responds to it
What is Gnosticism? How did the early Christian leaders respond to its teachings?
By ROLAND CHIA
THE phenomenal success
of Dan Brown's controversial novel, The Da Vinci Code, and the
recent hype surrounding the discovery of the Gospel of Judas have
generated public and media interest in Christian Gnosticism.
Scholars have not achieved a consensus on the origin of Gnosticism.
Early sources also provide different accounts of its origin. According
to the early church historian Eusebius, Hegesippus maintains that
Gnosticism began among some Jewish sects. Church Fathers like
Irenaeus and Tertullian, however, trace its source to Greek philosophy
and mystery religions.
Be that as it may, most scholars agree that Gnosticism is a polymorphous
religio-philosophical phenomenon which combined various disparate
streams of thought drawn from Babylonian religions, mystery cults,
Zoroastrianism, and the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras
and Zeno.
Our knowledge of Gnosticism comes from two main sources. The first
is the significant documentary discovery made at the village of
Nag Hammadi, near Luxor, in 1946 of 13 codices and 48 documents
in an earthenware jar, all of Gnostic origin. Among them are the
Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Truth, both of which are in
Coptic translation. Although these manuscripts were dated in the
4th century, many scholars believe that they were translations
of the original Greek texts, which were composed much earlier.
The second source is the writings of early Church Fathers like
Irenaeus, Tertullian and Hippolytus, which refute the teachings
of the Gnostics and present orthodox Christianity. These works
also identified a number of prominent leaders of the Gnostic sect
in early Christianity. Saturninus, whose Gnosticism betrays an
oriental influence, appeared in Syria in the first half of the
2nd century.
Basilides, who worked in Egypt around the year 125, and Valentinus,
who was active in Rome from 135 to 160, espoused a philosophically
sophisticated version of Gnosticism. Some Church Fathers maintain
that Gnosticism has its roots in Simon Magus (Acts 8:9-24), whose
teaching was deemed as the prototype of all heresy.
The Gnostics believed reality to be divided into two equal but
opposing realms - good and evil, spirit and matter, higher and
lower spheres. Because God as Spirit is good, God could not have
created the material world, for matter, the Gnostics maintain,
is evil. This material world therefore came into being through
the work of the Demiurge, a lower, lesser deity, whom Gnostics
like Marcion identified as the God of the Old Testament. But since
the world, including human beings are created by a spiritual being,
there are still "sparks" or "bits" of spirit
in it.
Salvation, then, according to the Gnostics, is the liberation
of the spirit from the evil, material world. This is achieved
through a special, secret knowledge (Greek: gnosis). The sect
is called Gnosticism because of its teaching that salvation is
based on a secret knowledge.
The Gnostics teach that Christ is a heavenly messenger who has
come to disclose this secret knowledge to an elite group of people
who called themselves "spirituals" (Greek: pneumatokoi).
But since Christ is a spirit being, the incarnation, as it is
traditionally understood, is rejected by the Gnostics, because
spirit cannot commingle with matter.
The Gnostics therefore teach that
Christ did not come in the flesh but rather took possession of
the mortal Jesus at the latter's baptism at the river Jordan.
Through the man Jesus, the Christ gathered disciples, taught them
the secret knowledge and worked miracles. But the Christ left
the man Jesus before the crucifixion (for spirit cannot be touched
by death), leaving the latter to die alone on the cross. This
is how the Gnostics interpret Jesus' cry of dereliction at the
cross: "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me" (Matthew
27:46). Because in the Gnostic view salvation comes through a
secret knowledge, the death of Jesus is not emphasised in their
literature, and there is hardly any mention of the resurrection.
A group of Christian theologians in the 2nd century, commonly
known as the anti-Gnostic fathers, rejected these Gnostic teachings
as heretical because they were antithetical to the tradition handed
down by the apostles. Chief among them, Irenaeus, the Bishop of
Lyons, in his refutation of the Gnostic heresy, penned what some
scholars considered to be the first systematic presentation of
orthodoxy.
Against Gnostic dualism, Irenaeus argued that God is the Creator
of the cosmos, and that creation is part of the divine order of
salvation. Irenaeus presented the doctrine of the incarnation,
arguing that the eternal Son of God took upon Himself human flesh,
and became part of this material world in order to redeem it.
Through his concept of "recapitulation", Irenaeus maintained
that Christ has come to restore fallen creation so that it can
achieve its proper goal or telos. Thus, against the Gnostic teaching
of redemption from the world, Irenaeus presented the biblical
vision of the redemption of the world, its future perfection and
transfiguration. Together with Tertullian and Hippolytus who wrote
at around the same time, Irenaeus in his famous work, Against
Heresies, exposes the Gnostic heresy even as he demonstrates the
elegance of the Christian vision.
Two important implications can be drawn from this brief discussion.
Firstly, the view that early Christianity was not a monolithic
religion, advanced by modern scholars like Elaine Pagels of Princeton
University must therefore be called to question.
While it is true that there were different presentations of the
Faith in the early Church, this diversity must always be understood
within a greater unity. This unity is established by the Gospel
and the apostolic tradition; it is articulated in the Rule of
Faith, a statement containing truth-claims which delineates the
substance and contours of orthodoxy. Diversity is therefore never
endorsed at the expense of truth.
Secondly, it is simply not the case that orthodoxy and heresy
are determined only from the 4th century through the councils
as authors like Pagels would have us think.
The Church believes that it is a recipient of God's revelation,
and therefore, it is always concerned about the truth. And commitment
to the truth, as the great historian of dogma Jaroslav Pelikan
has said, is always also a commitment against error and falsehood.
It is because truth is no longer esteemed in our day that error
is not chastised but celebrated in the name of diversity, difference
and tolerance.
Dr Roland Chia is Dean of Postgraduate Studies and Lecturer
in Historical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Theological College.
He worships at the Fairfield Preaching Point in Woodlands.
QUOTE:
GOD'S REVELATION
'The Church believes that it is a recipient of God's revelation,
and therefore, it is always concerned about the truth.'