Twentieth-century Gnosticism took many forms, both inside and outside the churches. Overtly Gnostic ideas inspired many esoteric groups and new religious movements, especially those derived from the Theosophical movement.
To take one example of a modern esoteric religion, Scientology offers an unabashedly Gnostic mythology of sleep, forgetting, and reawakening. Believers are taught to return to the vastly powerful spiritual state they once enjoyed, but lost when that original being was trapped in the deceptions of MEST Matter, Energy, Space, Time. No less explicitly Gnostic are the later works of that latter-day prophet Philip K.
Psychology was also a major vehicle for Gnostic thought. Carl-Gustav Jung, as much a mystic as a therapist, drew extensively on ancient Gnostic thinkers and mythology in works like Seven Sermons to the Dead Fundamental Gnostic assumptions underlie many forms of contemporary therapy, which lead patients to recognize the Fall through which they became entrapped in the world of illusion and dependency.
Patients must above all recover their memories, through which they can overcome the states of sleep, amnesia, and illusion that blight their lives.
As for ancient Gnostics, troubled souls are lost in an alien material world, trying to find their way home, to remember their true identity. The Gnostic idea of salvation became the psychologist's integration or individuation. These parallels became particularly evident with the child abuse recovery movement of the s and s.
Treatment of incest survivors implied such archaic themes as the loss of primal innocence through sexual sins inflicted on the patient, and the recovery of an untarnished child-like state: Memory is the gate through which we return to Eden. But Gnosticism has also returned in an explicitly religious form, with the scholarly rediscovery of the ancient religious movements themselves.
The best-known name is Elaine Pagels, whose pivotal book The Gnostic Gospels offered a religious synthesis very similar to that offered in Frances Swiney's day. Pagels likewise presented an ideal Christianity that was dehistoricized, psychological, thoroughly woman-friendly, and had many points of resemblance to Buddhism. For Pagels, moreover, as for later writers like Karen King, these ideas were not just an alternative fringe package labeled "Gnosticism," but the authentic core of the ancient Jesus movement.
The ancient Gnostic gospels received a fresh advertisement in when Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code again argued that such movements were at the center, not the margins, of Christianity. Brown's heroine, who proves to be a descendant of Jesus, even bears the Gnostic-inspired name of Sophie. Such ideas are intoxicating for the millions of people who have grown up in a Christian culture, who love the figure of Jesus, but who feel that there must be something more to the story than what is offered in the Bible or the churches.
Gnosticism, as selectively repackaged by its modern advocates, amply fills this need and is buttressed by "authentic" ancient scriptures. Gnosticism, they feel, represents the pristine faith in a form that could never be appreciated by the vulgar herd of ordinary believers, who remain asleep. Surely God would never deign to make his truth available in a form equally available to everyone, however humble, and from all nations?
Sections Home. Bible Coronavirus Prayer. Subscribe Member Benefits Give a Gift. Subscribers receive full access to the archives. Christian History Archives Eras Home. The Heresy that Wouldn't Die. When Peter and James, the most prominent of the disciples, were arrested and executed, every Christian recognized that joining the movement placed him in danger.
Both Tacitus and Suetonius, the historian of the imperial court c. First, then, those of the sect were arrested who confessed; next, on their disclosures, vast numbers were convicted, not so much on the count of arson, as for hatred of the human race. Nero had offered his gardens for the spectacle…. Besides, rumor indicated that their secrecy concealed atrocities such as rituals that included eating human flesh and drinking human blood—practices of which magicians were commonly accused.
I asked them whether they were Christians, and I asked them a second and third time with threats of punishment. If they kept to it, I ordered them taken off for execution, for I had no doubt that whatever it was they admitted, in any case they deserve to be punished for obstinacy and unbending pertinacity….
As for those who said they neither were nor ever had been Christians, I thought it right to let them go , when they recited a prayer to the gods at my dictation, and made supplication with incense and wine to your statue, which I had ordered to be brought into court for the purpose, and moreover, cursed Christ—things which so it is said those who are really Christians cannot be made to do.
Justin, a second-century Platonist philosopher who had converted to Christianity, boldly wrote to Emperor Antoninus Pius and his son, Marcus Aurelius, protesting the injustice Christians endured in imperial courts. Justin relates a recent case in Rome: a woman who had been converted to Christianity through the influence of her teacher Ptolemy refused to take part in drunken sexual activities with her husband and servants as she had in the past.
Her friends persuaded her not to divorce, hoping for some reconciliation, but when she learned that her husband had acted more flagrantly than ever, she sued for divorce and left him. Judge Urbicus asked Ptolemy only one question: was he a Christian? And when he acknowledged that he was, Urbicus immediately sentenced him to death. The trial was conducted by Rusticus, a personal friend of the young emperor Marcus Aurelius. The record of the trial shows that Rusticus asked Justin,. The account proceeds:.
Agree to offer sacrifice to the gods. Charged with the unpleasant duty of ordering that Christians who would not renounce their faith be executed, Roman officials often tried to persuade the accused to save their own lives.
An account from North Africa c. We too are a religious people, and our religion is a simple one: we swear by the genius of our lord the emperor and offer prayers for his health—as you ought to do too. Thanks be to God! For a time, the term was used for any Christians who dared to protest the unjust treatment that their fellow believers received in Roman courts. Justin and others like him faced a simple choice: either to speak out, risking arrest, torture, a pro forma trial, and exile or death—or to keep silent and remain safe.
But not all Christians spoke out. Many made the opposite choice. When that great opponent of heresy, Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, was arrested and tried, he is said to have accepted the death sentence with joyful exultation. Allow me to be eaten by the beasts, through whom I can attain to God. Do me this favor…. Let there come upon me fire, and the cross, and struggle with wild beasts, cutting and tearing apart, racking of bones, mangling of limbs, crushing of my whole body…may I but attain to Jesus Christ!
But if, as some say…his suffering was only an appearance, then why am I a prisoner, and why do I long to fight with the wild beasts? In that case, I am dying in vain. Their courage, he says, convinced him of their divine inspiration.
It is clear that no one can terrify or subdue us who believe in Jesus Christ, throughout the whole world. For it is clear that though beheaded, and crucified, and thrown to the wild beasts, in chains, in fire, and all other kinds of torture, we do not give up our confession; but the more such things happen, the more do others, in larger numbers, become believers. Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon, the best known opponent of the Valentinian gnostics, also witnessed martyrdom and persecution during his life.
He mentions many who were martyred in Rome, and he knew from personal experience the loss of his teacher Polycarp, who was caught by a mob and burned alive.
Twelve years later, in the summer of , Irenaeus witnessed the harassment of Christians in Lyon. First they were prohibited from entering public places—the markets and the baths. Then, when the provincial governor was out of the city.
Christians were hounded and attacked openly. They were treated as public enemies, assaulted, beaten, and stoned. Finally they were dragged into the Forum…were accused, and, after confessing to being Christians, they were flung in prison.
An eyewitness account by one of the Christians reports:. These stories got around, and all the people raged against us, so that even those whose attitude had been moderate before because of their friendship with us now became greatly angry and gnashed their teeth against us.
Every day new prisoners were brought in from the churches in Lyon and the neighboring town of Vienne. They were brutally tortured along with the others as they awaited the day set for the mass execution, August 1. On this holiday celebrating Rome and the emperor, the governor was required to sponsor lavish public entertainment for the population of the city—a spectacle that traditionally required enormous expenses for hiring professional gladiators, boxers, wrestling teams, and swordsmen.
By , a new imperial law allowed the governor to substitute condemned criminals who were not Roman citizens, offering the spectacle of their torture and execution instead of athletic exhibitions—at the cost of six aurei per head, one-tenth the cost of hiring a fifth-class gladiator, with proportionate savings for the higher grades. This new law undoubtedly encouraged official persecution of Christians, who could provide, as they did in Lyon, the least expensive holiday entertainment.
Irenaeus himself managed to escape arrest, and he brought an account of the terrible suffering that he saw in Lyon to Christians in Rome.
When he returned to Gaul, he found the Christians there in mourning: nearly fifty martyrs had died in the two-month ordeal. He himself was persuaded to become the leader of the Christian community, succeeding the ninety-year-old Bishop Pothinus, who had died of torture and exposure in prison.
Irenaeus insists that. The North African theologian Tertullian c. This among Christians is a time of persecution. When, therefore, the faith is greatly agitated and the church on fire…then the gnostics break out; then the Valentinians creep forth; then all the opponents of martyrdom bubble up …. Now we are in the midst of an intense heat, the very dog star of persecution…the fire and the sword have tried some Christians, and the beasts have tried others; others are in prison, longing for martyrdoms which they have tasted already, having been beaten by clubs and tortured….
We ourselves, having been appointed for pursuit, are like hares being hemmed in from a distance— and the heretics go about as usual! What pattern, then, do we observe? The church in every place, because of the love which she cherishes toward God, sends forth, throughout all time, a multitude of martyrs to the Father; while all others not only have nothing of this kind to point to among themselves, but even maintain that bearing witness [ martyrium ] is not at all necessary…with the exception, perhaps, of one or two among them…who have occasionally, along with our martyrs, borne the reproach of the name.
Although Irenaeus undoubtedly underestimated the number of heretics who willingly died for their faith, martyrdom did occur rarely among gnostic Christians. What attitudes did gnostics take toward martyrdom, and on what grounds? Evidence from Nag Hammadi shows that some advocated it, while others repudiated it on principle.
Followers of Valentinus took a mediating position between these extremes. While some forms were completely unrelated to Christianity, others considered themselves a higher type of Christian. But although Gnostic beliefs varied a good deal, we can sum up a few essential points on which all agreed:. These ideas had implications that could not be squared with either the Old Testament or apostolic writings, which is why early Christians rejected them.
Since Gnostics held matter to be corrupt, they considered the body to be corrupt, too. The trend of some Gnostics was to teach that there is no harm in indulging fleshly desires since the body is utterly corrupt and beyond redemption anyhow.
Other Gnostics, perhaps the majority, held that the body must be kept in check by strict asceticism. Whether one chooses plan A or plan B, the underlying doctrine makes it impossible to understand how God could become a true man with a fleshly body in Christ Jesus.
If matter is corrupt, Christ's body also was corrupt. Since the "Christian" Gnostics accepted Christ as in some sense the savior, they were prone to a heresy called docetism, which taught that Christ only appeared to have a man's body. Those Gnostics who avoided docetism and allowed Christ a real material body taught that the Christ spirit entered into the Jesus body at some point and was later withdrawn.
Even on this point Gnostic writings differ. Some say that the Christ spirit abandoned the man Jesus and left him to die alone on the cross, others that someone other than Jesus was executed. In Gnostic writings, the resurrection was either ignored or viewed as a spiritual, rather than a physical, event.
There was no settled Gnostic position on these points. Each Gnostic worked out a solution as he or she pleased, freely inventing myths to his or her own satisfaction, borrowing at will from the thoughts of predecessors.
The origins of Gnosticism are not known. Some of its ideas, especially the pervasive theme of androgyny, can be found in Plato. Various scholars have attempted to trace Gnostic dualism to Zoroastrianism and other features of Gnosticism to Buddhism or Judaism. A treasure trove of Gnostic documents found at Nag Hammadi include several works which represent a sour, blasphemous Jewish Gnosticism that takes a perverse delight in saying spiteful things about God as He is revealed in the Old Testament.
As this suggests, elements of Gnosticism existed before the advent of Christianity. Peter, Paul, John and the writer of Hebrews were probably addressing budding Gnostic ideas when they insisted that Jesus came in the flesh and was a man like us.
John's Revelation mentions groups who incorporated sexual acts into worship, which was also the practice of some Gnostic groups. However, the majority of Gnostic manuscripts found at Nag Hammadi as well as the Gospel of Judas and other such writings are clearly a reaction to the already-existing history-based Christianity of those whom we call the orthodox-- those whose faith was based on the oral teaching and writings of the apostles and their associates the apostolic writings were widely distributed and accepted throughout Christendom although not every area had all of the books that made it into the New Testament and some accepted books that did not make the cut.
He became connected with the Christian church. After almost being elected Bishop of Rome i. Apparently he was a poet; some have credited him with authorship of the earliest version of the poetical Gnostic homily Gospel of Truth. Desiring to present apostolic authority for his teaching without which he knew Christians would ignore him , he claimed that he had received instruction from a follower of Paul named Theodas or Theudas.
Even if this Theodas really had been a follower of Paul, it would not validate Valentinus' teaching, for we know that some followers of Paul fell away, for he and other apostles warn of those who shipwrecked their faith and of wolves in sheep's clothing who will come among them. With the deaths of the apostles and their immediate successors, falsehood found it easier to take root. There were no eyewitnesses left to repudiate false claims. As Valentinus' life dates show, the "Christian Gnostic" movement and its writings date from the middle of the 2nd century AD or later.
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