it is truth! Indeed, it is more fitting to say that the
world is an illusion rather than the resurrection."[24] Yet, the nature
of the post-resurrection appearances differs from the biblical accounts.
Jesus is disclosed through spiritual visions rather than physical
circumstances.
The resurrected Jesus for the Gnostics is the spiritual Revealer who
imparts secret wisdom to the selected few. The tone and content of Luke's
account of Jesus' resurrection appearances is a great distance from Gnostic
accounts: "After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave
many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period
of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3).
By now it should be apparent that the biblical Jesus has little in common
with the Gnostic Jesus. He is viewed as a Redeemer in both cases, yet
his nature as a Redeemer and the way of redemption diverge at crucial
points. We shall now examine some of these points.
DID CHRIST REALLY SUFFER AND DIE?
As in much modern New Age teaching, the Gnostics tended to divide Jesus
from the Christ. For Valentinus, Christ descended on Jesus at his baptism
and left before his death on the cross. Much of the burden of the treatise
Against Heresies, written by the early Christian theologian Irenaeus,
was to affirm that Jesus was, is, and always will be, the Christ. He says:
"The Gospel...knew no other son of man but Him who was of Mary, who also
suffered; and no Christ who flew away from Jesus before the passion; but
Him who was born it knew as Jesus Christ the Son of God, and that this
same suffered and rose again."[25]
Irenaeus goes on to quote John's affirmation that "Jesus is the Christ"
(John 20:31) against the notion that Jesus and Christ were "formed of
two different substances," as the Gnostics taught.[26]
In dealing with the idea that Christ did not suffer on the cross for
sin, Irenaeus argues that Christ never would have exhorted His disciples
to take up the cross if He in fact was not to suffer on it Himself, but
fly away from it.[27]
For Irenaeus (a disciple of Polycarp, who himself was a disciple of the
apostle John), the suffering of Jesus the Christ was paramount. It was
indispensable to the apostolic "rule of faith" that Jesus Christ suffered
on the cross to bring salvation to His people. In Irenaeus's mind, there
was no divine spark in the human heart to rekindle; self-knowledge was
not equal to God-knowledge. Rather, humans were stuck in sin and required
a radical rescue operation. Because "it was not possible that the man...who
had been destroyed through disobedience, could reform himself," the Son
brought salvation by "descending from the Father, becoming incarnate,
stooping low, even to death, and consummating the arranged plan of our
salvation."[28]
This harmonizes with the words of Polycarp: "Let us then continually
persevere in our hope and the earnest of our righteousness, which Jesus
Christ, "who bore our sins in His own body on the tree" [1 Pet. 2:24],
"who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth" [1 Pet. 2:22],
but endured all things for us, that we might live in Him."[29]
Polycarp's mentor, the apostle John, said: "This is how we know what
love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us" (1 John 3:16); and "This
is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son
as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (4:10).
The Gnostic Jesus is predominantly a dispenser of cosmic wisdom who discourses
on abstruse themes like the spirit's fall into matter. Jesus Christ certainly
taught theology, but he dealt with the problem of pain and suffering in
a far different way. He suffered for us, rather than escaping the cross
or lecturing on the vanity of the body.
THE MATTER OF THE RESURRECTION
For Gnosticism, the inherent problem of humanity derives from the misuse
of power by the ignorant creator and the resulting entrapment of souls
in matter. The Gnostic Jesus alerts us to this and helps rekindle the
divine spark within. In the biblical teaching, the problem is ethical;
humans have sinned against a good Creator and are guilty before the throne
of the universe.
For Gnosticism, the world is bad, but the soul -- when freed from its
entrapments -- is good. For Christianity, the world was created good (Gen.
1), but humans have fallen from innocence and purity through disobedience
(Gen. 3; Rom. 3). Yet, the message of the gospel is that the One who can
rightly prosecute His creatures as guilty and worthy of punishment has
deigned to visit them in the person of His only Son -- not just to write
up a firsthand damage report, but to rectify the situation through the
Cross and the Resurrection.
In light of these differences, the significance of Jesus' literal and
physical resurrection should be clear. For the Gnostic who abhors matter
and seeks release from its grim grip, the physical resurrection of Jesus
would be anticlimactic, if not absurd. A material resurrection would be
counterproductive and only recapitulate the original problem.
Jesus displays a positive attitude toward the Creation throughout the
Gospels. In telling His followers not to worry He says, "Look at the birds
of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your
heavenly Father feeds them" (Matt. 2:26). And, "Are not two sparrows sold
for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the
will of your Father" (Matt. 10:29). These and many other examples presuppose
the goodness of the material world and declare care by a benevolent Creator.
Gnostic dualism is precluded.
If Jesus recommends fasting and physical self-denial on occasion, it
is not because matter is unworthy of attention or an incorrigible roadblock
to spiritual growth, but because moral and spiritual resolve may be strengthened
through periodic abstinence (Matt. 6:16-18; 9:14-15). Jesus fasts
in the desert and feasts with His disciples. The created world
is good, but the human heart is corrupt and inclines to selfishly misuse
a good creation. Therefore, it is sometimes wise to deny what is good
without in order to inspect and mortify what is bad within.
If Jesus is the Christ who comes to restore God's creation, He must come
as one of its own, a bona fide man. Although Gnostic teachings
show some diversity on this subject, they tend toward docetism -- the
doctrine that the descent of the Christ was spiritual and not material,
despite any appearance of materiality. It was even claimed that
Jesus left no footprints behind him when he walked on the sand.
From a biblical view, materiality is not the problem, but disharmony
with the Maker. Adam and Eve were both material and in harmony with their
good Maker before they succumbed to the Serpent's temptation. Yet, in
biblical reasoning, if Jesus is to conquer sin and death for humanity,
He must rise from the dead in a physical body, albeit a transformed one.
A mere spiritual apparition would mean an abdication of material responsibility.
As Norman Geisler has noted, "Humans sin and die in material bodies and
they must be redeemed in the same physical bodies. Any other kind of deliverance
would be an admission of defeat....If redemption does not restore God's
physical creation, including our material bodies, then God's original
purpose in creating a material world would be frustrated."[30]
For this reason, at Pentecost the apostle Peter preached Jesus of Nazareth
as "a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs" (Acts
2:22) who, though put to death by being nailed to the cross, "God raised
him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was
impossible for death to keep its hold on him" (v. 24). Peter then quotes
Psalm 16:10 which speaks of God not letting His "Holy One see decay" (v.
27). Peter says of David, the psalm's author, "Seeing what was ahead,
he spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that he was not abandoned to the
grave nor did his body see decay. God raised Jesus to life" (vv. 31, 32).
The apostle Paul confesses that if the resurrection of Jesus is not a
historical fact, Christianity is a vanity of vanities (1 Cor. 15:14-19).
And, while he speaks of Jesus' (and the believers') resurrected condition
as a "spiritual body," this does not mean nonphysical or ethereal; rather,
it refers to a body totally free from the results of sin and the Fall.
It is a spirit-driven body, untouched by any of the entropies of evil.
Because Jesus was resurrected bodily, those who know Him as Lord can anticipate
their own resurrected bodies.
JESUS, JUDAISM, AND GNOSIS
The Gnostic Jesus is also divided from the Jesus of the Gospels over
his relationship to Judaism. For Gnostics, the God of the Old Testament
is somewhat of a cosmic clown, neither ultimate nor good. In fact, many
Gnostic documents invert the meaning of Old Testament stories in order
to ridicule him. For instance, the serpent and Eve are heroic figures
who oppose the dull deity in the Hypostasis of the Archons (the Reality
of the Rulers) and in On the Origin of the World.[31]
In the Apocryphon of John, Jesus says he encouraged Adam and Eve
to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,[32] thus putting
Jesus diametrically at odds with the meaning of the Genesis account where
this action is seen as the essence of sin (Gen. 3). The same anti-Jewish
element is found in the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas where the
disciples say to Jesus, "Twenty-four prophets spoke in Israel, and all
of them spoke in you." To which Jesus replies, "You have omitted the one
living in your presence and have spoken (only) of the dead."[33] Jesus
thus dismisses all the prophets as merely "dead." For the Gnostics, the
Creator must be separated from the Redeemer.
The Jesus found in the New Testament quotes the prophets, claims to fulfill
their prophecies, and consistently argues according to the Old Testament
revelation, despite the fact that He exudes an authority equal to it.
Jesus says, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets;
I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matt. 5:17). He
corrects the Sadducees' misunderstanding of the afterlife by saying, "Are
you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures..." (Mark 12:24).
To other critics He again appeals to the Old Testament: "You diligently
study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal
life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me" (John 5:39).
When Jesus appeared after His death and burial to the two disciples on
the road to Emmaus, He commented on their slowness of heart "to believe
all that the prophets have spoken." He asked, "Did not the Christ have
to suffer these things and then enter into glory?" Luke then records,
"And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what
was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself" (Luke 24:25-27).
For both Jesus and the Old Testament, the supreme Creator is the Father
of all living. They are one and the same.
GOD: UNKNOWABLE OR KNOWABLE?
Many Gnostic treatises speak of the ultimate reality or godhead as beyond
conceptual apprehension. Any hope of contacting this reality -- a spark
of which is lodged within the Gnostic -- must be filtered through numerous
intermediary beings of a lesser stature than the godhead itself.
In the Gospel of the Egyptians, the ultimate reality is said to
be the "unrevealable, unmarked, ageless, unproclaimable Father." Three
powers are said to emanate from Him: "They are the Father, the Mother,
(and) the Son, from the living silence."[34] The text speaks of giving
praise to "the great invisible Spirit" who is "the silence of silent silence."[35]
In the Sophia of Jesus Christ, Jesus is asked by Matthew, "Lord...teach
us the truth," to which Jesus says, "He Who Is is ineffable." Although
Jesus seems to indicate that he reveals the ineffable, he says concerning
the ultimate, "He is unnameable....he is ever incomprehensible."[36]
At this point the divide between the New Testament and the Gnostic documents
couldn't be deeper or wider. Although the biblical Jesus had the pedagogical
tact not to proclaim indiscriminately, "I am God! I am God!" the entire
contour of His ministry points to Him as God in the flesh. He says, "He
who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). The prologue to John's
gospel says that "in the beginning was the Word (Logos)" and that "the
Word was with God and was God" (John 1:1). John did not say, "In the beginning
was the silence of the silent silence" or "the ineffable."
Incarnation means tangible and intelligible revelation from God to humanity.
The Creator's truth and life are communicated spiritually through the
medium of matter. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling place among
us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only who came from
the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). The Word that became
flesh "has made Him [the Father] known" (v. 19). John's first epistle
tells us: "The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we
proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared
to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard..." (1 John 1:2-3).
Irenaeus encountered these Gnostic invocations of the ineffable. He quotes
a Valentinian Gnostic teacher who explained the "primary Tetrad" (fourfold
emanation from ultimate reality): "There is a certain Proarch who existed
before all things, surpassing all thought, speech, and nomenclature" whom
he called "Monotes" (unity). Along with this power there is another power
called Hentotes (oneness) who, along with Monotes produced "an intelligent,
unbegotten, and undivided being, which beginning language terms 'Monad.'"
Another entity called Hen (One) rounds out the primal union.[37] Irenaeus
satirically responds with his own suggested Tetrad which also proceeds
from "a certain Proarch":
But along with it there exists a power which I term Gourd;
and along with this Gourd there exists a power which again I term Utter-Emptiness.
This Gourd and Emptiness, since they are one, produced...a fruit, everywhere
visible, eatable, and delicious, which fruit-language calls a Cucumber.
Along with this Cucumber exists a power of the same essence, which again
I call a Melon.[38]
Irenaeus's point is well taken. If spiritual realities surpass our ability
to name or even think about them, then any name under the sun (or
within the Tetrad) is just as appropriate -- or inappropriate -- as any
other, and we are free to affirm with Irenaeus that "these powers of the
Gourd, Utter Emptiness, the Cucumber, and the Melon, brought forth the
remaining multitude of the delirious melons of Valentinus."[39]
Whenever a Gnostic writer -- ancient or modern -- simultaneously asserts
that a spiritual entity or principle is utterly unknown and unnameable
and begins to give it names and ascribe to it characteristics, we should
hark back to Irenaeus. If something is ineffable, it is necessarily unthinkable,
unreportable, and unapproachable.
ANCIENT GNOSTICISM AND MODERN THOUGHT
Modern day Gnostics, Neo-Gnostics, or Gnostic sympathizers should be
aware of some Gnostic elements which decidedly clash with modern tastes.
First, although Pagels, like Jung, has shown the Gnostics in a positive
psychological light, the Gnostic outlook is just as much theological
and cosmological as it is psychological. The Gnostic message
is all of a piece, and the psychology should not be artificially divorced
from the overall world view. In other words, Gnosticism should not be
reduced to psychology -- as if we know better what a Basilides or a Valentinus
really meant than they did.
The Gnostic documents do not present their system as a crypto-psychology
(with various cosmic forces representing psychic functions), but as a
religious and theological explanation of the origin and operation of the
universe. Those who want to adopt consistently Gnostic attitudes and assumptions
should keep in mind what the Gnostic texts -- to which they appeal for
authority and credibility -- actually say.
Second, the Gnostic rejection of matter as illusory, evil, or, at most,
second-best, is at odds with many New Age sentiments regarding the value
of nature and the need for an ecological awareness and ethic. Trying to
find an ecological concern in the Gnostic corpus is on the order of harvesting
wheat in Antarctica. For the Gnostics, as Gnostic scholar Pheme Perkins
puts it, "most of the cosmos that we know is a carefully constructed plot
to keep humanity from returning to its true divine home."[40]
Third, Pagels and others to the contrary, the Gnostic attitude toward
women was not proto-feminist. Gnostic groups did sometimes allow for women's
participation in religious activities and several of the emanational beings
were seen as feminine. Nevertheless, even though Ms. Magazine gave
The Gnostic Gospels a glowing review[41], women fare far worse
in Gnosticism than many think. The concluding saying from the Gospel
of Thomas, for example, has less than a feminist ring:
Simon Peter said to them, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy
of life."
Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so
that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every
woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."[42]
The issue of the role of women in Gnostic theology and community cannot
be adequately addressed here, but it should be noted that the Jesus of
the Gospels never spoke of making the female into the male -- no doubt
because Jesus did not perceive the female to be inferior to the male.
Going against social customs, He gathered women followers, and revealed
to an outcast Samaritan woman that He was the Messiah -- which scandalized
His own disciples (John 4:1-39). The Gospels also record women as the
first witnesses to Jesus' resurrection (Matt. 28:1-10) -- and this in
a society where women were not considered qualified to be legal witnesses.
Fourth, despite an emphasis on reincarnation, several Gnostic documents
speak of the damnation of those who are incorrigibly non-Gnostic[43],
particularly apostates from Gnostic groups.[44] If one chafes at the Jesus
of the Gospels warning of "eternal destruction," chafings are likewise
readily available from Gnostic doomsayers.
Concerning the Gnostic-Orthodox controversy, biblical scholar F. F. Bruce
is so bold as to say that "there is no reason why the student of the conflict
should shrink from making a value judgment: the Gnostic schools lost because
they deserved to lose."[45] The Gnostics lost once, but do they deserve
to lose again? We will seek to answer this in Part Two as we consider
the historic reliability of the Gnostic (Nag Hammadi) texts versus that
of the New Testament.
Part II
NOTES
1 Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, ed. Betty Sue Flowers (New
York: Doubleday, 1988), 210.
2 Don Lattin, "Rediscovery of Gnostic Christianity," San Francisco
Chronicle, 1 April 1989, A-4-5.
3 Stephan A. Hoeller, "Wandering Bishops," Gnosis, Summer 1989,
24.
4 Ibid.
5 "The Gnostic Jung: An Interview with Stephan Hoeller," The Quest,
Summer 1989, 85.
6 C. G. Jung, Psychological Types (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1976), 11.
7 "Gnosticism," Critique, June-Sept. 1989, 66.
8 Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979),
xxxv.
9 Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism (San
Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), 57f.
10 James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library (San Francisco:
Harper and Row, 1988), 154.
11 Robinson, 126.
12 F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 112-13.
13 Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (Garden City, NY: Doubleday
and Co., Inc., 1987), 403.
14 Pagels, 124.
15 Ibid., 126.
16 Christopher Farmer, "An Interview with Gilles Quispel," Gnosis,
Summer 1989, 28.
17 Stephan A. Hoeller, "Valentinus: A Gnostic for All Seasons," Gnosis,
Fall/Winter 1985, 24.
18 Ibid., 25.
19 Robinson, 265.
20 Ibid., 365.
21 John Dart, The Jesus of History and Heresy (San Francisco: Harper
and Row, 1988), 97.
22 Robinson, 41.
23 Pagels, 95.
24 Robinson, 56.
25 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.16.5.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid., 3.18.5.
28 Ibid., 3.18.2.
29 "The Epistle of Polycarp," ch. 8, in The Apostolic Fathers,
ed. A. Cleveland Coxe (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 35.
30 Norman L. Geisler, "I Believe...In the Resurrection of the Flesh,"
Christian Research Journal, Summer 1989, 21-22.
31 See Dart, 60-74.
32 Robinson, 117.
33 Ibid., 132.
34 Ibid., 209.
35 Ibid., 210.
36 Ibid., 224-25.
37 Irenaeus, 1.11.3.
38 Ibid., 1.11.4.
39 Ibid.
40 Pheme Perkins, "Popularizing the Past," Commonweal, November
1979, 634.
41 Kenneth Pitchford, "The Good News About God," Ms. Magazine,
April 1980, 32-35.
42 Robinson, 138.
43 See The Book of Thomas the Contender, in Robinson, 205.
44 See Layton, 17.
45 F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity
Press, 1988), 277.
End of document, CRJ0040A.TXT (original CRI file name),
"Gnosticism And The Gnostic Jesus"
release A, March 21, 1994
R. Poll, CRI
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