In this article we will continue our discussion of early Christianity. We will begin with a look at the discrepancies that arose in belief systems between Gnostics (G) and early orthodox Christians (O). Some of these include:
Gnostic Heretics vs. Orthodox Christians
| Orthodox Church Beliefs | Gnostic Beliefs |
| Belief in bodily resurrection of Christ | Spiritual resurrection or redemption |
| Belief in One God/One Bishop | Dualism of Demiurge (creator) and God (Ineffable One) |
| God as masculine | God as masculine and feminine |
| The use of Christ’s passion and death to affirm martyrdom and believing a martyr’s death offers forgiveness of sin | The view of Christ’s passion as spiritual in nature, not human; and the knowledge that martyrdom does not ensure salvation |
| Belief of Jesus as the “fullness of God” who came down into human bodily experience to make it sacred | Belief that Jesus is the one who leads souls out of this world into enlightenment |
| Belief that evil originated with Adam and Eve and their violation of the natural order | Belief that evil originated with internal emotional distress such as fear, confusion, greed and grief |
John Michell writes, “The Church had adopted as its totem the image of Christ’s body, the god nailed to a cross. It was disliked by the Gnostics for reasons similar to those given by the Protestants at the Reformation and by sects of spiritualist and charismatic Christians today: that it emphasizes the body and the material power of the Church rather than the spirit of Christ – a function somewhat like that of Lenin’s mummified body in the state temple of his cult.”
Michell continues, “The main difference between the two sides was over the nature of Christ’s divinity. The Gnostics affirmed that the spirit of Christ was divine, but they thought it absurd to worship the body of Jesus or any material image. They criticized the Church for its emphasis on the human body, and for making him, in modern terms, the object of a personality cult. Their own view of the matter was that Christ was a redeeming spirit, a renewed archetype, whose coming recharged the atmosphere and opened a new area of human understanding.
Most blasphemous to the Gnostics’ way of thinking, was the erection of an idol, the image of the wounded man on the cross, as an object of compulsory Christian worship.”
The body of the church “having gained power, consolidated its hold by suppressing the gnostic saints and by claiming credit for all miracles performed in the name of Christ. Finally it set up an idol – the wounded figure of Jesus Christ – who cajoled people into worshiping it, and excommunicated those who would not do so.”
St. Paul, whom the Gnostics claimed as one of their number, condemned those who “changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like a corruptible man…who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator.”
Now we will take a look into the politics of why some of the early church decisions were made and dogmas were formed. These include decisions about the: Resurrection, Monotheism, God the Father/God the Mother, Passion of the Christ, Persecution of Christians & Martyrdom, the “One True Church”, and “Knowing” God. This information is sourced from The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels.
The Politics of the Resurrection
We begin with a question from Elaine Pagels: “If the New Testament
accounts could support a range of interpretations of the resurrection, why did orthodox Christians in the second century insist on a literal view of resurrection and reject all others as heretical?”
The reason is clearly power and control. Pagels answers, “We can see that the doctrine of bodily resurrection also serves an essential political function: it legitimizes the authority of certain men who claim to exercise exclusive leadership over the churches as the successors of the apostle Peter. From the second century, the doctrine has served to validate the apostolic succession of bishops, the basis of papal authority to this day.” The point being: without the existence of the bodily resurrection, the apostles, and thus the Pope, would have no authority.
There are many discrepancies in regards to the resurrection of Christ. For example, Peter, Mary Magdalene, and James (Jesus’s brother) are all cited as the first witness. However since the 2nd century orthodox churches said only “the eleven” (the 12 disciples minus Judas) held the position of official witnesses – and therefore they were the only official leaders. Today the Pope still traces his authority to Peter as “first witness of the resurrection.”
Karl Holl explains that this restricts “the circle of leadership to a small band of persons whose members stand in a position of incontestable authority. Second, it suggests that only the apostles had the right to ordain future leaders as their successors.”
Gnostics rejected this idea. To them witnessing the resurrection was not literal seeing, but “spiritual vision”, often through visions, dreams, ecstatic trances and spiritual illumination. The Gnostic viewpoint is expressed through Rheginos’ teacher in the Gnostic Epistle to Rheginos: “ordinary human existence is spiritual death. But the resurrection is the moment of enlightenment: It is the revealing of what truly exists…and a migration into newness. Whoever grasps this becomes spiritually alive. This means you can be resurrected from the dead right now.”
Gnostic belief suggests that “whoever sees the Lord through inner vision can claim that his or her own authority equals or surpasses, that of the Twelve – and of their successors.” The Gnostics had gone beyond the church’s teaching and transcended the authority of its hierarchy. This was obviously a problem for the rising power structure of the Orthodox Church.
The Gnostic leader Valentinus taught that “only one’s own experience offers the ultimate criterion of truth, taking precedence over all secondhand testimony and all tradition – even gnostic tradition”. This was in direct contrast to the Orthodox view that all future generations of Christians must trust the apostles’ testimony – even more than their own experience.
The Gnostics weren’t buying it. They knew resurrection was a spiritual event. It symbolized the awakening of the soul. They believed that that people who experience the resurrection can experience eternal life or union with God while on earth and then after death, escape rebirth. People who don’t experience the resurrection and union with God on earth would reincarnate.
Jesus states the following in the Gnostic Gospel, the Gospel of Phillip: “People who say they will first die and then arise are mistaken. If they do not first receive resurrection while they are alive, once they have died they will receive nothing.”
Because the Gnostic teaching claimed to offer every initiate direct access to God of which the priests and bishops might themselves be ignorant, they had to be snuffed out. In the end, Elaine Pagels writes, “The Orthodox teaching on resurrection legitimized a hierarchy of persons through whose authority all others must approach God.” It has remained so to this day.
The Politics of Monotheism
The well-known Christian creed that begins: “I believe in one God, Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth…” was formulated exclusively to exclude followers of Marcion. Marcion of Sinope (85-160 AD) preached the dualistic beliefs of the Gnostics. He taught that the god who sent Jesus into the world was a different, higher deity than the creator god of Judaism. Elaine Pagels explains, “Marcion was struck by what he saw as the contrast between the creator-God of the Old Testament, who demands justice and punishes every violation of his law, and the Father whom Jesus proclaims – the New Testament God of forgiveness and love.” In the Secret Book of John it states: “I am a jealous God, and there is no other God before me.” But by announcing this he indicated to the angels that another God does exist. If there were no others, of whom would he be jealous?
Marcion was denounced as a heretic and excommunicated from the Church of Rome around 144 AD. His church, the Marcionite church, continued on, expanding greatly in his lifetime to become a major rival to the emerging Catholic Church.
Gnostic belief was dualistic. They believed in the Demiurge – creator-gods – who were lesser divine beings who serve as the instrument of the higher power; and the One God – the source of all being – “the depth”, “an invisible, incomprehensible primal principle.”
The Gnostics had a ritual of redemption in which after gaining insight they could release themselves from the demiurge’s power and declare themselves independent. This would make them a true child of God, the Ineffable One. “Gnosis,” Pagels writes, “offers nothing less than a theological justification for refusing to obey the bishops and priests!” Gnosticism encouraged insubordination to clerical authority and so had to be stamped out.
Pagels continues, “When the orthodox insisted upon ‘one God’, they simultaneously validated the system of governance in which the church is ruled by ‘one bishop’.” It was during this time when the Christian community began to divide ‘clergy’ from ‘laity’. Bishops were emerging for the first as the ‘sole ruler’ or ‘monarch’ of the church. These bishops claimed the power to act as disciplinarian and judge, paving the way for the Dark Ages and the idea of ‘divinely chosen monarch rule’.”
Irenaeus, an early Orthodox Church father, tried to demolish the heretical gnostic teaching of the demiurge. He intended to force people to believe in the authority of the one Catholic Church and its bishop. He declared that all Orthodox Christians must believe God is One – Creator, Father, Lord and judge and he pushed the idea of “the fear of God” into believer’s hearts in order to control them.
Another of the original Orthodox Church fathers, Clement, believed that God delegated his authority of reign to rulers and leaders such as bishops, priests and deacons. He said that “Whoever refuses to bow the neck and obey the church leaders is guilty of insubordination against the divine master himself.” He was warning that whoever disobeys the divinely ordained authorities would receive the death penalty! This was serious stuff.
The Gnostics had no such strict order of leaders. They (both men and women) would draw lots at each meeting, taking turns playing the role of priest, bishop and prophet. They thus lived by the principles of equal access, equal participation and equal claims to knowledge.
The Orthodox Church was organized in a strict order. Distinctions were set up between new-comers and experienced Christians. Men and women were divided and new distinctions were set up between them. Divisions were also put up between the professional clergy and those with secular professions, between readers, deacons, priests and bishops; and between clergy and laity.
Clement stated that “Each must observe the rules and commandments of his position at all times”.
Ignatius, a generation later, defended the three ranks as mirroring the divine hierarchy in heaven. He warned the laity to revere, honor, and obey the bishop “as if he were God”! He also urged people to submit themselves to the bishop and priests for the sake of salvation.
The Gnostic Tripartite Tractate stated: “The Father’s children [Gnostics] join together as equals, enjoying mutual love, spontaneously helping one another. But the demiurge’s offspring – the ordinary Christians – wanted to command one another, out-rivaling one another in their empty ambition; they are inflated with lust for power, each one imagining that he is superior to the others.”
And so, as stated by Elaine Pagels, “As the doctrine of Christ’s bodily resurrection establishes the initial framework for clerical authority, so the doctrine of the ‘one God’ confirms, for orthodox Christians, the emerging institution of the ‘one bishop’ as monarch (sole ruler) of the church.”
In other words, as explained by Robert Lawlor, “The three dominant monotheisms which originated with and presently bind Western civilization, all adopted dramaturgies with one very simple element: One God, having a specific name who actively intrudes in the social, political, sexual and military endeavors of human life. This specified and anthropomorphized “God” guides nations through the rise and fall of Empires as well as through the, not uncommon, plagues, famines and floods. In this way the deification earns devotion and fear in their constituency. Consistent in the three mid-Eastern European monotheisms the ultimate “God” communes through a historic figure, (ruler or military) who is instrumental in establishing an institutionalized church.
The Gnostics [on the other hand] believed that collective narratives, such as those found in monotheism, as well as in its antithesis, atheistic secular scientism, distorts human thought and perception on all levels and can only direct the formation and goals towards corrupt and self-destructive conclusions.
The Christian Church of Rome converted the ancient sacred principle of the soul into a behavior report card of sin and disobedience and also claimed that all human souls are stained with “Adam’s original sin”. These are among the most spiritually debilitating devices ever perpetrated against human psychology. Permeating human history with the fear of death and punishment along with the guilt-ridden obedience made subjugation a template for a world totalitarian hierarchical system which overshadows humanity to this day.”
The Politics of God the Father/God the Mother
Elaine Pagels asks: “Who, growing up with Jewish or Christian tradition, has escaped the distinct impression that God is masculine?”
There is clearly an absence of feminine symbolism for God in Judaism, Christianity and Islam despite the fact that feminine symbolism abounds in Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, Rome, Africa, India, North America and among the Gnostics. The Gnostics embraced God as a dyad with masculine and feminine characteristics; and prayed to both. They prayed: “Thee, Father and through Thee, Mother, the two immortal names, Parents of the divine being…”
The Gnostic Valentinus taught that God is indescribable and beyond words but can be imagined as a dyad “in one part, of the Ineffable, the Depth, the Primal Father; and in the other, of Grace, Silence, the Womb and Mother of All.”
To the Gnostics, Elaine Pagels writes, “The divine is to be understood in terms of a harmonious, dynamic relationship of opposites – a concept that may be akin to the Eastern view of yin and yang, but remains alien to Orthodox Judaism and Christianity.”
It is to be noted that there are gnostic texts that speak contemptuously of the feminine. Yet in each of these cases the target is not women but the power of sexuality and how it can be used for the negative if it is not respected.
Interestingly, early Christianity showed a remarkable openness to women. Jesus violated Jewish law to talk openly with women and included them among his companions, yet the Orthodox Church would not follow Jesus’ example. They were dedicated to following their own self-serving doctrine of control and manipulation.
1 Corinthians 14:34 states, “the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but they should be subordinate…it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.” It is highly likely this was inserted into the Bible at this time and not originally spoken by Paul. Furthermore, in I and II Timothy, Colossians and Ephesians someone speaking as “Paul” insists that women be subordinate to men. This, of course, excludes all women from consideration to become bishops. The Bishop was to be a father figure. His wife and children must be submissive to him in order to prove his ability to keep God’s church in order and its members properly subordinated.
“As late as the year 200,” Pagels writes, “virtually all the feminine imagery for God had disappeared from orthodox Christian tradition.” The traditional creation story of Genesis inverted the biological birth process and attributed the male with the creative function. The story of the virgin birth of Jesus subverted the natural feminine creative process once again. Women, female sexuality, menstruation and child birth were to be regarded as lowly, dirty, even ‘sinful’ aspects of humanity. So “What is the reason for this total rejection?”
One reason was that in those times the powers of women’s’ intuition and ability to “see” beyond the five senses was well known. This was a direct threat to the power structure of the new church. Bishop Irenaeus claimed that women were especially attracted to heretical groups that tell them to prophesy. This was strictly forbidden in the Orthodox Church.
Tertellulian, another early Church father, said: “It is not permitted for a woman to speak in the church, nor is it permitted for her to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer the Eucharist, nor to claim for herself a share in any masculine function – not to mention any priestly office.” Bishop Clement demanded that “women were to remain in the role of subjection to their husbands.”
Elaine Pagels writes, “In the middle of the 2nd century – precisely at the time of struggle with gnostic Christians – orthodox communities began to adopt the synagogue custom, segregating women from men. By the end of the 2nd century, woman’s participation in worship was explicitly condemned.”
Pagels continues, “By the late 2nd century, the orthodox community came to accept the domination of men over women as the divinely ordained order.” Even up to 1977, Pope Paul VI declared a woman cannot be a priest because “Our Lord was a man”!
Even today, as I write this in 2020, women are still not respected in the church or allowed positions of authority over men.
Roman persecution of Christians
The first documented case of imperially supervised persecution of Christians began with Nero who ruled from 54 to 68 AD. Before him Augustus, who ruled as Emperor from 14 AD to 37 AD began, as Elaine Pagels writes “to repress any social dissidents whom they thought potential troublemakers, as they did astrologers, magicians, followers of foreign religious cults, and philosophers”. The stage was thus set.
However, for the majority of the 300 years after Christ Christians were able to live in peace, practice their professions and rise to positions of responsibility. As Wikipedia states, “only for approximately ten out of the first 300 years of the church history were Christians executed due to orders from a Roman emperor.” The reason for this was that without agitation from the public, Roman government had little motivation to persecute Christians. From Nero’s reign until 250 AD persecution of Christians was not empire wide. It was localized, haphazard, sporadic and often mob-led.
Elaine Pagels writes that Christianity looked like conspiracy to the Romans: “First, [the Christians] identified themselves as followers of a man accused of magic and executed for that and for treason; second, they were ‘atheists’, who denounced as ‘demons’ the gods who protected the fortunes of the Roman state; third, they belonged to an illegal society.” Basically much of the pagan population looked upon the Christians with suspicion. They had fear that if their Roman deities weren’t worshiped bad things would happen.
Towards the late 2nd century, Christians in Lyons were prohibited from entering public places. They were hounded, attacked, assaulted, beaten and stoned. 48 victims were tortured or executed in 177 AD in Lyons as a result. In Rome, if a citizen was accused of Christianity they were immediately beheaded. If they were a non-citizen they were tortured as a spectacle in the public sports arena. Servants of Christians were tortured to get false information about their masters including sexual atrocities, incest and cannibalism.
In 176 AD it was announced that the governor could legally substitute condemned criminals who were non-citizens, offering the spectacle of their torture and execution instead of athletic exhibitions at the cost of six aurei per head. This edict, though not about Christians directly, added to official zeal against them as they became cheap holiday entertainment to the Romans. The Romans were indeed horrible bloodthirsty people in many ways, yet “it is important to emphasize that such cruel deaths were not unique to Christians. Condemnation to the beasts was popular punishment for criminals of any type, because it maximized their suffering and allowed good and proper Roman citizens to gain pleasure from the deaths of wrong-doers.”1
At times the most horrible tortures were committed upon Christians. They were torn apart by wild beasts in the arena; burned alive; red-hot irons were applied to the body; they were beaten and broken then hung in the arena to be eaten by wild animals.
Marcus Aurelius despised the Christians as morbid and misguided exhibitionists due to their seeming lust for martyrdom. The Christians did believe that through martyrdom they could achieve salvation. The Romans tried to get Christians to denounce and curse Christ in order to be set free. This was an eerie foreshadowing of the Inquisition to come several hundred years later.
This sporadic and often horrific persecution of Christians continued until the Edict of Milan was announced in February 313. It stated an agreement to treat Christians benevolently within the Roman Empire. In 325 Emperor Constantine was to make Christianity the official religion of the Roman (Vatican) Empire, as it still is today.
The Politics of the Passion of the Christ and Persecution of Christians
We begin again with a question from Elaine Pagels: “Why does faith in the passion and death of Christ become an essential element – some say, the essential element – of Orthodox Christianity?” To answer, the interpretation of Christ’s passion and death became the focus for controversy over the practical question of martyrdom. In those early days the Christian’s zeal for martyrdom matched only their hatred of heresy.
The Gnostics did not believe that Jesus was a human being – but a spiritual being who adapted himself to human perception. This was stated in the Gnostic text, the Acts of John. The Orthodox Church believed that Jesus was a human and the son of God simultaneously. Not surprisingly, Pope Leo the Great in 447 condemned the Acts of John as “a hotbed of manifold perversity” which “should not only be forbidden, but entirely destroyed and burned with fire”.
“In every case,” writes Elaine Pagels, the attitude toward martyrdom corresponds to the interpretation of Christ’s suffering and death.”
In the Gnostic text, the Testimony of Truth the conviction that the martyr’s death offers forgiveness of sins is attacked. It ridicules orthodox teachers who see martyrdom as an offering to God, as if God desires human sacrifice. It also attacks those who believe that martyrdom ensures their resurrection.
In the Gnostic text, the Apocalypse of Peter, Peter dislikes how Christian martyrs coerce innocent fellow believers to the executioner with the promise of salvation. Because of this Gnostics tended to withdraw their support of those overzealous and unenlightened fanatics held in prison waiting to be martyred.
In the Gospel of Truth crucifixion was seen as the occasion for discovering the divine self within. Elaine Pagels explains, “None of these sources denies that Jesus actually suffered and died; all assume it. Yet all are concerned to show how, in his incarnation, Christ transcended human nature so that he could prevail over death by divine power.”
So, why did the orthodox view of martyrdom – and of Christ’s death as its model – prevail? As Elaine Pagels explains “Persecution gave impetus to the formation of the organized church structure that developed by the end of the second century…Christian martyrs wrote to other Christian churches, not in hope of ending persecution, but to encourage them to emulate the martyrs ‘glorious victory’ and to consolidate the communities internally and in relation to one another.”
As martyrs were dying in the late 2nd century, the Roman church was compiling the definitive list of books eventually accepted by all Christian churches. This is discussed in more detail in the article regarding Joseph Atwill’s Caesar’s Messiah. Upon this compilation of books by the Roman elite, the network of Christian groups became increasingly uniform in doctrine, ritual, canon and political structure.
In the end, the Roman persecution of Christians and their subsequent martyrdom helped the Orthodox Church grow stronger. The sight of the martyrs aroused wonder and admiration that impelled others to investigate the powerful movement. Orthodox Church leader Tertullian stated to the Romans, “Your cruelty is our glory” and “the oftener we are mown down by you, the more we grow in numbers: the blood of the Christians is seed!”
Gnostic groups, on the other hand, were scattered and lost.
As it stands now, writes Elaine Pagels, “all Christians who have suffered for 2000 years, who have feared and faced death, have found their experience validated in the story of the human Jesus.” This explains the powerful clinging to the orthodox idea – it gives meaning to human suffering.
The Politics of the “One True Church”
In order to maintain control of the people the Orthodox Church had to force the population to believe it was the “One True Church”. Elaine Pagels explains that “By the year 200, the battle lines had been drawn: both orthodox and gnostic Christians claimed to represent the true church and accused one another of being outsiders, false brethren, and hypocrites.”
Gnostics believed the orthodox teachings reconciled it adherents to fear and slavery, encouraging them to subject themselves to the earthly representatives of the world creator. In the Gnostic text the Apocalypse of Peter it claimed that the Catholic Christians had “fallen into an erroneous name and into the hands of an evil, cunning man with teachings in a multiplicity of forms”. Clearly the Gnostics saw the orthodox as blindly arrogant, claiming exclusive legitimacy to truth and God. Their obedience to bishops and deacons indicated that they “bowed to the judgment of the leaders. They oppressed their brethren, and slandered those who attain gnosis,” Pagels explains.
By the late 2nd century the Orthodox Church had begun to establish objective criteria for church membership: “whoever confessed the creed, accepted the ritual of baptism, participated in worship, and obeyed the clergy was accepted as a fellow Christian,” explains Elaine Pagels. The Catholic Church wanted to include as many people as possible. They did not care about their spiritual maturity, insight or personal holiness; they only cared about their framework of control: doctrine, ritual and political structure.
The Gnostics insisted baptism did not make a Christian. As the Gnostic text the Gospel of Philip said, “many people go down into the water and come up without having received anything.”
The Orthodox Church insisted they were the “One True Church”. This automatically meant that their bishops were the sole keepers of the truth and whatever the bishops declared as truth was in fact the word of God. Orthodox leader Ignatius said: “To join with the bishop is to join the church; to separate oneself from the bishop is to separate oneself not only from the church, but from God himself.” Irenaeus attributed absolute authority to the gospels of the New Testament. He claimed that “all others are false and unreliable, apostolic, and probably composed by heretics.” Irenaeus also pushed the idea that all those who rejected his version of Christian truth were false persons, evil seducers and hypocrites.
The Gnostics weren’t buying it. Their text, the Testimony of Truth taught: “Obedience to the clerical hierarchy requires believers to submit themselves to blind guides whose authority comes from the malevolent creator. Conformity to the rule of faith attempts to limit all Christians to an inferior ideology…Only those who come to recognize that they have been living in ignorance, and learn to release themselves by discovering who they are, experience enlightenment as a new life, as ‘the resurrection’. Physical rituals like baptism become irrelevant.”
According the Elaine Pagels, the Gnostics “asserted that what distinguishes the false from the true church is not its relationship to the clergy, but the level of understanding of its members, and the quality of their relations with one another.” In the Gnostic Second Treatise of the Great Seth it characterized the true church as the union its members enjoy with god and with one another. It members were those who loved each other as “fellow spirits”.
Gnostics thus understood “Christ’s message not as offering a set of answers, but as encouragement to engage in a process of searching.” They regarded all doctrines, speculations and myths, including their own, as approaches to truth. This was in stark contrast to the Orthodox view that said the only safe course was to accept in faith what the church teaches and recognize the limits of human understanding.
The Gnostics split into Two Branches
It was during these turbulent times when the Gnostics, under great strain, split into two branches. The Eastern branch was led by Theodotus. He taught that the Gnostics were the “chosen race” and the only true spiritual beings. Here we see seeds of negativity and elitism being sown.
The Western school led by Ptolemy and Heracleon disagreed. They claimed Christ’s body and the church consisted of two elements – one was spiritual, one non-spiritual or physical. “Heracleon taught that God has given them spiritual understanding for the sake of the rest – so that they would be able to teach “the many” and bring them to gnosis,” explains Elaine Pagels. Ptolemy said that: “Christ combined within the church both spiritual and unspiritual Christians so that eventually all may become spiritual.” The Western branch, not without its flaws, had a more positive altruistic viewpoint.
The author of the Gnostic text the Interpretation of Knowledge saw how the church was being split and divided into factions and recognized that this caused hostility and misunderstanding. Elaine Pagels writes, “Those who were spiritually advanced tended to withdraw from those they considered ‘ignorant’ Christians, and hesitated to share their insights with them. Those who lacked spiritual inspiration envied those who spoke out in public at the worship service and who spoke in prophecy, taught, and healed others.”
The author of this text was attempting to reconcile the Gnostic and orthodox. It taught that “All believers are members of the church, the body of Christ. To those who felt inferior it advised: “Do not accuse your Head (Christ) because it has not made you an eye, but a finger; and do not be jealous of what has been made an eye or a hand or a foot, but be thankful that you are not outside the body.” To those who were spiritual it advised: “Does someone have a prophetic gift? Share it without hesitation. Do not approach your brother with jealousy…How do you know that someone is ignorant? You are ignorant when you hate them and are jealous of them.”
The author was urging all members to love one another – to work and suffer together – mature and immature Christians alike, Gnostics and orthodox, in order to share in true harmony. The author sounded much like Christ himself. Of course the bishop thought this was outrageous. “These heretics challenged his right to define what he considered to be his own church” wrote Pagels.
The orthodox wanted a church to include everyone, that is, “everyone who would submit to their system of organization.” In the end states Elaine Pagels, “Only by suppressing Gnosticism did orthodox leaders establish that system of organization which united all believers into a single institutional structure” – one that could be easily controlled.
The Politics of ‘Knowing God’
The last topic we will discuss in this article relates to the politics of ‘knowing God’. Not surprisingly, the Gnostics and the Orthodox Church had very different perspectives on how one was to personally ‘know’ God. The Orthodox viewpoint won out over the Gnostic viewpoint and is still taught today as mainstream religious dogma.
The Orthodox Church claimed that one finds God only through Jesus and one finds Jesus only through the church. Gnostics, on the other hand, believed each person had direct access to God through their own consciousness. The Gnostics directed each human to their inner capacity to find one’s own direction. They called this the “light within.”
The Orthodox Church insisted that humanity needed a way beyond its own power – a divinely given way – to approach God. That way, according to them, could only be found through the Catholic Church. Furthermore, the Orthodox believed that God could not be found within the human mind. The mind needed to be enlightened by divine revelation. Once again, that divine revelation could only be found through the approved scriptures of the Catholic Church.
By 367 AD Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria ordered all “apocryphal books” with heretic tendencies to be purged. Thus they were destroyed, burned or hidden away.
The new Catholic Church was thus able to gain such power by either destroying the old beliefs or by usurping them and then twisting them to their own purposes. For instance, in the 3rd and 4th centuries many catholic Christians adopted ascetic forms of self-discipline, seeking religious insight through solitude, visions and ecstatic experiences. “Rather than exclude the monastic movement,” Elaine Pagels tells us, “the church moved, in the 4th century, to bring the monks into line with episcopal authority.” Pagels continues, “Some who seek their own interior direction, like the radical Gnostics, reject religious institutions as a hindrance to their progress. Others, like the Valentinians, willingly participate in them, although they regard the church more as an instrument of their own self-discovery than as the necessary ‘ark of salvation’.”
In regards to suffering, the Orthodox Church taught that suffering comes from humans failing to achieve the moral goal toward which they should aim. In the New Testament the word hamartia was used to refer to sin and sinning. Hamartia, means “missing the mark”. In a positive sense, then, to “sin” means to fail to live up to your full potential. Its meaning has sense been twisted for other purposes.
Gnostics, on the other hand, insisted ignorance, not sin, is what involves a person in suffering. Elaine Pagels writes, “Both Gnosticism and psychotherapy value, above all, knowledge – the self-knowledge which is insight. They agree that, lacking this, a person experiences the sense of being driven by impulses he does not understand.”
The Greek word pathos for “suffering” connotes being the passive recipient, not the initiator, of one’s experience. This implies one acts as a victim to their circumstances and does not own their power in order to use a situation to overcome challenges and rise to a fuller potential.
The Greek term kakia means “ill-ness”. It originally meant what is bad – meaning what one desires to avoid such as physical pain, sickness, misfortune…etc. Later this came to mean “evil”.
In the Gnostic Gospel of Truth it stated “Ignorance brought about anguish and terror”. Ignorance to the Gnostics meant oblivion, unconsciousness, to be sunk in a deep sleep or caught up in many illusions. Self-ignorance was thus a form of self-destruction to the Gnostics. They agreed that the psyche “bears within itself the potential for liberation or destruction” so one must choose to use it wisely. Pagels explains that “Gnostics acknowledged that pursuing gnosis engages each person in a solitary, difficult process, as one struggles against internal resistance. They characterized this resistance to gnosis as the desire to sleep or to be drunk – that is, to remain unconscious.”
Gnostics acknowledged the need for guidance, but to them the purpose of accepting authority was to learn to outgrow it. When one becomes mature, one no longer needs any external authority. Even Jesus, in the Gospel of Thomas, ridiculed those who thought the kingdom of God was a specific literal place. Instead, it is a state of internal self-discovery. Jesus said, “The Kingdom is inside you, and it is outside of you…if you will not know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty.” The “Kingdom” symbolized a state of transformed consciousness.
The Gospel of Thomas also stated that Jesus said to them: “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below and when you make the male and the female one and the same…then you will enter the Kingdom.” Even in the Book of Luke (17:20-21), an accepted chapter of the modern mainstream Bible, Jesus explicitly says “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. Neither shall they say, Lo here! Or lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”
Hippolytus reported that Simon Magus, one of the original initiators of Gnosticism spoke “each human being is a dwelling place and that in him dwells an infinite power…the root of the universe. But since that infinite power exists in two modes, one actual, the other potential, so this infinite power exists in a latent condition in everyone, potentially, not actually.” So “How is one to realize that potential?” asks Elaine Pagels. “Discovering that for oneself is, apparently, the first step toward self-knowledge.”
In the Testimony of Truth it teaches that the Gnostic becomes a disciple of his or her own mind. The mind of the individual is the “father of the truth”. One can learn what they need to know when alone in meditative silence; when they learn to consider themself equal to everyone; when they maintain their own independence of anyone else’s authority and when they are patient with everyone.
As the Gospel of Philip taught: whoever perceives divine reality becomes what he sees. More explicitly, “Whoever achieves gnosis becomes no longer a Christian, but a Christ.” This is a key forgotten teaching of Christ. One must endeavor to emulate or become like Christ, rather than mindlessly worship him. Christ did not want to be put on a pedestal to be worshipped by the masses. He wanted the people to learn to rise up to the pedestal and join him as an evolved human full of compassion and wisdom.
“Many Gnostics, like many artists, search for interior self-knowledge as the key to understanding universal truths” Elaine Pagels tells us. This is often done through prayers, chants and instruction punctuated by retreat into meditation.
The Gnostic Book of Thomas the Contender states: “whoever has not known himself has known nothing, but he who has known himself has at the same time already achieved knowledge about the depths of all things.” The Zostrianos – the longest text found in Nag Hammadi – relates “that first, he had to remove from himself physical desires, probably by ascetic practices. Second, he had to reduce ‘chaos in mind’ stilling his mind with meditation. Then, he says, after I set myself straight, I saw the perfect child – a vision of divine presence.” These are very Buddhist teachings.
The Gnostic Discourse of the Eighth and Ninth guides the practitioner to ascend to higher knowledge through a progression of the first seven levels of understanding motivated by moral effort and dedication. Then, when they are ready to go beyond vicarious knowledge they join in prayer “to the perfect, invisible God to whom one speaks in silence”. This suggests a meditative technique that includes intoning sound that references Trismegistus. Also in this text the master instructs the student to write his experiences in a book to guide others who will “advance by stages and enter into the way of immortality…into the understanding of the eighth that reveals the ninth.” It is to be noted that the “seven levels of knowledge” refer to the seven chakras.
These are all very intense practices based on high ideals. They require extreme dedication, persistence and strength of will. It is no surprise that many could not apply themselves to these practices. The same is seen today. Why toil hard day after day doing the intense inner mental work to achieve self-renewal and transformation of the soul when you can just go to church once a week and achieve “salvation”? That was the thought then, as it is today.
The Orthodox Tertullian compared Valentinian initiation to the Eleusinian mysteries. He knew that such a program of discipline, like the higher levels of Buddhist teaching, would appeal to only a few. Though the Gnostics believed in the discovery of the divine within, this did not lend well to a mass religion. As Elaine Pagels writes, “Ideas alone do not make a religion powerful, although it cannot succeed without them; equally important are social and political structures that identify and unite people into a common affiliation.” In this regard, the Catholic Church reigned supreme.
However, Pagels reminds us, an increasing number of people today “cannot rest solely on the authority of the Scriptures, the apostles, the church – at least not without inquiring how that authority constituted itself, and what, if anything, gives it legitimacy.” This is the very reason we explore the origins, concepts and structures of religion in Cosmic Core.
In the next article we will review the early Orthodox Christian church fathers and their beliefs; then we will discuss Christianity in the Dark Ages and modern fundamentalism. Lastly we will take a look at W.L. Graham’s Bible Reality Check to attempt to untangle and clarify certain teachings in the Bible.
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