Hi Lunamoth -
In discussing gnosticism, or modern gnosticism in particular, one must distinguish between the subjective and objective realities.
Subjectively, and this seems the far greater topic of discussion, gnosticism represents a person freedom and degree of self-determination that is not available to the Christian, who appears to labour under the burden of creeds, dogmas, doctrines and disciplines which occludes any notion of interiority.
What needs to be acknowledged is that 'gnosticism' encompasses its own exteriority, its creeds drawn from Egyptian, Greek or Oriental mysticism, the Golden Tablet of Hermes Trismegestus, the works of Pythagoras or Plato, of Levi and Paracelcus; the Greek Myths, the Kaballa, the Gospel of Thomas, Alchemy ... in fact whatever language of interiority shapes the gnostics' world view - creed means, quite simply, "I believe" - there is a creed. Where there is no creed, there is no belief ... where there is no belief, there is no meaningful redemptive activity.
In the same vein, what needs to be acknowledged is the undeniable presence of Christian interiority - in the lives of the saints and sages down through the ages - in the lives of countless Christians who labour without distinction in the cause of their faith.
To say that the church occludes this interiority, that her dogmas and doctrines snuff out this inner light, is a patent nonsense - faith, and a specifically Orthodox and Catholic faith - has produced mystics, saints, doctors, scientists and artists of every ilk - there are libraries of the most profound mystical texts ... really I am astounded that some seem to not notice, or somehow separate the great mystics from the church they love, that somehow Eckhart or Mount Athos is not connected with Orthodox Christianity.
Dogma, doctrine and discipline flows from what man holkds to be true. Whilst there is a wide resource of gnostic literature freely available, the access to gnostic practice, method and discipline (in the sense of ascesis) is not so readily available, nor so readily absorbed. The ancients spoke of theurgy and some practiced the most austere ascetic regimes, the Pythagorians had their rules, the Epicurean and the Stoic likewise (the Christians borrowed freely from the latter in both thought and act), the Essenes (ditto). All the Mysteries had their preparations, and some lengthy and testing ... and some far more restrictive and demanding in terms of personal freedom than Christian doctrine ... as was elsewhere, ask the Cathars!
The main issue, however, lies with the objective data of gnostic doctrine.
Now it must be said to speak of Gnosticism as a movement is somewhat misleading, for there was no single concrete organisation, church or culture. Gnostic adherents were invartiably focussed on their teacher. I wonder how the guru maintained discipline within his sect?
Furthermore a particular defining characteristic of gnosticism was its ease and ability in selecting, assimilating and identifying itself with a language and ideas received from without. This being said, there are certain 'universal' ideas, common to all the sects:
1 - Most of the schools were thoroughly dualistic - with an infinite distance between the realm of spirit and matter, the latter being regarded as intrinsically evil.
2 - The insistence that the material world is not the handiwork of the Ultimate God.
3 - The insistence that the material world is the result of a primeval disorder in a sub-divine or demiurgic realm. (Where, for example, the Old Testament was acknowledged, it was held that this scripture was authored by the demiurge whom the Jews took to be the One God).
4 - The gnostic holds that the soul or spiritual element in man (and in some cases among the elite of mankind only) is a stranger to this world and which yearns for freedom and release from the bonds of matter and ascend to its true home. In some schools the world is actually punitive, in others (eg. as suggested by Origen) pedagogic.
5 - Mediators have and continue to appear from the successive aeons or heavens to help this spiritual element home. These ideas and others were expounded in a setting of ever-more elaborate cosmologies.
6 - Redemption is brought about by knowledge, and essentially this knowledge, the insight into the interior meaning of the gnostic myths, brough realisation, illumination and salvation. The knowledge of the supramundane worlds would enable the gnostic, after death, to traverse the pitfalls of the successive stages of an upward journey.
The Christian response, founded on the Scripture of the Jews, and the Tradition and teaching of the Church - opposed many of these doctrines head-to head:
1 - The world is essentially good. The Cosmos is a theophany.
2 - The world was made by God in a free act of the Divine will - and so was man, and man was endowed with this freedom of will 'in the image and likeness' of his Maker, the One God, Father Almighty.
3 - The disorder of the material world was brought about by the Fall, an act of man alone, in definace of the Divine, in becoming enamoured of his own freedom - by pitting his own will against God.
4 - Soul and Body are one: To be fully human is to be body and soul in harmony, in which the cosmos is brought to fruition.
5 - The Incarnation is a one-time event, for all time - and He alone is the mediator - not an angel, nor an avatar, but the irruption of the Divine, manifest in the material order (something unthinkable to the gnostic).
6 - Redemption is brought about by love.
The root cause, as Irenaeus pointed out, was that because the gnostic disparages the material world, he had little or no interest in history as a dynamic process, as something in which God would take an active interest - as something that is both a theophany and itself on the road to perfection, in which man plays his part as a corporeal and psychospiritual dynamic, a mode of being in the material - as a presence - it is this reason, this fundamental attitude towards the world (that shapes any particular doctrine) that prevents the gnostic from giving a full and complete assent to the fundamental doctrine of the Incarnation.
Everything turns on this point, for it is impossible for the gnostic (in the historical sense) to embrace Christianity without abandoning everything he holds to be the case, and it is equally impossible for a Christian to be a gnostic (in the historical sense) for the selfsame reason.
Likewise the Christian understands gnosis in a way that is meaningless, and a scandal to the gnostic. The Word, to the gnostic, is only ever a metaphor for somewhere-other-than-what it says, somewhere-other-than-here. The Word, for the Christian, evokes the reality of a love that underlies all existence, that chooses to manifest Itself in solidarity with the here-and-now.
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For the modern gnostic, it is insufficient to declare himself such without offering adequate definition of what, to him, the term implies, precisely because its understanding has become so diffuse as to be all but meaningless - and one in which 'I believe in Christ but not in what the church says' is intellectually insufficient - it is no argument - any more that the insistence that 'I am the authority for my own existence' stands in the face of the evidence of psychology and the science of perception.
The one crucial thing man absolutely cannot guarantee is himself.
At this point I should note that many now regard Plato's Myth of the Cave as actually sounding the end of the era of mythology. Philosophy had rendered it's answers insufficient for anything other than speculation, as it has laid bare the processes of speculation itself - of fantasia and imaginatio - it could not answer the questions of being and existence - of man's tragic and short-lived state - in any way adequately in a world that was revealing its secrets to the emergence of science.
The gnostic believes in knowledge. The philosopher asks what is knowledge, and what do we really know? How do we know?
What finished gnosticism, what bankrupted myth, was progress - man was 'growing up' (albeit in an unfortunate direction) - and it is impossible to turn back the clock. We cannot undiscover what has been discovered any more than we can turn back the clock. The church might be blamed for resisting this process, but the gnostic simply rejects it.
The question facing the gnostic is that either he has learned nothing from history, or his version of history has nothing to teach him.
In so doing, personal taste and practice are, effectively, of no consequence, or rather of subsidiary interest, the princiople point being one is obliged to state one's spiritual and cosmological understanding before any meaningful dialogue can take place, which is a rather overblown way of repeating Lunamoth's original question.
Last point:
To say, as many do, that gnostics (as the term is commonly and historically understood) and Christians believe in the same thing is patently not true. One doesn't even have to look to Christian doctrine, but the Jewish scriptures and Hebraic anthropology - gnosticism is 'real' dualism, or a 'real' monism - whereas in Judaism, Christianity and Islam dualism is only ever relative - man is a corporate being, body and soul, and only such.
Will people please stop saying Paul was a gnostic, Jesus was a gnostic, etc. The Christian Way is a way of gnosis, any way towards interiority is a way of gnosis, Buddhism is a way of gnosis, but one cannot conflate Christianity with gnosticism as it is expressed, any more than one can say Christianity and Buddhism is the same thing.
Now I am sure this will invite adverse comment, but can we perhaps stick to the basics, to what is believed, and not how one believes, in the first instance, because this is where the difference lies.
Thomas
