Conclusion - Part 2

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 1 with the following:

 

(p.149) " This solitude derives from the gnostics' insistence on the primacy of

immediate experience. No one else can tell another which way to go, what to do,

how to act. The gnostic could not accept on faith what others said, except as a

provisional measure, until one found one's own path, 'for', as the gnostic

teacher Heracleon says, 'people at first are led to believe in the Savior

through others', but when they become mature 'they no longer rely on mere human

testimony', but discover instead their own immediate relationship with 'the

truth itself'. [9] (p.150) Whoever follows second-hand testimony - even

testimony of the apostles and the Scriptures - could earn the rebuke Jesus

delivered to his disciples when they quoted the prophets to him: 'You have

ignored the one living in your presence and have spoken (only) of the dead.'

[10] Only on the basis of immediate experience could one create the poems,

vision accounts, myths, and hymns that gnostics prized as proof that one

actually has attained 'gnosis'. "

 

The Gnostic Gospels, Chapter 6, Pg. 149

 

Here now is Part 2.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

 

'Conclusion' - Part 2

 

(p.150) Compared with that achievement, all others fall away. If 'the many' -

unenlightened people - believed that they would find fulfillment in family life,

sexual relationships, business, politics, ordinary employment or leisure, the

gnostic rejected this belief as illusion. Some radicals rejected all

transactions involving sexuality or money: they claimed that whoever rejects

sexual intercourse and Mammon' shows [that] he is [from] the generation of the

[son of Man]'. [11] Others, like the Valentinians, married, raised children,

worked at ordinary employment, but like devout Buddhists, regarded all these as

secondary to the solitary, interior path of 'gnosis'.

 

Orthodox Christianity, on the other hand, articulated a different kind of

experience. Orthodox Christians were concerned - far more than gnostics - with

their relationships with other people. If gnostics insisted that humanity's

original experience of evil involved internal emotional distress, the orthodox

dissented. Recalling the story of Adam and Eve, they explained that humanity

discovered evil in human violation of the natural order, itself essentially

'good'. The orthodox interpreted evil ('kakia') primarily in terms of violence

against others (thus giving the moral connotation of the term). They revised the

Mosaic code, which prohibits physical violation of others - murder, stealing,

adultery - in terms of Jesus' prohibition against even mental and emotional

violence - anger, lust, hatred.

 

Agreeing that human suffering derives from human fault, orthodox Christians

affirmed the natural order. Earth's plains, deserts, seas, mountains, stars, and

trees form an appropriate home for humanity. As part of that 'good' creation,

the orthodox recognized the processes of human biology: they tended to trust and

affirm sexuality (at least in marriage), procreation, and human development. The

orthodox Christian saw Christ not as one who leads souls out of this world into

enlightenment, but as 'fullness of God' come down into human experience - into

'bodily' experience - to sacralize it. Irenaeus declares that Christ

 

did not despise or evade any condition of humanity, nor set aside for himself

the law which he had appointed for the human race, but sanctified every age...He

therefore passes through every age, becoming an infant for infants, thus

sanctifying infants; a child for children, thus sanctifying those who are at

this age...a youth for youths...and...because he was an old man for old

people...sanctifying at the same time the aged also...then, at last, he came

onto death itself. [12]

 

To maintain the consistency of his theory, Irenaeus revised the common tradition

that Jesus died in his thirties: lest old age be left unsanctified by Christ's

participation, Irenaeus argued that Jesus was more than fifty years old when he

died. [13]

 

But it is not only the story of Christ that makes ordinary life sacred. The

orthodox church gradually developed rituals to sanction major events of

biological existence: the sharing of food, in the eucharist; sexuality, in

marriage; childbirth, in baptism; sickness, in anointment; and death, in

funerals. The social arrangements that these events celebrated, in communities,

in the family, and in social life, all bore, for the orthodox believer, vitally

important ethical responsibilities. The believer heard church leaders constantly

warning against incurring sin in the most practical affairs of life: cheating in

business, lying to a spouse, tyrannizing children or slaves, ignoring the poor.

Even their pagan critics noticed that Christians appealed to the destitute by

alleviating two of their major anxieties: Christians provided food for the poor,

and they buried the dead.

 

While the gnostic saw himself as 'one out of a thousand, two out of ten

thousand,' [14] the orthodox experienced himself as one member of the common

human family, and as one member of a universal church. According to Professor

Helmut Koester, 'the test of orthodoxy is whether it is able to build a 'church'

rather than a club or school or a sect, or merely a series of concerned

religious individuals'. [15] Origen, the most brilliant theologian of the third

century, expressed, although he was himself brought under suspicion of heresy,

the orthodox viewpoint when he declared that God would not have offered a way of

salvation accessible only to an intellectual or spiritual elite. What the church

teaches, he agreed, must be simple, unanimous, accessible to all. Irenaeus

declares that

 

as the sun, that creature of God, is one and the same throughout the whole

world, so also the preaching of the truth shines everywhere, and enlightens all

people who are willing...Nor will any one of the rulers in the churches, however

highly gifted he may be in matters of eloquence, teach doctrines different from

these. [16]

 

(p.152) Irenaeus encouraged his community to enjoy the security of believing

that their faith rested upon absolute authority: the canonically approved

Scriptures, the creed, church ritual, and the clerical hierarchy.

 

If we go back to the earliest known sources of Christian tradition - the sayings

of Jesus (although scholars disagree on the question of 'which' sayings are

genuinely authentic), we can see how both gnostic and orthodox forms of

Christianity could emerge as variant interpretations of the teaching and

significance of Christ. Those attracted to solitude would note that even the New

Testament gospel of Luke includes Jesus' saying that whoever 'does not hate his

own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and

even his own life, he cannot be my disciple'. [17] He demanded that those who

followed him must give up everything - family, home, children, ordinary work,

wealth - to join him. And he himself, as prototype, was a homeless man who

rejected his own family, avoided marriage and family life, a mysterious wanderer

who insisted on truth at all costs, even the cost of his own life. Mark relates

that Jesus concealed his teaching from the masses, and entrusted it only to the

few he considered worthy to receive it. [18]

 

Yet the New Testament gospels also offer accounts that lend themselves to a very

different interpretation. Jesus blessed marriage and declared it inviolable;

[19] he welcomed the children who surrounded him; [20] he responded with

compassion to the most common forms of human suffering, [21] such as fever,

blindness, paralysis, and mental illness, and wept [22] when he realized that

his people had rejected him. William Blake, noting such different portraits of

Jesus in the New Testament, sided with the one the gnostics preferred against

'the vision of Christ that all men see':

 

The vision of Christ that thou dost see

Is my vision's deepest enemy...

Thine is the friend of all Mankind,

Mine speaks in parables to the blind:

Thine loves the same world that mine hates

Thy Heaven doors are my Hell gates...

Both read the Bible day and night

But thou read'st black where I read white...

Seeing this False Christ, In fury and passion

I made my Voice heard all over the Nation. [23]

 

Nietzsche, who detested what he knew as Christianity, nevertheless wrote: 'There

was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.' [24] Dostoevsky, in 'The

Brothers Karamazov', attributes to Ivan a vision of the Christ rejected by the

church, the Christ who 'desired man's free love, that he should follow Thee

freely', [25] choosing the truth of one's own conscience over material

well-being, social approval, and religious certainty. Like the author of the

'Second Treatise of the Great Seth', Ivan denounced the orthodox church for

seducing people away from 'the truth of their freedom'. [26]

 

We can see, then, how conflicts arose in the formation of Christianity between

those restless, inquiring people who marked out a solitary path of

self-discovery and the institutional framework that gave to the great majority

of people religious sanction and ethical direction for their daily lives.

Adapting for its own purposes the model of Roman political and military

organization, and gaining, in the fourth century, imperial support, orthodox

Christianity grew increasingly stable and enduring. Gnostic Christianity proved

no match for the orthodox faith, either in terms of orthodoxy's wide popular

appeal, what Nock called its 'perfect because unconscious correspondence to the

needs and aspirations of ordinary humanity', [27] or in terms of its effective

organization. Both have ensured its survival through time. But the process of

establishing orthodoxy ruled out every other option. To the impoverishment of

Christian tradition, gnosticism, which offered alternatives to what became the

main thrust of Christian orthodoxy, was forced outside.

 

The Gnostic Gospels

(Long Buried And Suppressed, The Gnostic Gospels Contain

The Secret Writings Attributed To The Followers of Jesus)

Chapter 6, Pg. 149-153

Elaine Pagels

Phoenix Publishers - St. Martin's Lane, London

ISBN 13: 978-0-7538-2114-5

 

Notes:

 

[9] Heracleon, Frag. 39, in Origen, COMM. JO. 13.53.

 

[10] 'Gospel of Thomas' 42.16-18, in NHL 124.

 

[11] 'Testimony of Truth' 68.8-12, in NHL 414.

 

[12] Irenaeus, AH 2.22.4.

 

[13] ibid., 2.22.5-6.

 

[14] 'Gospel of Thomas' 38.1-3, in NHL 121.

 

[15] H. Koester, 'The Structure of Early Christian Beliefs', in

'Trajectories

Through Early Christianity' (Philadelphia, 1971), 231.

 

[16] Irenaeus, AH 1.10.2.

 

[17] Luke 14:26.

 

[18] Mark 4:10-12, 'par'.

 

[19] Matthew 19:4-6, 'par'.

 

[20] ibid., 19:13-15, 'par'.

 

[21] Mark 1:41, 3:3-5, 'par'.

 

[22] Luke 19:41-4.

 

[23] W. Blake, 'The Everlasting Gospel', 2a and g.

 

[24] F. Nietzsche, 'The Antichrist'.

 

[25] F. Dostoevsky, 'The Grand Inquisitor', in 'The Brothers Karamazov'.

 

[26] 'Second Treatise of the Great Seth' 61.20, in NHL 334.

 

[27] A.D. Nock, 'The Study of the History of Religion', in 'Arthur

Darby Nock',

Vol. 1, 339.