Gnostics (11/5)

Katie, Robb, Dave, Shawn, Jamie

FINALLY A TOPIC THAT HAS SOME MEATY INFORMATION.... 

So being a Gnostics apparently means you have some serious Control, Dualistic, & totally Doubtful about the belief in God and the belief that God was not good.

The Gnostic idea was that human beings have within them the spark of something absolutely transcendent, something completely alien to this world... AWKWARD!!!

The difficulty in defining Gnosticism is not entirely of recent origin. As early as 1910, a small book was published in London that in many ways foreshadowed current trends, including the difficulties in definition. The title of the work wasGnosticism: The Coming Apostasy; the author, a certain D.M. Panton, was an anxious defender of Christian orthodoxy, which he felt was menaced by an emerging Gnostic revival. Gnosticism, Panton wrote, had surfaced in the twentieth century in the forms of Theosophy, Christian Science, some forms of spiritualism, and in what was called the "New Theology," which had been introduced primarily by German writers on religion. (A biography of Marcion by theologian Adolf von Harnack created much interest and controversy at that time.) While earlier crypto-Gnostics, such as Emanuel Swedenborg, William Blake, George Fox, and Elias Hicks camouflaged their heretical beliefs, Panton argued, twentieth-century Gnostics no longer bothered with concealment. The gnosticizing movements of the early twentieth century, wrote Panton, were "frankly and jubilantly Gnostic"; their thought and their movements carried within them the "throbbing heart of Gnosticism, perhaps the most dreaded foe the Christian faith ever confronted."

To understand Gnosticism, said Hans Jonas, one needs something very much like a musical ear. Such a Gnostic "musical ear" is not come by easily. One person who seemingly possesses it is Professor Clark Emery of the University of Miami. In a small work on William Blake, Emery summarizes twelve points on which Gnostics tended to agree. Hence I shall present it here as a suggested collection of criteria that one might apply in determining what Gnosticism is. The following characteristics may be considered normative for all Gnostic teachers and groups in the era of classical Gnosticism; thus one who adheres to some or all of them today might properly be called a Gnostic:

• The Gnostics posited an original spiritual unity that came to be split into a plurality.

• As a result of the precosmic division the universe was created. This was done by a leader possessing inferior spiritual powers and who often resembled the Old Testament Jehovah.

• A female emanation of God was involved in the cosmic creation (albeit in a much more positive role than the leader).

• In the cosmos, space and time have a malevolent character and may be personified as demonic beings separating man from God.

• For man, the universe is a vast prison. He is enslaved both by the physical laws of nature and by such moral laws as the Mosaic code.

• Mankind may be personified as Adam, who lies in the deep sleep of ignorance, his powers of spiritual self-awareness stupefied by materiality.

• Within each natural man is an "inner man," a fallen spark of the divine substance. Since this exists in each man, we have the possibility of awakening from our stupefaction.

• What effects the awakening is not obedience, faith, or good works, but knowledge.

• Before the awakening, men undergo troubled dreams.

• Man does not attain the knowledge that awakens him from these dreams by cognition but through revelatory experience, and this knowledge is not information but a modification of the sensate being.

• The awakening (i.e., the salvation) of any individual is a cosmic event.

• Since the effort is to restore the wholeness and unity of the Godhead, active rebellion against the moral law of the Old Testament is enjoined upon every man.

By retrofitting Magdalene into the redeemer paradigm, the Gnostic message is co-opted and distorted, time and time again. In their own day Gnostics saw this happening and protested with vehemence and eloquence. The distortion continues, effectively obliterating from Magdalene’s character and teaching any traces of “the side that lost out,” as King characterizes them. With Jesus and Magdalene, it is one version or the other: either they represent Gnostic illuminism or they represent the salvationist platform of redeemer beliefs. It cannot be both. Any admixture of cross theology immediately destroys the authenticity of the Gnostic couple and their message to humanity about what it means to be human.

According to their own account of their origins, Gnostics traced their sacred tradition back to Seth, one of the sons of Adam. Sethian teachings emphasize the power of the Divine Sophia and even downplay the Christos in the mythic scenario of Sophia's fall. One of the essential claims of the Sethians was to preserve the teaching of True Humanity, the Anthropos, not to be confounded with the image of perfect humanity in Jesus Christ. (Adam and Seth, miniature from the Royal Chronicles of Cologne, 1238 CE. National Library, Brussels.)