October 27, 2025

Welcome back to Revolutionary Restraint. Today I would like to take another short break from the political and economic themes we have been pursuing to once again turn our attention to the infinitely more lofty and worthy concerns of theology. In our last turn to theology we focused our attention on the traditions of the Gnostic Mandaean faith. Since then, I have found myself drawn into the intense and often troubling world of X theological debates. I have been struck by the degree of bitter animosity that seems to still exist between Orthodox, Catholics, and the various Protestant sects. One would be forgiven for thinking that the Thirty Years War was still raging on all around us. It is deeply dismaying to see so many who supposedly share a reverence for a man who taught his followers to love their neighbours as themselves and to turn the other cheek and forgive those who transgress against them, should be so filled with hate and aggression for one another. I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me in the slightest that, by butting into these debates from a Gnostic perspective, I would come under fire from all sides. Perhaps the one thing that truly unites all mainstream Christian factions is a shared hate for Gnostics. Still, despite all the accusations of heresy and demonic inspiration, I cannot help but to engage in these debates, for it seems repugnant to the memory of Jesus Christ that those who purport to follow him and his teachings should carry such bitter contempt and animosity toward one another and lash each other viciously with their razor sharp tongues, thus if there is any small step I can take to help remedy the situation, I believe it is my duty to take that step. And because I earnestly believe that Gnosticism carries with it the salve necessary to heal the wounds that disfigure the body of the Christian community, the shield necessary to deflect any future controversies of the sort that have inflicted these wounds, and the adhesive necessary to unite Christendom once more in Love and devotion to Christ, no matter how unwelcome it might be, I consider it necessary to act as a gadfly to the Christian community in order to stir Christians from their death-like dogmatic slumber so that we might all be reborn as more perfect images of the true, living Christ. Moreover, I invite those of other faiths and, indeed, of no faith at all to come along with us on this journey. Perhaps we shall discover that we are not all that different after all and that Christianity need not adhere to whatever preconceived notions you have attributed to it, justly or otherwise. Now, let us go into the house of our Lord.

But before we begin the discussion proper, let me first address those Christians who detest Gnosticism as a vile perversion of true Christian doctrine: Please do not recoil in disgust at the mere mention of the word “Gnosticism.” I ask only that you give me a chance to explain myself and that you evaluate what I have to say with due charity and concern for the truth. It is not my intent to convert you, nor, necessarily, to make you change any of your beliefs or practices. Indeed, in part, my motivation in laying out my beliefs is the hope that, if I am mistaken on some point or another, that others might correct me and help me find my way to the Truth. If you are content in your current faith and the means by which you express that faith, I am happy for you and wish only for you to continue with those practices that fulfill your spiritual needs and help to bring you closer to God. All that I really ask for is that you return that sentiment, not only to me and my fellow Gnostics, but also to those of other Christian denominations and, indeed, other religions, with whom you disagree. Though I encourage you to understand my beliefs and the reasons I have for adopting them, just as I wish to understand yours, for in such weighty matters, it is of the utmost importance that we work together with honesty and good faith and the hope that through our combined efforts we might all find ourselves a little closer to the truth than we were when we started out. When we share our ideas with one another with due respect and humility, we all stand to benefit from the process. I firmly believe that both Protestant and orthodox thought stand to gain much from contact with Gnostic currents of faith, just as my own faith and understanding of Gnosticism has greatly improved through contact with Protestant and orthodox thought. Let me address each of these camps separately. 

To my Protestant readers, I commend you for your strong history of standing up to authority and challenging prevailing power structures, your commitment to finding God’s Truth, and your willingness to abandon tradition should you find it disagrees with your understanding of God’s Truth. However, I question if, in your disputes with Rome, you have gone quite far enough. It strikes me that in my interactions with Protestants, the most common response to Gnostic ideas is a condescending reminder that such ideas were condemned as heresy nearly two thousand years ago. What they fail to point out is that those who condemned Gnostic teachings all those years ago were devout members of what would evolve into what we currently know as the Catholic Church, the very Church on which the existence itself of Protestantism is predicated upon rebelling against. So, I ask my Protestant brothers and sisters, why take these early representatives of the Church at their word? They are not Christ. Their writings are not scripture. Why should we rest assured that they were correct about Gnosticism and that the matter is now settled forevermore? If you can admit that the Church had become corrupt by the sixteenth century, then why shouldn’t you think that it might have become corrupt at an even earlier date? Should we not think that, perhaps, corruption seeped in beginning around the third or fourth century when the Church first began courting the wicked Roman Empire, which decreed no lesser a sin than the murder of the Savior himself, ultimately culminating in the Church’s marriage to the Empire? Perhaps corruption creeped in even earlier than that. After all, in Revelation 2:6, Jesus condemns the Nicolaitans before the century in which he was crucified had even closed. But was Nicholas not a Deacon appointed by the Apostles themselves? Are we to rest assured that this was the only error to enter the Church from its founding until 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg? Or should we suppose that other errors have infected the Church from time to time as well, perhaps with some going undetected and unexorcised, fusing themselves into the very structure of the Church so that any attempt to annihilate them would necessitate the destruction of all that we have come to associate with the Church? It seems incredibly likely that corruption began to make its way into the church long before Martin Luther ever broke away to found the first Protestant Churches, thus Protestants ought not be content to take the words of the early Church Fathers, however close in time to Christ they might be, as unimpeachable or necessarily true, but rather, ought to interrogate the works of the Church Fathers in the same way they might interrogate the words of some contemporary member of the Catholic Church. Thus, I ask you to not merely take the words and traditions of the Catholic Church for granted and blindly accept their condemnation of Gnosticism as a heresy, but to reconsider and reevaluate the arguments against Gnosticism for yourself and to draw your own conclusions. 

Now, to my Catholic and Orthodox readers, let me begin by saying that I have the highest respect for the great antiquity of your Church and traditions, as well as the fact that you can draw a direct line of succession from the Apostles themselves. I certainly have no desire to disrupt or destroy your impressive traditions and lineage. Indeed, I find a great deal of value in your traditions and, as we shall see, there are a great many matters on which we will be able to find common ground, if not even full blown agreement. Perhaps we shall find our greatest agreements in our common disagreements with Protestantism. It is hard to deny that one of the most profound effects of the Protestant Reformation was the emergence of a number of deflated theologies that serve to diminish, denigrate, and, in some cases, all out depose some of the key teachings and traditions at the heart of the Christian faith, resulting in a faith without mysteries, lacking in fullness, that is a mere shell of its former self. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the case of the Virgin Mary, where fear of idolatry all too often descends into the most vile iconoclasm and sacrilege. Perhaps through comparison and dialogue Gnostic and Orthodox alike can come to a greater understanding of Mary’s significance and discover better arguments to present to our Protestant brothers so that they might show the Holy Theotokos the appropriate reverence. That being said, I cannot help but to suggest that the historical Church in many ways set the stage for the emergence of the deflated theologies of the Protestants through their suppression and persecution of Gnostics, for, in comparison to Gnostic theology, orthodox theology is itself quite deflated. On a related note, I feel compelled to remind you that though you may represent the only branches of Christ’s Church to have survived from antiquity until the present (of course the existence of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Assyrian Church of the East complicate such claims, but let us use “Orthodox” in its broadest possible sense), you do not represent the entirety of ancient Christendom. From the very beginning Christianity was a diverse movement with many interpretations of the events and teachings of Jesus’ life. As early as the Book of Acts we see a divide forming between Jewish Christians and the teachings of the Apostle Paul as a result of Paul’s insistence that Gentile Christians need not adhere to Mosaic laws and traditions. Ultimately, reconciliation between these two groups proved unattainable and they soon crystallized into distinct sects, with proto-orthodoxy emerging from the Pauline camp, and the Nazarenes and Ebionites emerging from the Jewish camp. But on what grounds can orthodoxy claim to be the True Church and the Nazarenes and Ebionites the false? Certainly claims of antiquity and connections to Christ do not work here as these Jewish Christian groups are just as old as orthodoxy and it is quite possible that some of the original members of the Jewish Christian faction may have even known Jesus himself (they were there when it happened, so I guess they ought to know). But Jewish Christians are not the only group capable of making claims to originality. The Gnostics, as I will argue, were also there from the very beginning, and simply citing the antiquity of orthodoxy will suffice to discredit Gnosticism no more than it suffices to discredit Jewish Christians. And had it not been for persecutions at the hands of the orthodoxy, there is a good chance that a Gnostic Church would have survived down to the present day alongside the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. (Though I certainly find the Church’s treatment of Gnostics regrettable, I do not bring the fact of persecutions up to dig up old grievances and shame my opponents nor to elicit sympathy in any way. I wish for no further conflict with the orthodoxy. My only wish is that we might set aside our historic differences and bad blood so that we might engage in productive dialogue aimed at a more perfect understanding of our shared faith in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.) But let us slow down for a bit. We will come back to this point soon enough, but first we have to address a far more basic matter, namely, what is Gnosticism? 

Defining Gnosticism is a difficult matter, not least of all due to the hostile propaganda that has been levelled at it by representatives of the Church for nearly two millennia now. Since St. Irenaeus wrote his Against Heresies, slander, misrepresentation, conflation, and equivocation have been the order of the day in the Church’s arguments against Gnosticism. At best Irenaeus was misinformed about the doctrines he criticized; at worst, he was engaged in deliberate obfuscation and character assassination. Irenaeus makes it clear that he is aware of the existence of many different Gnostic teachers and schools of thought with different doctrines and practices, however, throughout the text, he more often than not fails to clearly identify which groups’ views he is presenting or arguing against, simply referring to his opponents as “they”, in a way that can give the impression that a refutation or condemnation of one group or teacher applies to all Gnostics. For instance, in the thirteenth chapter of the first book of Against Heresies Irenaeus describes the practices of one Marcus, a Gnostic teacher active around Lyon, where Irenaeus also lived, and an apparent disciple of Valentinus. Irenaeus tells us that Marcus made use of philters and potions in order to take advantage of the women who followed him. In describing these activities, Irenaeus mentions in passing that these women are led into the “bridal chamber.” A few chapters later he also refers to the “nuptial couch” being amongst the various rituals practiced by Gnostics. Interestingly, the rediscovery of several Valentinian texts in the modern era has revealed that there does indeed appear to have been a bridal chamber or nuptial couch ritual practiced by the Valentinians, however, these same texts also express considerable anxiety of the risk and deleterious effects of sexual immorality. For instance, we read in the Gospel of Philip, 

No [one can] know when [a husband] and a wife have sex except those two, for marriage in this world is a mystery for those married. If defiled marriage is hidden, how much more is undefiled marriage a true mystery! It is not fleshly but pure. It belongs not to desire but to will. It belongs not to darkness or night but to the day and the light. 

If marriage is exposed, it has become prostitution, and the bride plays the harlot not only if she is impregnated by another man, but even if she slips out of her bedchamber and is seen. Let her show herself only to her father and her mother, the friend of the bridegroom, and the attendants of the bridegroom. They are allowed to enter the bridal chamber every day. But let the others yearn just to hear her voice and enjoy the fragrance of her ointment, and let them feed on the crumbs that fall from the table, like dogs. 

Bridegrooms and brides belong to the bridal chamber. No one can see a bridegroom or a bride except by becoming one. 

So, it would seem that either Irenaeus was mistaken about Marcus’ practices, or that Marcus had gone astray from his teacher and corrupted the doctrines of Valentinian Gnosticism. In either case, the accusations against Marcus are not enough to justify accusing all Valentinians of sexual immorality. Moreover, as there were Gnostic sects who were condemned as heretics for their adherence to strict standards of celibacy, it is certainly not sufficient to accuse all Gnostics of sexual immorality. To be sure, there were other Gnostic sects, for instance the Nicolaitans and Carpocratians, who were accused of sexual immorality and, in some cases, these accusations may have indeed been true, however, just as Marcus’ potential transgressions should not be taken as representative of Valentinian thought and practices as a whole, the potential transgressions of these groups should not be taken as representative of Gnosticism as a whole. If there truly was a Gnostic doctrine that passed directly from Jesus to the Apostles, then we must conclude that Gnostic doctrines that promote sexual immorality are corruptions of that original Gnostic doctrine that came from Christ given the fact that Christ explicitly condemns the Nicolaitans for their sexual immorality in the Book of Revelation. Of course, even if we admit that Jesus did pass on Gnostic teachings to his disciples, we cannot suppose that all Gnostic schools of thought have a lineage that can be traced directly to Jesus. There were Christian as well as non-Christian Gnostic sects. This fact is most prominently exemplified by the existence of the Mandaeans, those followers of John the Baptist who consider themselves neither Jewish nor Christian. It might also be argued that there were certain Gnostic elements in several ancient Jewish sects, especially those esoteric schools that emphasized the mysticism of the Merkabah, the Heavenly Chariot of God. If Jesus really did teach Gnostic doctrines, in all likelihood his development of those doctrines was deeply influenced by these two earlier strains of Gnostic thought. 

What are we to make of all this? How does this bring us any closer to understanding what Gnosticism actually is? In the first place, we must conclude that any attempt to neatly and cleanly define Gnosticism in a way that safely encompasses all those who have been described as Gnostics, either by themselves or others, is bound to fail. Gnosticism refers to a number of highly diverse religious movements and, that being the case, we cannot conclude from the designation of some person or group as “Gnostic” anything about what that person or group must believe or declare them heretics. There are, of course, some recurring features that tend to be a theme of Gnostic thought, for instance a focus on esoteric teachings, a rejection of traditional dogma, and a philosophical approach to the faith, though all of these are not necessarily to be found in every viewpoint that has ever been associated with Gnosticism. If we want to know what any given Gnostic actually believes and to evaluate their beliefs, we have to actually read their writings and listen to their words and address the views they actually endorse rather than any views that we have ascribed to them simply for their being associated with Gnosticism. Though this, no doubt, places a heavy burden on any who would like to evaluate the beliefs of the various Gnostic sects, intellectual honesty and charity demands such efforts, and, given the profound and personal nature of theological matters, it is essential, if we wish to comment on such matters, that we hold ourselves to the highest possible intellectual standards and that we approach any potential disagreements or criticisms with appropriate sensitivity and decorum. 

Of course, none of this gets us any closer to a clear definition of Gnosticism. If anything, we have only further muddied the waters and pushed a precise definition even further out of reach. Despite the difficulties of putting forth a positive definition of Gnosticism, it is similarly difficult to carry on a conversation about anything when we have no real way of pinning down what it is that we are talking about. It would be useful if we had a substantive, positive Gnostic doctrine to take hold of in the discussions that follow. There are, as we have indicated, many schools of Gnostic thought with their own positive doctrines that we might choose from, but, at the risk of appearing overly self-important, I will make use of my own understanding of Gnosticism as the positive doctrine according to which our discussion shall proceed. This being the case, however, I would like to be quite careful to remind my readers that my word is by no means the final word on Gnosticism. Just because I accept or reject some premise or another, it by no means follows that any other Gnostic will accept or reject that premise along with me. More importantly, I by no means intend to assert that my interpretation of Gnosticism is correct or that I in any way have all the answers. What great arrogance must a man have in his limited nature to dare think he could possibly know all that there is to know about the infinite and unfathomable vastness of God’s nature! I will happily admit that I do not have the answer to every question and that it is quite possible that some of the answers I believe I have may be incorrect. We are all still trying to learn about our God, our world, and our place in it the best that we can and we should all work together in humility with the hope that we might all more closely approach the truth. 

With all of that out of the way, let me begin to say a few words about Gnosticism as I conceive it. Perhaps the core feature of Gnosticism, as I understand it, can be summed up as a philosophical approach to the faith which rejects dogma so that the faithful might freely follow where the evidence and arguments lead them. Now, I suspect there might be a few readers whose warning signals are beginning to sound at this point. “Surely,” they might think, “disregarding dogma is to remove an incredibly important guard rail without which philosophical inquiry threatens to lead us into ruinous heresies.” And I’m sure that I do hold to a few viewpoints that would seem to confirm such fears, but, as it turns out, the conclusions that this philosophical approach to the faith have led me to positions that are quite consistent with orthodoxy. Far from condemning me for arriving at orthodox truths through unorthodox paths, I would suggest that orthodox Christians should rejoice at this fact, for the fact that widely divergent paths lead to the very same truths only serves to increase the credibility of those truths and should, indeed, strengthen our faith in them. So, before getting too carried away on the points where Gnosticism and orthodoxy diverge, let us first focus on what we can agree on. 

If I have not yet made it abundantly clear, let me do so here; though not all Gnostics are necessarily Christians, the Gnosticism I adhere to is decidedly Christian. More than that, I share a good deal of beliefs with traditional, orthodox Christians. Indeed, I am happy to affirm nearly all that the Nicene Creed affirms. I profess the Trinity, holding that there is but one God, consisting of three persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who is the Creator of all that is in existence. I profess that God had one Son, Jesus Christ, who was born of a Virgin, who is both fully divine and fully human, and who was crucified so that we might be delivered from our sins, and who rose again on the third day. I further profess that through Christ, the dead shall be restored to life in the world to come. 

So far, so good. At this point, it would appear that we are in substantial agreement with those denominations of Christianity typically regarded as “mainstream” on the core tenets of the Christian faith. So, why do I not simply choose one of the countless mainstream Christian denominations that exist today and leave things at that? Why bother inflaming tensions by trying to resurrect an ancient heresy? The problem we have here is that as soon as we get beyond the mere words and affirmations contained in the Nicene Creed, nearly all of my agreement with “mainstream” Christianity goes out the window almost immediately. In the first place, I must disappoint my Catholic and Orthodox brothers. Though I am more than happy to affirm the doctrines that the Nicene Creed affirms, I am not willing to affirm and,  indeed, am more than willing to positively deny the spiritual authority of those who formulated the Nicene Creed over other Christians. More than that, to disappoint all those “mainstream” Christians I have not yet managed to disappoint, though I firmly believe the affirmations of the Nicene Creed to be true, and I believe that there are strong arguments to support those affirmations, I am willing to leave open the possibility that I, along with all of “mainstream” Christianity, down through the ages, have been wrong on one or more of the points of affirmation listed in the Nicene Creed and, for that reason, I cannot take affirmation of the Nicene Creed as in any way essential to one’s status as a Christian. After all, have there not, from the earliest times, been various examples of Christians who deny all or part of the Nicene Creed? Some of the Ebionites, as we mentioned before, may have even known Jesus personally, yet, shaped by their Jewish heritage and informed by traditional Jewish messianic expectations, this extremely early Christian sect notoriously denied the Trinity and with it, the notion that Jesus is the Son of God born of a virgin. In the centuries that followed a plethora of different theories and frameworks with the purpose of explaining the inner workings of that most remarkable of phenomena that was the life of Jesus Christ began to appear. There were the docetists, who attempted to preserve the absolute purity of Christ’s divine nature by insisting that the human body in which he appeared to his contemporaries was a mere illusion. But this led docetists into conflict with the orthodox understanding of the Crucifixion, for if Christ had not been truly incarnated in an actual human body, then, not only is he spared from true participation in human passions and base bodily functions, but, moreover, he is incapable of suffering, thus meaning he could not have taken away our sins by suffering in our place on the cross. So too were there adoptionists who rejected Jesus’ eternal preexistence, believing instead that God had rewarded Jesus later in life by choosing to adopt him as His Son and modalists who maintained that God is but one person who appears to different people at different times under the guise of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Arius reverted to an even stricter monotheism, denying the identity of the Son and the Holy Spirit with the Father, thereby relegating both to the status of mere created beings. Even after Arianism was formally rejected at the Council of Nicaea in 325, there continued to be disagreement on how to understand the divine nature of the Son and how the Son related to the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and the opposing positions and debates grew even more pedantic and convoluted. Nestorius claimed that Jesus was composed of two distinct persons, one human, the other divine. The monophysitists countered that Jesus had but a single divine nature. In 431, Nestorianism was condemned as heresy by the Council of Ephesus, resulting in a schism that separated the Church of the East from the main body of the Church. In 445 and the Council of Chalcedon, monophysitism too was to be condemned, but the search for the true Christology was to prove divisive. Two major camps emerged; the dyophysists who held that Christ had two distinct natures united in a single person, and the miaphysists who maintained that Jesus was of but a single nature that was simultaneously fully divine and fully human. The tension between these two camps proved insurmountable and it ultimately resulted in schism, with those Churches that accepted the dyophysist position going on to form the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions and those adhering to the miaphysist position forming the Oriental Orthodox tradition. If your head is spinning at this point, that’s quite alright. Confusion would seem to be a natural reaction to this dizzying array of technical terms and pedantic nuances. But the simple point I am trying to make is that Christians, from the very earliest times, have never been in agreement on the basic tenets of their faith and have always debated with one another, at times, incredibly bitterly. This is not even an exhaustive list of all the diverse positions that were held at one time or another by different groups within the early Church and with the advent of the Protestant Reformation, an even greater array of diverse views were to burst upon the seen and in some cases ideas that had long been officially condemned as heresies reemerged. Today there are several groups who revere and follow the example of Jesus Christ yet who do not affirm all of the claims made in the Nicene Creed, from Jehovah’s Witnesses to Mormons, from Unitarians to Christian Scientists, and many others in between. Though there are many who would like to deny that adherents of the viewpoints listed are really Christians, such accusations seem incredibly uncharitable and highly arrogant. Can we honestly suppose that simply because someone has reached a heterodox conclusion that somehow their faith in and devotion to Christ must be less genuine than our own? Must we really suppose that they reached their conclusions through any less diligent and earnest consideration than we have? Certainly not. The adherents of heterodox views have often been every bit as pious and learned, if not more so, as their orthodox counterparts. Is it not absurd to think that someone like Isaac Newton came to deny the Trinity in his private writings due to careless and clumsy reasoning or out of want of fame or power? It certainly is. The only explanation for Newton’s neo-Arianism is that he came to the conclusion after careful, rational considerations of the sort for which he is famous. Even if we might disagree with the reasoning that led Newton to his position, we must not doubt that whatever mistake we see was an honest one, and we must not neglect our duty to demonstrate why it is an error. The fact of the matter is there is no reason to think one person’s faith is any more genuine than another just because that person holds a view that, due to its great antiquity and popularity through the long course of history, has been privileged to be regarded as orthodox. Moreover, there is no necessary reason to think that just because a view has long been regarded as orthodox that it must be true. There are many historical examples of false positions being favored over true ones, often with the support of authority or tradition, why should we not think that at least some orthodox positions should be of this sort? 

Let us, then, declare clearly, once and for all, what exactly it is that makes one a Christian. In the interest of being as broad and inclusive as possible, we will adopt an incredibly simple criteria for one to be counted amongst Christians. We shall say that in order for one to be a Christian, one must be a genuine follower of Jesus Christ who looks to Christ’s life and teachings for a model on which to base the conduct of their own life. (As Billy Joe Shaver put it, “If you don’t love Jesus, go to Hell.” Though, perhaps we need not be so abrasive. We might be better off just saying, “You just can’t beat Jesus Christ.”)

Now, if to be a Christian is simply to be a follower of Christ, then it would seem that resolving the various theological controversies that have plagued the Christian world over the years should be incredibly easy. All we should have to do is see what Jesus had to say on the matter under question and to adopt his position as our own. Such a standard would serve to very easily resolve questions about who is and is not a Christian as well. If Jesus clearly takes a position on some matter or another, then we could say that those who refuse to assent to Jesus’ opinion are not, in fact, Christians (or at least that that person does not hold a Christian opinion on the particular matter in question, in which case we could speak of people being Christian to different degrees, but let’s set such concerns aside). However, as it turns out, when we seek out Jesus’ opinion on a good many difficult matters, especially those metaphysical matters that have caused many of the bitter theological debates we discussed above we are often met with, at best, vague, cryptic sayings that are open to interpretation (as evidenced by the wide ranging interpretations different theologians have reached in perfectly good faith) or, at worst, complete and total silence. It does not require a particularly large stretch of the imagination to suppose that, perhaps, Jesus was vague about these lofty matters on purpose. Are there not quite plausible reasons why he might avoid making absolute declarations of the truth on these matters? Perhaps, for instance, Jesus considered it necessary to focus on more pressing, mundane matters in the short time he had to minister to his followers directly. Perhaps he determined that lessons on such matters would be far beyond the intellectual capacity of his followers, or, perhaps he simply wished to save us the satisfaction of getting to the bottom of such matters ourselves. Perhaps understanding such matters isn’t even a necessary component of salvation. But if Jesus is frustratingly vague on metaphysical matters, he is incredibly explicit when it comes to moral questions. For instance, commands such as “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark, 12:33) or “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” (Matthew, 5:38-39) are incredibly explicit and don’t leave very much open to interpretation. One plausible explanation for the extreme disconnect between the ambiguity of Jesus’ metaphysical teachings and the clarity of his moral teachings might, in part, stem from the fact that Jesus saw himself, primarily, as a moral teacher rather than a teacher of metaphysics or that, at any rate, he considered the moral content of his message of far more importance than his metaphysical message. Indeed, perhaps Jesus’ metaphysical ambiguity was intended to set up a test for Jesus’ followers to see just how well they were able to follow his moral commands. Jesus, no doubt, could have foreseen the multitude of ways his words on metaphysical matters could have been interpreted and that this might lead to the fragmenting of his movement into various schools of thought. Perhaps he allowed this to happen in order to test his followers’ ability to love one another despite their deeply held, yet, ultimately, inconsequential, differences. Indeed, this is the very the lesson Jesus taught in the famous Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37), for there, Jesus clearly teaches that it is not those who merely nominally share our faith who we are to regard as our neighbors, but those who act with righteousness, kindness, and compassion, even if they do not share our faith, heritage, or traditions. 

But if Jesus deliberately allowed divergent metaphysical understandings to emerge in order to test his followers’ ability to love each other as themselves despite whatever differences there might have been between them, it would appear that Christians have and continue to fail this test miserably, as evidenced by the Church’s early adoption of a relatively narrow dogma and persecution and suppression of any and all Christians that even hinted at stepping out of that narrow window of acceptability. Now, at this point, there are some that are likely to take objection to my suggestion that the Church in any way erred. They will say things to the effect of, “But the Church is the perfect Bride of Christ. How could the Church possibly be a fit Bride for Christ if it is not free from error.” They will take the claim that the Church erred to mean that Christ is in some way imperfect or that he failed in his mission. Let us be perfectly clear here, any accusation against the Church in no way impugns Christ or implies that he failed in his mission. The only failures that the errors of the Church expose are those of the members of the Church themselves and the failure of members of the Church to be free from error cannot be blamed on Christ, but only on the imperfect natures of the members of the Church. After all, if God endowed man with free will, then man must be free to fall into error and fall short of Christ’s plan for him. This does not mean that we must declare Christ’s plan to save humanity a failure, it only means that Christ must adjust and update his plan in accordance with the manner in which man exercises his free will. Indeed, that man’s free choices might prolong our salvation and the completion of Christ’s plan is strongly suggested by the fact that we have not yet been saved and it does not appear that Christ’s plan has been completed yet. For if Christ’s completion of his plan depended upon his efforts alone, then we could suppose that Christ would have completed his mission in the most perfect and glorious manner with the utmost haste; all the world would have been powerless to resist his glory and would have submitted themselves, absolutely, to his will allowing Christ to once and for all save humanity and establish his promised Kingdom. And, indeed, there are strong indications that early Christians expected the fulfilment of Christ’s Kingdom to happen shortly, perhaps within the course of their own lives. The words of early Church Fathers like Clement of Rome and Justin Martyr reveal great urgency, suggesting Christ could return at any hour. And it was Christ’s words themselves, no doubt, that caused early Christians to think this way. For instance, we read, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom” (Matthew, 16:28), “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” (Mark, 13:30), and “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.” (Luke, 9:27). But, alas, for whatever reason, perhaps because Christ saw the value in free will and saw fit to preserve humanity’s power to choose whether or not to follow him, for worse or for better, this did not occur. Humanity did not freely submit to Christ’s will and the final fulfillment of his plan would have to be put off until such a time as humanity was ready for it. But that Christ left us our freedom to accept or reject him is no indictment against Christ, but only an indictment against humanity, for if humanity was free to accept or reject Christ, then it was perfectly possible for us all to choose to follow Christ into his Kingdom through our own power. We have no one to blame but ourselves that this did not occur. Likewise, we have no one but the members of the Church to blame for the elements of Christ’s message that were perverted and the persecutions of different opinions those perversions were used to justify. Nevertheless, it is not my job here to act as an accuser or adversary. I hold no grudges against the Church or its representatives and demand no apologies, despite the Church’s long history of persecuting and suppressing Gnostics and other groups. Indeed, I will even go so far as to suggest that the Church’s posturing was, to some extent, a necessary reaction to the hardened hearts that prevented so many men from admitting the truth of Christ’s message and from following him. Though there were many who did not immediately heed Christ’s message, there were others who did and we know, from the traditions handed down to us from the early days of the Church, that many of these were so committed to Christ’s message of forgiveness and nonviolence that they suffered martyrdom without making any sort of attempt to resist or defend themselves. The martyrs no doubt deserve our praise and admiration for their absolute commitment to their faith and the impressive display of discipline that so many of us find so difficult to attain, but their examples also remind us how difficult it is for pacifistic doctrines to endure in a world where the vast majority still subscribe to barbarism and brutality. It would be difficult, all but impossible, for such a belief system to spread and endure in such conditions, as existing adherents would be quickly depleted through martyrdom, while few new adherents would be willing to rush to the same fate. (It is true that Tertullian is often translated as saying in his Apology “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” We should not doubt that the steadfast faith of the martyrs inspired some to convert despite the dangers to themselves. Such willingness to defy the natural instinct to self preservation no doubt testifies to the miraculous character of the Christian faith. That being said, not all were as enthusiastic about the prospect of martyrdom as was Tertullian and, indeed, his call for Christians not to flee in the face of persecution has been a point of contention surrounding his work since his works first began circulating.) Strict adherence to pacifist principles may well prove suicidal for the movement, and it is only natural that some, practically minded, less disciplined (or some combination of the two) adherents of the movement might gradually loosen the emphasis on nonviolence. Likewise, some adherents might have had reason to promote those interpretations of the faith that they believed were most likely to attract new followers while suppressing those they feared would drive potential followers away. This is in no way meant to impugn the faith or character of those who implemented these changes, we can even admit that perhaps Christ, recognizing the practical difficulties his followers faced and wishing to ease their burdens allowed these developments, and perhaps the Holy Spirit even helped to guide the Church through this process, working to ensure that those interpretations of the faith that would best allow it to spread across the world, while preserving the seed of Christ’s pure doctrine in its core, to bloom at such a time as the spread of Christ’s Church across the world would allow it to do so without such dire threat to its adherents, and, until such a time, to occasionally spring forth helping the better dispositions of the keepers of the faith to prevail, guiding the world to that time when the pure doctrine can fully bloom. But we must begin cultivating the ground if that bloom is to occur and there would seem to be no better way to begin this work than to try to bring together all those who strive to follow the teachings of Christ together, despite their doctrinal differences, under a single banner centered around Christ’s call for us to treat each other as neighbors and love each other as ourselves. 

With this call for Christian unity out of the way, we come now to yet another point on which I differ from both orthodox and Protestant Christians, namely the question of authority. The respective attitudes of the orthodoxy and Protestants on questions of authority are generally well known. Protestants, of course, adhere to the principle known as sola scriptura which holds that the absolute and final authority in all spiritual matters rests with scripture. The motivations behind the Protestant principle of sola scriptura are, we must admit, admirable enough. It reflects a desire to get as close to the words of Christ himself as possible, cutting out all intermediaries between believers  and the Messiah. But as much as we might respect the motivations behind sola scriptura we cannot help but agree with the assessment of more orthodox critics that sola scriptura is a misguided approach to the faith that needlessly and detrimentally confines our theological beliefs to an unduly narrow and, consequently, unstable foundation. The partisans of orthodoxy are quite right to point out that the history and traditions of the Church play an incredibly important role in shaping our understanding of the faith. Indeed, without this history and tradition, there would be no scripture for Protestants to turn to as the sole source of authority at all, for the earliest Christians had no scripture to speak of save the books of the Old Testament and it was only by the efforts of the Apostles and early Church Fathers that any scripture was to be written, and by the deliberations and consent of the councils that any canon of scripture was to be decided upon at all. Still, however, even in supplementing scripture with Church history and tradition, orthodoxy leaves the foundation of faith on far too narrow and unstable a ground. Though tradition no doubt gives us a valuable window into the historical faith and its development over the years, and though the Church Fathers may well have been learned and faithful, they were flawed humans all the same. Even if they were guided by the Holy Spirit in piloting the Church through the tumultuous waters of history, this is no guarantee that they always preserved the whole truth completely undistorted. On the contrary, the human element of Church history gives us all the more reason to check the Church’s work and revise its teachings when necessary to bring them into greater conformity with the original teachings of Christ, for there can be no more absolute arbiter of what it means to be a Christian than Jesus Christ himself! But, by what standards are we to evaluate Church tradition? The answer to this question also points us to the ultimate source of spiritual authority. In order to evaluate any spiritual claim, we all must ultimately rely on our own experiences interpreted through our own reason. This places faith on the broadest and stablest of all possible foundations, for who can come to faith but through his own experiences and his own rational reflection on those experiences that confirm to him that that faith is true? What could be a surer and less shakeable foundation for faith than the eternal and necessary proofs of our own reason that we carry within us wherever we might go (we will have much more to say about these proofs at a later date) and our own, intimate, experiences with the Divine? Indeed, it is only through the authority of our own experience and reason that we could ever possibly come to recognize the authority of either scripture or the Church. How could we ever know the truth of the scriptures if we have not first experienced them by reading them and found them to be consistent with our rational understanding of the world? How could we ever come to know the truth of the Church’s traditions and rituals if we have not first experienced them and felt God’s presence in them? In this sense, the Gnostic position might be seen to have some affinity with the Protestant notion of a “priesthood of all believers,” in that all people can be said to have an intimate connection to God at the very core of their being. However, this must not be taken as a rejection of any and all hierarchy in spiritual matters. Though each man must ultimately rely on the authority of his own experience and reason in determining what to believe, this does not mean that there cannot be greater and lesser degrees of spiritual understanding. On the contrary, there certainly are different degrees of spiritual understanding, and it is often prudent for those with a more limited understanding of such matters to defer to the authority of one with greater understanding, but it is each individual’s responsibility to seek out and identify such superior spiritual understanding in others and to willingly defer to their authority, thus authority still can only ultimately rest in the reason and experience of each individual, and the degree to which any person, group, or text can be said to have spiritual authority over others is a consequence of the cumulative effects of individual deferrals of authority. This is the natural epistemic condition that each and every individual naturally finds himself in and it will serve as the ultimate foundation of Gnostic faith. 

Now, though the ultimate authority in spiritual matters for each of us will ever rest in our own judgment and conscience, we must be willing to admit our own shortcomings and limitations and to seek out sources external to us capable of helping to expand, refine, and reinforce our own understanding of spiritual matters. We can admit that the Church and its representatives, with their longstanding traditions aimed at preserving the faith and the rigorous education administered to its representatives, retains a great deal of spiritual wisdom and that it is, at the very least, prudent to consider the opinions of the Church. Moreover, given our relative distance from the events described in the Bible and the tendency of time to distort and rob our memories, as a general rule we should give greater deference to those witnesses to the faith who find themselves in closer proximity in time to the events of Christ’s life. In accordance with this principle, it follows that we should give the greatest deference to those who knew Christ personally, followed closely by those who knew these most intimate followers of Christ personally. Still, to be sure, there can be no greater authority on spiritual matters than Jesus Christ himself. We must remain forever mindful that those who came after Christ, however devoted and well-meaning, were but men, bearing all the flaws and imperfections natural to the human condition. It should come as no surprise if we are to learn that the Apostles and Church Fathers each had their own personal opinions, jealousies, prejudices, and the like and that, in matters of Church governance, as with any human endeavour, from time to time, political considerations ruled the day. Therefore, we must always remain open to the possibility that, no matter how well learned and proximal to Christ, any witness to the faith is liable to fall into error. For this reason, we should always be careful to compare different accounts and never be afraid to apply the standards of our own reason when trying to weigh the truth of any given claim. It should come as no surprise then that our Gnostic reading of Matthew 16:18-19 will differ significantly from that of our Catholic brothers. For we read there, “And I tell you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Catholics, it is well known, understand this verse to establish the infallible authority of the Church with Peter, the first Pope. We can certainly agree that the verse seems to indicate Christ’s intention for Peter to serve as some sort of leader in his absence, but we must stand with our Orthodox brothers in pointing out that there is little indication of the scope of the authority entrusted to Peter, and certainly no mention of the vast powers that the Catholic Church attributes to the Pope, nor is there any indication that those who would succeed Peter as Bishops of Rome should enjoy the same degree of authority that Peter did. More importantly, we do not read the second part of Jesus’ statement to imply in any way that Peter, or the Church, must necessarily be infallible and reach the correct conclusion on every matter every time. Instead, we read this verse as a simple acknowledgement on Jesus’ part of the practical consequences that would follow from establishing mere men in roles of such authority. The Church would have the power, for better or worse, to make determinations about the truth or falsity of doctrines which, more often than not, the laity, in their blind trust, would readily adopt. Perhaps then, Christ in his infinite mercy, and out of a sense of responsibility to the flock he entrusted the Church to shepherd over, saw fit to bind and loose in Heaven in accordance with the binding and loosing of the Church on Earth to ensure that no one be kept from paradise on account of the errors of the all too human teachers who had been entrusted with their spiritual development. Thus, while we admit that the Church is an essential institution, founded by Christ himself with the hope it would guide the people of the earth toward a greater spiritual understanding, we at the same time recognize that it is hardly necessarily infallible on every matter at all times. It is, perhaps, appropriate to note here another important distinction at the heart of the Gnostic tradition. In addition to the earthly institution of the church that Jesus charged Peter and the Apostles with administering in his stead, there is also a True Heavenly Church that maintains Christ himself at its head. The earthly church is meant to serve as an earthly image of the True Heavenly Church, but while error and wickedness is capable of creeping into the earthly church, no such things can ever enter the Heavenly Church for entry into it is granted by Jesus Christ alone. The Heavenly Church is the True blameless Bride of Christ and it is the highest end of the earthly church to live up to the perfection of its model so that it might lead its flock into the True Church. It is as we read in the Gospel of Philip, 

The names of worldly things are utterly deceptive, for they turn the hear from what is real to what is unreal. Whoever hears the word “god” thinks not of what is real but rather of what is unreal. So also with the words “father,” “son,” “holy spirit,” “life,” “light,” “resurrection,” ‘church,” and all the rest, people do not think of what is real but of what is unreal, [though] the words refer to what is real. The words [that are] heard belong to this world. [Do not be} deceived. If words belonged to the eternal realm, they would never be pronounced in this world, nor would they designate worldly things. They would refer to what is in the eternal realm. 

This picture is reinforced in vivid detail in the canonical Book of Revelation, beginning in the fourth chapter, when, after writing to the seven earthly churches and admonishing their behavior, John is called up into the Heavenly Church and bears witness to an angelic mass. By understanding this distinction between the True Heavenly Church and the earthly church, we may finally come to a proper understanding of Matthew 16. It should be remembered that Hades is not merely a synonym for Hell, but a realm that shares a name with its ruler, who, according to Greek mythology, is the very personification of death itself. In this light, Christ’s promise may be understood, not as a promise that the church would never err, but that death would never overcome it. But death has and still does torment the church today; there are fewer living Christians today than all of those Christians who have died over the course of history. Thus, Christ’s promise that death will never overcome the church must not be taken as referring to the earthly church, but only the Heavenly Church, for truly, only the members admitted into this Church, through the saving grace of Jesus Christ, shall have the good fortune to escape death, while those who enter only the earthly church, while in their hearts are still committed to vice and wickedness, paying only lip service to Christ, shall surely taste the bitterness of death. It is the True Church we are called to work on and any work we do within or alongside earthly churches in doing so is merely incidental. It’s as Bill Monroe says, “If I were a preacher, I’ll tell you what I would do. I’d quit my preaching and work on the Building too.” 

In citing the Gospel of Philip, however, we come to a crucial question, namely, what is scripture? On the surface, this might, for most Christians, appear an easy question. It is the Word of God as found in the Holy Bible. This is all well and good, but the Bible did not always come so neatly packaged in a single volume to sit upon our shelves. Rather, the Bible consists of a number of books written over a substantial period of time. How did it come about that all of these books should be brought together and how was it determined which books belonged? How did anyone know which books were the genuine Word of God? Now, the conventional Christian will likely answer that the authenticity of these works is attested by the testimony of the Church Fathers and the decisions of Church Councils and that we can rest easy, because through the guidance of the Holy Spirit the Church ultimately collected all and only those texts that are the genuine word of God. But we have already stated that it is possible for the earthly church to err, even under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, so why should we not think that the church has erred in matters of scripture, whether it be by including some books that do not belong or excluding some books that do belong? And, indeed, as soon as we begin to examine modern Bibles, the fairy tale that all questions of scriptural canon had been settled long ago, never to concern us again, quickly begins to unravel. As it turns out, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has a canon of eighty-one books, whereas the Roman Catholic Church includes only seventy-three books in its canon, which was only formally solidified in the sixteenth century at the Council of Trent. Many Protestant denominations have even fewer books in their canon, having relegated the deuterocanonical texts to mere apocrypha, if that, with some denominations rejecting such texts entirely. Indeed, even our citation of Revelation might be called into question, as the Church of the East has traditionally excluded it from their canon. Who are we to believe? What books are we to read? Surely some of these Churches got things wrong that others got right. 

(Interestingly enough, there is even a slight chance that Revelation could be a Gnostic text. For according to Dionysius of Alexandria, as quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea in the twenty-fifth chapter of the seventh book of his Church History, there were rumours that Revelation might have been written by a Gnostic teacher, 

Some before us have set aside and rejected the book altogether, criticising it chapter by chapter, and pronouncing it without sense or argument, and maintaining that the title is fraudulent. 

For they say that it is not the work of John, nor is it a revelation, because it is covered thickly and densely by a veil of obscurity. And they affirm that none of the apostles, and none of the saints, nor any one in the Church is its author, but that Cerinthus, who founded the sect which was called after him the Cerinthian, desiring reputable authority for his fiction, prefixed the name.

For the doctrine which he taught was this: that the kingdom of Christ will be an earthly one. And as he himself devoted to the pleasures of the body and altogether sensual in his nature, he dreamed that that kingdom would consist in those things which he desired, namely, in the delights of the belly and of sexual passion; that is to say, in eating and drinking and marrying, and in festivals and sacrifices and the slaying of victims, under the guise of which he thought he could indulge his appetites with grace. 

Dionysius goes on to say that he does not deny the book because it is held in high regard by many others in the Church, while admitting it is beyond his comprehension. I can’t say this is far from my own position on the matter from one, no doubt, much better positioned to know. If you ask me, “who’s that writing?” I’ll just point you to Blind Willie Johnson.)

The fact of the matter is that defining scripture is a messy business. It is hardly an exact science and it all too often comes down to matters of subjective preference and taste. This brings us to the fact that there is a large body of ancient literature that purports to contain information on the life and teachings of Christ that has largely been dismissed as heretical and kept out of the canons of the major churches that have survived into modernity. What are we to make of these texts and the judgements against them? Are they truly heretical, or do at least some of them contain genuine accounts of Christ and his teachings? Did ancient church leaders make grave mistakes by rejecting and suppressing some of these texts? Are we not potentially rejecting valuable information about the Lord and Savior? 

We should begin by asking why the Church ultimately decided to reject these writings; what criteria do the agreed upon canonical works detailing the life of Jesus meet that allowed them to be regarded as scripture and how do these other writings fall short of those criteria? Moreover, we must ask, are these criteria legitimate and do even the settled canon live up to them? 

In compiling the canon the Church Fathers sought out works that had been written in close proximity to the Crucifixion, roughly within a century thereof, by the Apostles or their close associates, and that were widely known and in conformity with orthodox teachings. Let us begin by addressing the latter two criteria, as they are by far the easiest to address. In the first place, while a popular text’s provenance may be easier to ascertain than an obscure one, there can still be a great deal of doubt and this is certainly the case with several books of the New Testament. Moreover, whether a text is widely known or not has little bearing on whether its teachings are true. It is possible for a text that teaches falsities to achieve wide circulation, while a text that teaches the truth might languish in relative obscurity. The demand that texts be in conformity with orthodox teachings, on the other hand, though it might seem reasonable from the standpoint of a church that has decisively endorsed a particular doctrine, in the context of the general debate between Gnostics and orthodoxy, this demand merely begs the question. Of course if we are only willing to look at those texts that support the orthodox position, we will likely conclude that the orthodox position is in accordance with Jesus’ original teachings. But if there are sources that show Jesus challenging what would become the orthodox tradition, why should we not at least be open to the possibility that orthodox tradition is not in line with Jesus’ original teachings? Moreover, it is not as though the traditionally accepted canon is completely doctrinally clear. Arians,, Nestorians, Monophysitists, and Miaphysitists were all, for the most part, in agreement on what texts made up the Biblical canon and drew these wildly diverse opinions from them, and this is only accounting for the different Christological doctrines that have been taken from the canonical texts; the canon has inspired a wide range of opinions on other matters as well. 

Now, let us turn to those other requirements for a work to be considered scripture; that it be written in close proximity to Christ’s death by either the Apostles or close associates of the Apostles. We can certainly agree that it makes sense to prioritize those accounts written by those who had actually known Jesus and witnessed events in his life. After all, first hand accounts are less likely to be diluted or confused as a result of being passed down to others. Similarly, we can admit that the close companions of the Apostles likely heard the stories of Jesus recounted many times and, thus, probably knew many of the stories nearly as well as the Apostles who experienced them. But it is, perhaps, a reasonable worry that after subsequent retellings of the story, important information might begin to be omitted or confused from the story, rendering writings from people so removed from the events, though not totally without value, less valuable than more proximate accounts. And here we run into a problem because, as it turns out, the circumstances of the traditionally accepted authors of significant portions of the New Testament run head on into these worries. Paul, who is credited with writing nearly half of the books in the New Testament, does not appear to have ever met Jesus while he was alive. In addition, the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts are both attributed to the same Luke who was reputed to have been a student of Paul. In other words, two of the principle works recounting the history of Jesus’ ministry and the formation of the Church was written by someone who had never met Jesus and who had, himself, been taught by someone who had never met Jesus. Of course, the orthodox Christian will point out that Paul had indeed met Jesus in his vision on the road to Damascus (Acts, 9), but encountering Jesus in a vision is much different than having lived alongside him and witnessing the actual events of his life. If Paul’s writing is worthy of being listed as scripture because he had encountered Jesus in a vision, why should not the writings of later witnesses to whom Christ appeared in visions be regarded as scripture? And if encountering Christ in a vision is, indeed, different than having lived beside him, why then should we accept the writings of Paul or Luke as authoritative scripture, but not the writings of a student of a student of an Apostle, or someone yet further removed, who may well have accurately preserved the accounts of Christ’s life that had been related to him? The criteria of Apostolic authorship or connection becomes even more strained when we take account of modern academic Biblical criticism which has called into question many of the traditional attributions of texts in the Bible. If these modern revelations prove to be true, should this really undermine the books in question such that we lose faith in the wisdom we have always found there, or ought we amend our criteria for regarding a work as scripture? 

Still, even if the conventional Christian is willing to loosen the authorship criteria for New Testament scripture, they might continue to hold on to the requirement that all such works should be in close proximity to the Crucifixion. In particular, they might maintain that no book written after the Book of Revelation should be admitted as scripture, which would mean, given the popular dating of the work to around the year 96, that there could be no legitimate scripture written after the first century. The reason one might accept such a criteria comes from Revelation itself where we read, “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll.” (22:18-19) from which they conclude that God intended to close the scriptures entirely with Revelation. From the outset there is good reason to view such an argument with suspicion, not least of them being that, at the time Revelation was written, there was no established set of scripture to speak of, meaning it would make absolutely no sense for Revelation to be announcing the end of a collection of books that had not yet been compiled yet and which, therefore, did not yet exist. Moreover, there are some who hold that, chronologically, Revelation was not the last book of the canon to have been written. If this view happened to be correct, it would be necessary to either reject these works as genuine scriptures, or accept that the canon was not meant to close with Revelation after all. All of this suggests that when Revelation warns about adding or taking away from “this scroll” it is referring only to Revelation and not to the Bible as a whole. Most importantly, we read a near identical warning in the Book of Deuteronomy, “Now, Israel, hear the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land the LORD, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the LORD your God that I give you.” (4:1-2) But Moses did not descend from Sinai with all seventy-three (or was it sixty-six, or eighty-one?) books of the Christian Bible, but only the five books that make up the Torah. If the command to not add anything to scripture were to be taken in a strict sense, scripture would still consist of only five books. And, historically, there were some who felt this way. Most notable of all in this respect, were the Sadducees, the elite of ancient Israel amongst whom were counted the Temple Priests. (Indeed, a survey of the diverse factions of the Second Temple period reveals that even the Old Testament canon, often claimed to have been settled long before Christ’s death, is subject to similar disagreements as the New Testament. For instance, like the Sadducees, the Samaritans rejected the books of the prophets, but they also used their own unique version of the Torah, along with a Book of Joshua entirely unlike that found in the Tanakh. (According to Toots Hibbert, there were six and seven books of Moses.) On the other hand, the Jews of Beta Israel in Ethiopia accepted the validity of a work like the Testament of Abraham, generally regarded as Apocryphal in Israel proper. And the Essenes made use of a large number of books outside of the established canon that has come down to us. Clearly, questions of canonicity were just as messy before Christ as they remained after.) So, unless we wish to severely limit our scripture, we simply cannot take the prohibition against adding to the words of Revelation as an indication that there can be no future scripture any more than we take the same prohibition in Deuteronomy to mean that there can be no scripture after the Torah. And, indeed, to make a legalistic determination based on such verses that no further scripture can ever be written is to arrogantly and foolishly limit God. For if God saw fit to speak for so long before Revelation why should we not think He should be able to continue to do so if He so chooses? And would we not be even more foolish to not heed Him should he decide to speak? 

Having exposed these issues with the traditional standards of canonicity, we may now turn our attention to the specific cases of those Gnostic texts that were labeled heretical. In the first place, we should consider the possibility that at least some texts labeled Gnostic could potentially fulfil the age and authorship requirements imposed by orthodoxy. There are several Gnostic texts attributed to Apostles including the Apocryphon of John, Gospel of Philip, Apocryphon of James, Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Thomas. This last gospel is the most interesting to our current purposes. Scholars generally believe none of the other works were written any earlier than the early second century and are believed to be pseudepigraphical. Similar assumptions tend to be made about the Gospel of Thomas as well. That being said, a minority of scholars have proposed a significantly earlier date with some suggesting that parts of the Gospel could be dated to the decades immediately following Christ’s death. This would place the Gospel of Thomas amongst the earliest of all Christian writings. And the gospel’s style certainly gives one a sense that this might be possible. It is written in a betrayingly simple style. Classified as a “sayings gospel” it consists almost entirely of a list of Jesus’ sayings with next to no narrative information about his life. Many of the sayings the gospel records either directly mirror or closely resonate with passages found in the canonical gospels. Orthodoxy has traditionally taken this as evidence of the gospel’s later date, but might this not suggest the other alternative, that the Gospel of Thomas was the original source of these sayings in the canonical gospels? The fact of the matter is that the dating of ancient texts is highly speculative and hardly a perfect science. It is doubtful that we will ever know, beyond a reasonable doubt, the actual ages and provenances of a good many texts, canonical and non-canonical alike. 

Of course, at the end of the day, are the dates when these texts were written really that important after all? And do late dates really necessarily mean that a text is not inspired or that it does not contain genuine information about Christ’s life and ministry? Even if a text was written relatively late, is it not possible that it reflects a genuine teaching that was passed down orally for many decades, or even centuries, before being recorded in a scroll? When we consider the nature of teachings and the circumstances in which they were passed down, such possibilities are not entirely implausible. In the first place, we must consider the nature of Gnostic teachings themselves which will also give us an opportunity to respond to one of the most common charges levied against Gnostics, namely that their teachings were secret. In the first place we should ask ourselves where the prohibition on secret teachings even comes from. One might point to a verse like, “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who brought them – bringing swift destruction on themselves.” (2 Peter, 2:1) It deserves noting that this statement presumably comes from the Apostle Peter. Though, if the Petrine authorship is legitimate, Peter is certainly a valuable source to turn to about Christ and his teachings, still, he is not Christ, he is but a man and subject to error as any man. But we need not even question Peter’s judgement here, for it is not an outright condemnation of all secret teachings, it only describes one means by which destructive heresies will spread. It does not follow that all secret teachings must necessarily promote destructive heresies. However, a more pressing problem presents itself to us. Jesus says, “I have spoken openly to the world… I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret. Why question me? Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said.” (John 18:20-21) It should be noted that the text does not explicitly state the specific question he was responding to. It may have been in response to a question about some teaching that he did preach publicly. This, then, wouldn’t preclude the possibility that Jesus did teach on some subjects secretly. And, indeed, Jesus indicates in several places that this is the case. We read, “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” (Matthew 7:6) when asked why he spoke in parables, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” (Matthew 13:11-13), and similarly “When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. He told them, ‘The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables. So that ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven.’’” (Mark 4:10-12). In this first verse, Jesus clearly teaches that not all wisdom is fit for all people, and that in some circumstances we should withhold teachings that the audience is not prepared for. In the latter two, Jesus clearly indicates that he has imparted secret knowledge to the Apostles that others are either unable, or unwilling, to receive. And is it not only natural that the Apostles should have understood things that the average hearer of Jesus’ teachings did not? After all, they spent their time travelling with and learning from Christ and would have had ample opportunity to engage in private discussions with him and probe him with questions whose answer would help them to understand Jesus’ teachings on a much deeper level. That more direct and intimate students should understand a teacher’s teachings better than those who only had marginal contact with that teacher is simply a natural consequence of how teachings are transmitted. This leads us to an important point, it might not so much be the case that that Gnostic teachings represent “secret” teachings in the sense that that term is usually used, but simply more advanced or private teachings that were not meant to be passed on until a student was prepared for it, lest it somehow upset that student’s development. 

All of this leads us to an important point that will help the case of Gnostic texts considerably. If Jesus spoke privately with the Apostles and presented them with teachings that he did not present publicly, it is still, nonetheless, possible that those teachings might have been handed down orally for some time, passed down from the Apostles to their students, and so on, before those teachings were finally committed to writing. Indeed, as Jesus shows a clear concern about revealing things to those who are not prepared to hear them, it may have even been Jesus’ intention for some teachings to be passed down orally to ensure that they were only ever revealed before the ears of those suited to hearing them and for such teachings to never be written down, at least until the general public was prepared to receive them, in order to ensure that those writing never came before unprepared eyes. Thus, it may well have been in line with Christ’s will that some teachings be committed to writing at a relatively later date than the traditional canonical texts. Moreover, by taking account of the very real group dynamics in play in the transmission of doctrines and the compiling of scripture, it is easy to see why even legitimate teachings might come under scrutiny and be discarded. For instance, if Jesus taught the Apostles things privately that he did not address in public, it is quite possible that not all of the Apostles were present for all of these conversations. It might even be possible that Jesus handed down some teachings in one on one conversations to which no others were witness. Thus, the Apostles themselves may not have even been able to identify every teaching that Jesus ever gave over the course of his life. The problem would have been compounded as the Apostles took on students of their own. If these private teachings were not to be passed down until the student reached a sufficient level of understanding, then the more advanced a teaching was, the less students it would have been transmitted to. In the case of particularly advanced teachings, perhaps only one or two students would have reached a sufficient level of understanding to have received them. Indeed, there may have even been some teachings so advanced that none of a given Apostle’s students reached an adequate level of understanding to properly receive it, resulting either in that teaching dying with the Apostle, or that Apostle passing that teaching down to unprepared students who would likely misinterpret and corrupt the teaching. This problem would reappear as the students of Apostles took on students of their own and would inevitably compound with every generation. Thus, from the start, not every teaching would have necessarily been found in every line of transmission and, with each subsequent generation, there was a threat within each line of transmission of some number of teachings being lost or corrupted. So, even if a private teaching did survive within a given line of transmission it would not necessarily have been received by other lines, or it might have been received by other lines in a distorted way, and it might only be recognized as a genuine teaching by a handful of people, if even that many. It should come as no surprise if a genuine teaching might survive within a particular line of transmission that no other line is capable of verifying and it may even only be known by one or two people within the line of transmission from whence it came. In such cases, it would be quite likely for a perfectly genuine teaching to be rejected as spurious. And we have not yet begun to factor in the human fallibility of those who received and passed on these doctrines. These were men with their own jealousies, prejudices, loyalties and ambitions. It is not hard to imagine some less advanced students becoming jealous of those students who were entrusted with advanced esoteric teachings. Others may well have exploited these circumstances to gain political advantages and label opponents as heretics. Perhaps it was the emergence of jealousy and political maneuvering within the Church that forced some Gnostic teachings to take on an entirely new character as not merely more advanced teachings, but as secret teachings that had to be concealed as a matter of necessity in order for those in possession of these teachings to avoid persecution.

Indeed, the Gnostic texts themselves provide hints that these circumstances are the very reason for their suppression, and it would appear that these dynamics were already in play at the time of the Apostles. In the Gospel of Mary (17,10-19,5), after Mary has shared a teaching Jesus had revealed to her in private, we read, 

Andrew responded, addressing the brothers and sisters, “Say what you will about the things she has said, but I do not believe that the Savior said these things, for indeed these teachings are strange ideas.”

Peter responded, bringing up similar concerns. He questioned them about the Savior, “Did, he, then, speak with a woman in private without our knowing about it. Are we to turn around and listen to her? Did he choose her over us?”

Then Mary wept and said to Peter, “My brother Peter, what are you imagining? Do you think that I have thought up these things by myself in my heart or that I am telling lies about the Savior?” 

Levi answered, speaking to Peter, “Peter, you have always been a wrathful person. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. For if the Savior made her worthy, who are you then for your part to reject her? Assuredly the Savior’s knowledge of her is completely reliable. That is why he loved her more than us.

Rather, we should be ashamed. We should clothe ourselves with the perfect human, acquire it for ourselves as he commands us, and announce the good news, not laying down any other rule or law that differs from what the Savior said.”

After [he said these] things, they started going out [to] teach and to each. 

(Is our purpose not the same on this earth, to love and follow His direction?)

Even the New Testament canon corroborates the fact that splinters began to form between the Apostle after Christ died. For instance, we read in Galatians 11-21

When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so hat by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. 

When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? 

“We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. 

“But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker. 

“For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” 

Similarly in Acts 15

Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the believers very glad. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them. 

Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.” 

The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers , you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.” 

The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. When they finished, James spoke up. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. Simon has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written: 

“After this I will return 

And rebuild David’s fallen tent. 

Its ruins I will rebuild, 

and I will restore it, 

That the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, 

Even all the Gentiles who bear my name, 

says the Lord, who does these things

Things known from long ago. 

It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For the law of moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.” 

Then the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas (called Barsabbas) and silas, men who were leaders among the believers. With them they sent the following letter:

The apostles and elders, your brothers, 

Greetings. 

We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul – men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore we are sending Judas anSilas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements. You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. 

Farewell.

So the men were sent off and went down to Antioch, where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter. The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. Judas and Silas, who themselves were prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen the believers. After spending some time there, they were sent off by believers with the blessing of peace to return to those who had sent them. But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, where they and many others taught and preached the word of the Lord. 

Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing. Barbas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord. He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the Churches. 

Peter’s wavering nature is of particular note and it comes to light already in the gospel accounts. We read in the Gospel of John 18:1-14

When he had finished praying, Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley. On the other side there was a garden, and he and his disciples went into it.

Now Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. So Judas came to the garden, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and the Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons. 

Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?” 

“Jesus of Nazareth,” they said. 

Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. If you are looking for me, then let these men go.” This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled. “I have not lost one of those you gave me.”

Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.)

And in the Gospel of Luke 22:54-62,

Then seizing him, they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest. Peter followed at a distance. And when some there had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat down with them. A servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight. She looked closely at him and said, “This man was with him.” 

But he denied it. “Woman, I don’t know him,” he said. 

A little later someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.” 

“Man, I am not!” Peter replied. 

About an hour later another asserted, “Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean.” 

Peter replied, Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about! Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: “Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly.

These passages are powerful testaments against the notion that Peter, the Church, or his successors are in any way infallible and they give us reason to pause and ask whether or not Peter and his fellow Apostles always passed down accurate, complete, and unbiased teachings. 

Moreover, it bears pointing out that at least two prominent Gnostic teachers could boast having studied in a line originating with an Apostle; Valentinus in Paul’s line through his teacher Theudas, and Basilides in Peter’s line through his teacher Glaucias. With all of these circumstances in mind, it is perhaps not as implausible as the orthodoxy would have us believe to think that at least some Gnostic texts might contain some genuine teachings of the historic Jesus Christ. Indeed, the question of whether or not Gnostic texts contain any genuine teachings of Jesus could be said to come down to whether or not we have any reason to think that Jesus transmitted Gnostic teachings and, as it would turn out, there is good reason to think that Jesus might have passed down such teachings. 

By far, the strongest evidence that Jesus might have taught Gnostic doctrines lies in the Mandaean faith. I have already provided a more detailed overview of Mandaean beliefs and practices and attempted a cursory harmonization with Jewish and Christian beliefs in my Sermon on Baptism. For now it will suffice to acknowledge that Mandaeism is a Gnostic faith, indeed, perhaps the only Gnostic faith to have survived from antiquity. According to the Mandaeans, their faith predates both Christianity and Judaism and there is good reason to believe the former claim, at the very least. Mandaeans practice frequent baptisms; it is their central religious rite, and they regard John the Baptist, the Baptizer of Jesus Christ himself, as one of their chief prophets. Thus, if the Mandaeans claims of ties to John the Baptist are legitimate and they received their Gnostic doctrines from him and Jesus saw fit to be baptized by John, it would seem that Jesus at the very least didn’t disapprove of Gnostic doctrines, and it certainly isn’t unreasonable to think that John might have passed some of those Gnostic doctrines down to Jesus. And, indeed, there are many parallels between Mandaean teachings and Gnostic Christian thought, including reverence for the Heavenly iterations of early patriarchs, acknowledgement of a female aspect of divinity, and, of course, emphasis on baptism. If John the Baptist really was a Mandaean Gnostic, then, in all likelihood, Jesus did teach Gnostic doctrines and Gnostic Christian texts have to be taken seriously as likely containing genuine accounts of Jesus’ teachings. (The Mandaean connection to John the Baptist and imagery of Heavenly waters calls more music to mind than it would be reasonable to share. Let’s limit ourselves to a couple about water, by Willie Nelson and Johnny Paycheck, and another by Paycheck about the Baptist, plus one by Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt.)

At this point, however, our orthodox interlocutor might cast doubt on the claims of the Mandaeans, most likely pointing to the relatively late date of their scriptures, which are much later than even many Christian Gnostic writings. It is true that Mandaean scriptures were not compiled until around the seventh century. But this is not so alarming. At least some sections of these texts might be considerably older, with suggestions that some might have their origin in the Second Temple Period, leading credence to the possibility of a John the Baptist connection. But also, Mandaean culture places a strong emphasis on oral teachings and it is quite possible that much of the information in their written scripture had been preserved orally for some time before being written down. Indeed, it may even be that they were only spurred to commit their teachings to writing in response to the rise of Islam in hopes of being spared persecution by being identified as “people of the book.” If the orthodoxy wishes to cast doubt on oral tradition and disregard texts because they are far removed from the events they describe, much of the Torah must immediately come under suspicion as well, as the oldest fragments we have of the Torah are something like six centuries removed from the events of Exodus, not to mention the doubt that modern academic scholarship has cast on its traditional authorship and the likelihood that it was originally passed down through one or more oral traditions. If we wish to doubt the legitimacy of Mandaean scripture and their tradition of a connection to John the Baptist, we must also call into question the Torah and the Israelite’s purported connection to Moses. And, indeed, the New Testament itself provides some evidence to suggest that the Mandaean’s connection to John the Baptist might be legitimate. We read in the Book of Acts 19:1-7,

While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” 

They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” 

So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive? 

“John’s baptism,” they replied. 

Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. There were about twelve men in all.

In other words, we see here that, even after the crucifixion and resurrection, there were followers of John who did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah and who existed distinctly and separately from Christians. It is quite possible that there were more such followers of John the Baptist than Paul encountered here and, while these men were convinced to accept Christ, if there were others, it is possible that at least some of them could not be convinced to accept Christ. If there were any such followers of John the Baptist, it would stand to reason that these were the ancestors of the modern Mandaeans. 

So, given that the New Testament seems to corroborate the existence of Mandaeans as a group distinct from Christians who exclusively followed John the Baptist rather than Jesus Christ, it would seem that the grounds for our trusting Mandaean accounts of their connection to John the Baptist have gotten stronger. And given the reverence the Mandaeans had for John, it would stand to reason that they also endeavored to reliably preserve his teachings from generation to generation, even through oral transmission processes. Seeing as the Mandaean religion prioritizes gnosis and includes many teachings that would typically be considered Gnostic, it stands to reason that John’s teachings also included such Gnostic features. And if John’s teachings were Gnostic, then it follows that Jesus was exposed to Gnostic teachings and showed his approval of them by asking to be baptized by John. And if Jesus received Gnostic doctrines from John, it should come as no surprise that he should have passed some of these teachings on to his followers. Thus, in this light, the probability that Christian Gnostic texts contain the genuine teachings of Jesus becomes incredibly higher. 

While we are on the subject of Mandaeism, it would seem a good time to address one of the common charges leveled against Gnosticism, namely that Gnosticism promotes a dualist world view, positing a radical dichotomy between good and evil, light and dark, matter and spirit. To be sure, Gnostic systems, including Mandaeism, often describe such dichotomies. For instance, Mandaeism posits the human realm, Tibil, as situated between the Heavenly World of Light and the chthonic World of Darkness. But it’s not clear what is so heretical about this cosmology. Does orthodox theology not also recognize, in addition to this Earthly Realm, a Heavenly Realm and a Hellish Realm (perhaps “tripartism” would be a more appropriate term than “dualism”)? More than that, a closer look at Mandaean theology reveals that these divisions conceal another, more fundamental truth, that ultimately resolves in a sort of monism, in which Creation is the product of God’s essence perpetually overflowing, actualizing the various created things from the height of the World of Light to the depths of Darkness, and, ultimately, eternally flowing back to its source. As one Mandaean quoted by Lady E.S. Drower explained, “Why should there be enmity between us and the powers of darkness, or between the powers of the darkness and those of the light? There is only love! Love holds all things together so that they form a whole.” Thus the charge of dualism does not prove to be a particularly damning case against Gnosticism and ultimately falls flat when Gnostic myths are considered at a deeper level. 

Now that we have given good reasons to raise the probability that at least some Gnostic texts contain genuine teachings of Jesus, we must now consider, perhaps, the most important reason we have to take these texts seriously, namely, the Holy Spirit. In the first place, the Holy Spirit gives us reason to think that, even if we are not able to establish a concrete, historically plausible line of transmission from Jesus to those who wrote these texts, Gnostic texts might still contain legitimate teachings, as the Holy Spirit presents us with the possibility that at least some of these texts were written while in the spirit, in the same manner that John wrote Revelation. But why should we think that the Holy Spirit inspired any Gnostic texts at all? Because the Holy Spirit has seen fit to preserve them until the present day rather than allow them to be completely blotted out of the historical record. If we can admit that the Holy Spirit helped to guide orthodoxy toward a doctrine that would best facilitate the Church’s spread while preserving a small seed of the true doctrine of Christ in its core, then why should we not think it possible that the Holy Spirit also guided the keepers of Gnostic texts to give them the good sense to hide these great treasures away so that they might be spared from destruction and that the Spirit watched over these hiding places in order to ensure these texts would be largely preserved so that they might be rediscovered at a later time when Christendom was more perfectly prepared to receive and understand the teachings within. Given these considerations, it would seem, then, that if the Holy Spirit has seen fit for these texts to be rediscovered in modern times, that it is now time for us to seriously consider the teachings contained in them. 

Before moving on to address some of the more common objections to Gnosticism, let us make one final point about scripture that may prove to be the most controversial point yet. Let us ask again, what is scripture? It is the Word of God. And what is the Word of God? We read in Genesis 1, 

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day. 

And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning – the second day. 

And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. 

The God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the third day. 

And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights – the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning –  the fourth day. 

And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth. And there was evening, and there was morning – the fifth day. 

And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 

So God created mankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created them; 

male and female he created them. 

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” 

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. 

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day. 

We see here, repeatedly, that Creation is facilitated by God’s Word. God speaks His Words and they instantly become reality. Similarly, in John 1:1-5, 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 

God speaks Creation into existence, thus it can be said that all of Creation is God’s Word. And can we not gain some insight into God’s nature just by observing the wonders and marvels of the natural world? In this sense, we may understand all of Creation itself to be a work of scripture from which we can read, and learn, and be brought closer to God. Might we not also regard the work of physicists who endeavor to unveil the inner workings of the world to be a sort of scripture as well? But indeed, these considerations open the door to an even broader sense of scripture. If all of Creation is the Word of God, then all men are the Word of God, each bearing his own special relation and connection to Him, not to mention the remarkable distinction of having been made in God’s Image. Surely each and every man provides us with a window through which we might come to better understand God. Should we not, then, consider each and every man, along with any writings that these men might produce, as scripture to be understood so that we might gain a more perfect understanding of God and our situation? But what about atheists and their writing? Surely nothing which denies the existence of God could be fit to be regarded as scripture, right? But do not even those who deny the existence of God give us an important window into the nature of the world and humanity as well? For by studying the words of one who denies our Creator, we might begin to understand how one might come to be in such a dismal position and we might also find clues of how to restore such people to the faith, as well as what could have been done to prevent such a loss of faith from happening in the first place. Thus, for the Gnostic, the whole world, with all the written works contained therein,  may legitimately be considered extensions of scripture. Therefore, in contrast to the Protestant sola scriptura or even the less stringent prima scriptura, we propose the principle of omnis scriptura, i.e. all is scripture. 

Of course, with such a principle, we almost immediately run into a substantial problem that threatens to take us right back to where we started. There are very many books in the world. According to a quick google search, the number is estimated at around 120 million. In all likelihood, not only would it prove extremely challenging for any one person to read and absorb so many books, but such an endeavor is likely entirely impossible. So, even if all the world and all the writings in it may be regarded as scripture, we will nonetheless have to discriminate between these books to determine which are most worthy of our attention, so that we might narrow them down to a more manageable number. In the first place, we ought to try to identify a group of texts that ought to receive priority and which ought to be studied by all in order to provide a common intellectual foundation. Though we confess that all the world and all the texts in it are the Word of God, we cannot help but recognize a curious phenomenon according to which various people and different times have felt compelled to set aside a special number of texts as indisputable Word of God. We would be foolish to completely dismiss such traditions as meaningless superstition, but we should, until given good reason to think otherwise, approach such texts with respect and reverence on the grounds that those who traditionally revered these texts did so with very good reasons. Thus, we can affirm, along with the orthodoxy, that the entire Bible, Old and New Testament are worthy of our foremost attention. However, the orthodox Christian should not celebrate this victory too quickly, for it should be remembered that there are more texts that have traditionally been regarded as the word of God than those found in the Christian Bible. On the contrary, we must also include works such as the Quran of Islam, the Avestas of Zoroastrianism, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and even the Vedas of Hinduism. (Peter Rowan and Sturgill Simpson give us a glimpse of what gospel music under such an expanded canon might sound like.)

There, no doubt, are many Christians who will instinctually recoil at the thought that we ought to read the holy books of other faiths, especially those outside of the Abrahamic fold and, even more especially, those with polytheistic tendencies. Such worries are understandable, but they must not become a hindrance to a deeper and more complete understanding of the Divine. Though different religions might approach and represent the Divine in different ways, it is still within the realm of possibility that at least some of these may share an ultimate source in one and the same God. Indeed, given the incongruities between humans’ limited perceptual and comprehension capabilities, and God’s infinite and unfathomable nature, it should come as no surprise to us at all that peoples’ perceptions of God should be incomplete and that different people might perceive different aspects of God’s nature from one another and, consequently, that different people should develop different modes of representing God in which God is cloaked behind different forms and, because people’s abilities to perceive and comprehend God’s nature vary, it should likewise come as no surprise if some of the forms through which God is represented serve this purpose more or less completely and accurately than others. Some might be sceptical and ask, if different people and traditions cloak God behind different forms, how could we possibly be certain that it is one and the same God hidden behind those forms? This is, no doubt, a fair, even reasonable, concern. Are we not just finding an easy way to explain away the differences between religions and to create an illusion of unity where there really is none? However, such fears can be very easily dispatched by the observation that a good many religious traditions nonetheless attribute properties to the Divine, for instance omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, necessary existence, etc., which can, logically speaking, only belong to one and the same God as is worshipped in the Abrahamic faiths, for only a being than which none greater can be conceived can be in possession of these properties, and only one such being could ever possibly exist. Thus, while different people and traditions might have their differences in the manner in which they perceive and represent this absolute being, it would seem that they, nonetheless, are converging upon the very same being. Even truly polytheistic and atheistic systems of thought might share in being inspired by this same source. For instance, some polytheistic systems might be the result of a sort of confusion that splits God’s attributes into distinct and separate entities. Some other polytheistic systems may well worship other beings in addition to, or even to the exclusion of, the One True God. Meanwhile atheistic systems of thought have a confused aspect that tends to apply God’s aspects to nature and the universe. An exhaustive account of religious experience will require that we take all of these instances into account and try to determine the mechanisms by which confusions enter the picture and God is cast into the background. By striving to understand the Divine, the manner in which It is revealed to man, and the manner in which man might misapprehend these revelations and find himself confused, we might learn to fortify our faith and guard ourselves and others from falling into similar falsehoods. Thus, even the basest of works potentially have immense lessons to teach us about the nature of the Divine and human perception thereof and, for that reason, should be included in our canon as well. 

Still, though we may admit that some or all of these texts might contain divine inspiration in some or all of their parts, as Christians who believe that Jesus Christ was God Himself incarnated in human form, we ought to give particularly special attention to those works that offer us a window into his purpose and nature and, especially, those that document his life and teachings. Now, as there are disputes over which of these works are genuine, we shall be guided in large part by popular consensus. Thus, because, of those texts that purport to document Christ’s actual life, the four canonical gospels enjoy near universal acceptance from Christians across time, place, and denomination, these four books will receive the highest priority of all other texts, and shall serve as the core of our canon. After these, we shall include all of those other ancient texts that purport to document the life and teachings of Jesus Christ along with the books of the Old Testament as well as the Mandaeans, so that we might understand Christ’s life in context. 

However inspired or spiritually edifying those texts traditionally regarded as scripture might be, they will not be sufficient in themselves for all of our purposes, for traditional scripture does not address all subjects with sufficient rigour or elaboration for all of our purposes. For this reason, we will have to identify additional texts to expand our canon and place our understanding on a stronger foundation. Now, of those subjects that are not sufficiently elaborated in traditional scriptures, some are essential to all people, providing for a general understanding of our world and our place in it, while others are more specialized, providing essential instruction in particular interests that, practically speaking, can only seriously occupy a specific group of people that, nonetheless, might be indispensable. Of these, those works that address general questions of the nature of the world and our place in it shall necessarily be granted greater priority than those works that only deal with particular questions, as these will provide both the intellectual foundation on which the more particular works will be founded as well as the cultural foundation on which a robust and cohesive society is to be built. There is much discussion to be had about what works we should include amongst these essential works, but surely those great classics of world philosophy that have stood the tests of time and place to come down to us, from the Analects of Confucius, to the Upanishads of India, the great sages of ancient Greece, to the Scholastics of the Middle Ages, and, of course, to those great thinkers of the Enlightenment, such as Spinoza, Leibniz, and Berkeley, and all the way down to the most impressive thinkers of the modern day. Of course, there will always be some works more worthy of attention than others and for reasons that I hope will become apparent as we go forward, I would like to suggest the works of Plato, Immanuel Kant, and Arthur Schopenhauer be counted amongst those works of philosophy to which we ought to pay the most attention. We must always keep our eyes out for writers across times, places, and backgrounds whom we can draw on for inspiration and elucidation. 

With this endorsement of Plato and his works as scriptures of the utmost importance, it is perhaps a good time to address yet another orthodox objection to Gnosticism, namely that it is heavily influenced by Platonism. Admittedly, I find objections of this sort somewhat perplexing. What is so bad about apparent Platonic influences? Why must such influences be taken as evidence that Gnostic teachings are not genuine? Some will say that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, not a Greek philosopher, thus teachings with such an affinity to Plato as are found in Gnostic texts could not have come from Jesus. But, in the first place, is it really so far outside of the realm of possibility that Jesus might have had at least some basic familiarity with Platonic thought? Jesus lived in the heart of the Hellenistic world and even spent some of his formative years in Egypt where Hellenistic influences on the Jewish community were particularly strong, as attested by the life and works of the philosopher Philo of Alexandria who drew heavily on Plato to demonstrate the affinities between Jewish scriptures and Greek thought. Moreover, the canonical gospels can hardly be said to present a complete and exhaustive account of the events of Jesus’ life. There is a substantial gap between his sojourn in Egypt and the beginning of his public ministry that the gospels tell us next to nothing about. Is it really so absurd to think that Jesus, a man with a clear interest in such lofty matters as Plato wrote about, might have had a conversation or two with a teacher of Platonic philosophy at some point in his life, perhaps in the same manner as his youthful discussions with the Temple priests? It would almost be more absurd to assume that such a man as Jesus would have had no knowledge of Plato whatsoever. And even if, for whatever reason, Jesus, in fact, never heard the name of Plato or any of his teachings, then shouldn’t the affinity between Platonism and Gnosticism help to prove the claims of Christ, for how could two men, separated by both time and space, express ideas so like one another unless both were converging upon one and the same truth? But, indeed, many orthodox Church Fathers freely acknowledged the debt they owed to Plato and his philosophy and often pointed out the affinity Plato’s teachings share with those of Christ. For instance, St. Augustine tells us in the fifth chapter of the eighth book of his City of God, “If, then, Plato defined the wise man as one who imitates, knows, loves this God, and who is rendered blessed through fellowship with Him in His own blessedness, why discuss with the other philosophers? It is evident that none come nearer to us than the Platonists. Perhaps even more remarkable is St. Clement of Alexandria’s remark in the twenty-second chapter of the first book of his Stromata, through a quotation of the Pythagorean philosopher Numenius, “For what is Plato, but Moses speaking in Attic Greek?” Similarly, St. Justin Martyr writes in chapters fifty-nine and sixty of his First Apology, 

And that you may learn that it was from our teachers – we mean the account given through the prophets – that Plato borrowed his statement that God, having altered matter which was shapeless, made the world, hear the very words spoken through Moses, who, as above shown, was the first prophet, and of greater antiquity than the Greek writers; and through whom the Spirit of prophecy, signifying how and from what materials God at first formed the world, spoke thus: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was invisible and unfurnished, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved over the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and it was so.” So that both Plato and they who agree with him, and we ourselves, have learned, and you also can be convinced, that by the word of God the whole world was made out of the substance spoken of before by Moses. And that which the poets call Erebus, we know was spoken of formerly by Moses. Deuteronomy 32:22

And the physiological discussion concerning the Son of God in the Timaeus of Plato, where he says, “He placed him crosswise in the universe,” he borrowed in like manner from Moses; for in the writings of Moses it is related how at that time, when the Israelites went out of Egypt and were in the wilderness, they fell in with poisonous beasts, both vipers and asps, and every kind of serpent, which slew the people; and that Moses, by the inspiration and influence of God, took brass, and made it into the figure of a cross, and let it in the holy tabernacle, and said to the people, “If you look to this figure, and believe, you shall be saved thereby.” Numbers 21:8 And when this was done, it is recorded that the serpents died, and it is handed down that the people thus escaped death. Which things Plato reading, and not accurately understanding, and not apprehending that it was the figure of the cross, but taking it to be a placing crosswise, he said that the power next to the first God was placed crosswise in the universe. And as to his speaking of a third, he did this because he read, as we said above, that which was spoken by Moses, “That the Spirit of God moved over the waters.” For he gives the second place to the Logos which is with God, who he said was placed crosswise in the universe; and the third place to the Spirit who was said to be borne upon the water, saying, “And the third around the third.” And hear how the Spirit of prophecy signified through Moses that there should be a conflagration. He spoke thus, “Everlasting fire shall descend, and shall devour to the pit beneath.” Deuteronomy 32:22. It is not, then, that we hold the same opinions as others, but that all speak in imitation of ours. Among us these things can be heard and learned from persons who do not even know the forms of the letters, who are uneducated and barbarous in speech, though wise and believing in mind; some, indeed, even maimed and deprived of eyesight; so that you may understand that these things are not the effect of human wisdom, but are uttered by the power of God. 

And, given that Christ tasked his followers with spreading his teachings beyond the land of Israel, to the nations of the world, would he have not had reason to train these followers in Greek philosophy? Surely Jesus would have been aware of the influence philosophy had in Greco-Roman society and that if his teachings were to make any headway with the educated elite of that world whom he hoped to convert, that his ideas would have to be able to hold their own in the philosophical arena. It, therefore, would have been essential for Jesus to prepare his disciples for this mission by making them familiar with Greek philosophy and teaching them to present ideas in a way that appealed to philosophical sensibilities. Christ would have been negligent had he not prepared his disciples in this way, thus it is in no way absurd to think that Jesus might have exposed his students to the thought of Plato and that he even might have taught them to present his ideas in a way that mirrored Platonic philosophy. 

So, then, if Plato’s philosophy was so in accord with Biblical thought that a Church Father would go so far as to suppose that he must have in some way been influenced by Moses (while there is no clear evidence that Plato had any familiarity with Moses, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the similarities in Biblical and Platonic thought can be attributed to influences from a common source, namely, Egypt, as this very place where the Israelites were held in subjugation for generations was also a destination for study to many Greek philosophers from Pythagoras to Solon, and perhaps even Plato himself), if Jesus had the opportunity and motivation to be exposed to Platonic philosophy, and if it would have been prudent for him to ensure his students would be well versed in Greek philosophy, it would seem that similarities between a purported teaching of Jesus and the thought of Plato are not so damning as orthodox thinkers would have us believe. Of course, those who make these sorts of objections often speak of Neoplatonism, rather than Platonism proper, so perhaps the major problems come from the corruption of Plato’s teachings by later Neoplatonic thinkers rather than Plato himself and it is Neoplatonic influences that we should be on the look out for to determine that a purported teaching is false, not merely Platonic teachings. This suggestion, however, immediately encounters two major difficulties. First, the emergence of Neoplatonism is traditionally traced to the philosopher Plotinus. But Plotinus was not born until the early third century, after at least some of the important Gnostic texts, including the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, Apocryphon of John, and Gospel of Truth, were written. Thus, these texts could not have possibly been influenced by Neoplatonism, and if there was any influence at all, it must have gone in the opposite direction.  (Chronologically speaking, it would make the most sense for Gnosticism to have been influenced by Middle Platonism, but given the example of Philo of Alexandria, it is clear that there is no necessary opposition between Middle Platonism and traditional Hebrew thought.) The second problem comes from Plotinus himself who was highly critical of Gnosticism; so much so that he wrote an entire essay that has come down to us under the title Against the Gnostics. Interestingly, Plotinus’ criticisms of the Gnostics echo orthodox Christian criticisms in the opposite direction, with Plotinus accusing the Gnostics of adding doctrines to their teachings that Plato never taught, saying in the sixth section, 

Generally speaking, some of these peoples’ doctrines have been taken from Plato, but others, all the new ideas they have brought in to establish philosophy of their own, are things they have found outside the truth. For the judgements too, and the rivers in Hades and the reincarnations come from Plato. And the making a plurality in the intelligible world, Being and Intellect, and Soul, is taken from the words in the Timaeus: For Plato says, “The maker of this universe thought it should contain all the forms that intelligence discerns contained in the Living Being that truly is.” But they did not understand, and took it to mean that there is one mind which contains in it in repose all realities, and another mind different from it which contemplates them, and another which plans – but often they have soul as the maker instead of the planning mind – and they think that this is the maker according to Pato, being a long way from knowing who the maker is. And in general they falsify Plato’s account of the manner of the making, and a great deal else, and degrade the great man’s teachings as if they had understood the intelligible nature, but he and the other blessed philosophers had not. And by giving names to a multitude of intelligible realities they think they will appear to have discovered the exact truth, though by this very multiplicity they bring the intelligible nature into the likeness of the sense-world, the inferior world, when one ought there in the intelligible to aim at the smallest possible number, and attribute everything to the reality which comes after the First and so be quit of multiplicity, since it is all the other excellences that come after the first nature. The form of soul should come third; and they should trace the differences of souls in affections or in nature, without in any way disparaging those godlike men, but receiving their teaching with a good grace since it is the teaching of more ancient authorities and they themselves have received what is good in what they say from them, the immortality of the soul, the intelligible universe, the first god, the separation from the body, the escape from becoming to being. For these doctrines are there in Plato, and when they state them clearly in this way they do well. If they wish to disagree on these points, there is no unfair hostility in saying to them that they should not recommend their own opinions to their audience by ridiculing and insulting the Greeks but that they should show the correctness on their own merits of all the points of doctrine which are peculiar to them and differ from the views of the Greeks, stating their real opinions courteously, as befits philosophers, and fairly on the points where they are opposed, looking to the truth and not hunting fame by censuring men who have been judged good from ancient times by men of worth and saying that they themselves are better than the Greeks. For what was said by the ancients about the intelligible world is far better, and is put in a way appropriate to educated men, and it will be easily recognised by those who are not utterly deceived by the delusion that is rushing upon men that these teachings have been taken by the Gnostics later from the ancients, but have acquired some in no way appropriate additions; on the points, at any rate, on which they wish to oppose the ancient teachings they introduce all sorts of comings into being and passings away, and disapprove of this universe, and blame the soul for its association with the body, and censure the director of this universe, and identify its maker with the soul, and attribute to this universal soul the same affections as those which the souls in parts of the universe have. 

Perhaps some of these supposed discrepancies between Plato and the Gnostics can be traced to the influence of a teacher other than Plato, for instance, Jesus, expanding upon or correcting parts of Plato’s doctrine. Of course, on the other hand, it could be the case that Plotinus was the one misinterpreting Plato after all and the Gnostics the ones more perfectly preserving his doctrine. At any rate, it appears from Plotinus’ comments that one of the most pressing issues leading to Plotinus’ animosity toward the Gnostics is his perception that Gnostics tended to argue from a place of arrogance, not only confident that they understood the world better than their contemporaries, but even going so far as to disparage the ancients’ understanding of matters. Let us take this as an opportunity to speak out against those who let their confidence get the better of them in such discussions and thereby descend into unhelpful arrogance. It is of the utmost importance that we remember that we are all in a similar situation when it comes to understanding these matters, aimlessly grasping about, trying to find some place to take hold of so that we might pull ourselves up to get a better view of that at which we aim. Those of us that have succeeded in getting some glimpse, however brief and incomplete, of that higher place, must understand just how fortunate and blessed we are to have been granted that glimpse. We must not think ourselves better than those who have not been treated to such a view, but, instead, we must take pity on them and regard it as our duty demonstrate our love for our fellow man to do all in our power to lead them to the truth so that they might share in the glorious vision. Moreover, we must always remain cognizant of the fact that we might have, somehow or another, misunderstood what we have seen or received it in a confused manner. We must, therefore, remain ever open minded to the possibility that we still have much to learn from others who have also been treated to such visions and approach all such discussions with the humility and reverence that is fitting to the sublimity of the subject. 

Additionally, perhaps Plotinus’ chief criticisms against Gnosticism is the charge that they have far too much disdain for the material world. He writes in the fourth section, 

We cannot grant, either, that this universe had an evil origin because there are many unpleasant things in it: this is a judgement of people who rate it too highly, if they claim that it ought to be the same as the intelligible world and not only an image of it. Surely, what other fairer image of the intelligible world could there be? For what other fire could be a better image of the intelligible fire than the fire here? Or what other earth could be better than this, after the intelligible earth? And what sphere could be more exact or more dignified or better ordered in its circuit [than the sphere of this universe] after the self-enclosed circle there of the intelligible universe? And what other sun could there be which ranked after the intelligible sun and before the visible sun here?

In light of these comments, the orthodox condemnation of Gnosticism for its supposed inclusion of Neoplatonic elements appears rather ironic, as Plotinus’ criticisms of the Gnostics here for despising the material world closely mirror typical criticisms offered by orthodox opponents of Gnosticism. Given these criticisms, now is perhaps as good a time as any to put the diversity, versatility, and open-mindedness of Gnosticism on full display by admitting that Plotinus and orthodox Christians are perfectly right to criticize those Gnostics who regard the material world as wholly evil and devoid of good. It is true that in comparison with the perfection of the intelligible world, this world is, indeed, base, fallen, and wicked, and at times it may even be necessary to emphasize these points so that we are not lulled asleep by material comforts and made to lose sight of that more perfect world to which we hope to go, but such considerations must not cause us to lose sight of the fact that all of Creation, no matter how lowly a station we might currently occupy, is the work of All-Perfect God who makes no mistakes. The material world, however base it might be in comparison to the intelligible world, is, nonetheless, an integral component of God’s Creation that must contribute to the perfection of Creation in some way, even if, from our lowly perspective, we are blind to those contributions. Thus, we must not despise matter or despair our place in the world, but seek to more completely understand these things so that we may better play our intended role and glorify God’s Creation. Only by doing so can we have any hope of being rewarded with a higher and more perfect station. 

We will have reason to more fully examine Plotinus’ arguments against the Gnostics at a later date, but before moving on from the subject of Platonic influences on Gnosticism, let us admit at least one point on which we cannot deny agreement with Plato that brings us into direct opposition with the orthodoxy, namely, on the matter of the existence of a Demiurge. Plato first describes the Demiurge in his dialogue Timaeus, where he is described as a divine craftsman (the term demiurge quite literally means craftsman in Greek), bringing order to pre-existent matter and molding it into proper form to produce the world in which we live. A similar figure appears in several Gnostic texts under various names such as Yaldaboath, Saklas, and others, where he is sometimes depicted as malevolent, sometimes as ignorant, and other times, as both. This is in sharp contrast to the Platonic perspective according to which the Demiurge is typically seen as a wise and talented craftsman worthy of honor for his role in our creation. Orthodox Christianity, however, admits the existence of no such being as the Demiurge, taking his presence in Gnostic systems of thought as evidence that Gnosticism is false and could not possibly have come from Christ. They will argue that positing the existence of a being such as the Demiurge directly contradicts the creation account in Genesis because the Demiurge is neither mentioned in Genesis, nor is Almighty God in any need of a partner to aid him in creating the world. Now, it is true that the Demiurge is not obviously mentioned at any point in the Genesis creation narrative, but it does not necessarily follow from the fact that the Demiurge is not mentioned in Genesis that his existence contradicts the Genesis account. After all, the faithful have long believed in the existence of angels and there are several examples in scripture of angels revealing themselves to people, but Genesis tells us nowhere about when, why, or how God created the angels. Thus, unless we wish to dismiss a number of texts traditionally regarded as canonical scripture, then, rather than concluding that these texts contradict Genesis, we must suppose that the creation of angels was simply left out of the Genesis narrative, though it did indeed occur. This brings us to an important point about the Bible; we should not think that it is necessarily a complete and exhaustive account of every event it describes. In the case of the Genesis creation narrative specifically, the Bible does not give us every excruciating detail of every step by which God created the world. If it did, Genesis would no doubt sound less like a religious text and much more like a treatise on physics. But, as it is, there is no discussion of general relativity, quantum mechanics, gravity, fundamental particles, or anything of the like, so clearly, if the traditional narrative is to be believed and Genesis was indeed dictated to Moses by God Himself on Sinai, then God saw fit to leave some details out and to simplify some others. And thank God for this, for, surely, such explanations would have been next to meaningless to an Ancient Israelite looking for answers about his world and, perhaps, the book would have been discarded and lost to history forever. Just as a man who has been starving is at risk of developing refeeding syndrome and dying should he go immediately to feasting, so too might a man who has been deprived of truth be overwhelmed and react violently should he be dragged out and exposed to the full weight of the truth all at once. God reveals just what is appropriate to the time and place in which he reveals himself, taking account of the maturity and preparation of the people there. Perhaps the only real difference between the Genesis and Gnostic accounts of creation is the difference that exists between telling a three year old who asks where babies come from, “when a mommy and daddy love each other very much, a stork brings them a baby,” and telling a thirteen year old about the actual mechanisms of sexual reproduction. 

“Ok, very well,” our opponents might say, “it might be that Genesis does not exhaustively document every single step in the process of creation, but the Demiurge still cannot exist as that would directly contradict the claim in Genesis that it was God, not the Demiurge who created the world.” This is a fair point. Genesis does say quite clearly that God created the Heavens and the Earth, but again we may point out that the Bible has no need to list each and every minute detail, and furthermore, the text never decisively denies the possibility that other beings had some role to play in helping God to create the world. Is it not at least possible that when God says things like “Let there be light,” he is giving an order to some other being such as the Demiurge to create the light? Such a picture would in no way take away from the fact that God is the architect and commander-in-chief of the creative process, especially if we posit that God is the creator of whatever beings he might order. Moreover, it must be emphasized that admitting something other than God has created something in no way takes away from the glory of God. Admitting that Leonardo da Vinci created the Mona Lisa in no way subtracts from God’s perfect and necessary nature or his role in setting Creation in motion. But we might have grounds for an even more direct response to this objection as there may well be hints at the Demiurge’s role in creation sitting right under our noses. We have already seen how the account in Genesis 1 ends on the sixth day of creation with God looking over His creation and affirming it is good. The opening passage of Genesis 2 seemingly picks up precisely where 1 left off, saying, 

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing, so on the seventh day he resed from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. 

But immediately after these first three verses, the chapter takes a sharp and unexpected turn. We read, 

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. 

Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. 

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. 

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the trees of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” 

Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. 

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 

The man said, 

“This is now bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh

she shall be called ‘woman,’ 

for she was taken out of man.”

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. 

Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. 

What exactly are we to make of this seeming repetition of the previous chapter? Did God simply forget he had already dictated the story of Creation to Moses and tell him the story again? Or maybe God simply wanted to reiterate the story for emphasis? These are certainly possibilities, but they are not the only ones. There is also the possibility that there is no real repetition at all because these two accounts describe separate events. In particular, we might suppose that Genesis 1 describes a heavenly or spiritual creation, whereas Genesis 2 describes an earthly, material creation. This is by no means a novel suggestion and such an interpretation has roots tracing back at least as far as Philo of Alexandria. For instance, in his Allegorical Interpretations I, XII, in discussing the difference between the accounts of the creation of man in Genesis 1 and 2 he says,

“And God created man, taking a lump of clay from the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life: and man became a living soul.” The races of men are twofold; for one is the heavenly man, and the other the earthly man. Now the heavenly man, as being born in the image of God, has no participation in any corruptible or earthlike essence. But the earthly man is made of loose material, which he calls a lump of clay. On which account he says, not that the heavenly man was made, but that he was fashioned according to the image of God; but the earthly man he calls a thing made, and not begotten by the maker. And we must consider that the man who was formed of earth, means the mind which is to be infused into the body, but which has not yet been so infused and this mind would be really earthly and corruptible, if it were not that God had breathed into it the spirit of genuine life; for then it “exists,” and is no longer made into a soul; and its soul is not inactive, and incapable of proper formation, but a really intellectual and living one. “For man,” says Moses, “became a living soul.” 

Several Gnostic texts tell a similar story. However, whereas Philo believes that one and the same God, the Most High, is responsible for both the heavenly and earthly creations, the Gnostics suggest that two distinct beings are responsible for the two creations. And the Gnostics, to be sure, give compelling reasons to support such interpretation, pointing out that the God who casts Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3 does not behave like an all perfect and knowing God. We read in The Testimony of Truth, 

It is written in the law about this: God commanded Adam, “From every tree you may eat, [but] from the tree that is in the middle of paradise do not eat, for on the day that you eat from it, you will certainly die.” But the snake was wiser than all the other animals in paradise, and he persuaded Eve by saying, “On the day that you eat from the tree that is in the middle of paradise, the eyes of your mind will be opened.” Eve obeyed; she stretched out her hand, took from the tree, and ate. She also gave some fruit to her husband who was with her. Immediately they realized that they were naked. They took some fig leaves and put them on as aprons. 

But at [evening] time [God] came along, walking in the middle [of]paradise. When Adam saw him, he went into hiding. And God said, “Adam, where are you?” He answered, “I have come under the fig tree.” At that very moment God [realized] that he had eaten from the tree about which he had commanded him, “Don’t eat from it.”

And God said, “Who is it who instructed you?” Adam answered, “The woman you gave me.” And the woman said, “It is the snake who instructed me.” He cursed the snake and called him “devil.” And God said, “Look, Adam has become like one of us now that he knows evil and good.” Then he said, “Let’s throw him out of paradise so he doesn’t take from the tree of life, eat and live forever.” 

What kind of a god is this? First, he begrudged Adam’s eating from the tree of knowledge. Second, he said, “Adam, where are you?” God does not have foreknowledge; otherwise, wouldn’t he have known from the beginning? He has certainly shown himself to be a malicious grudger. And what kind of a god is this? 

Great is the blindness of those who read such things, and they don’t know him. He said, “I am the jealous God; I will bring the sins of the fathers upon the children up to three and four generations.” He also said, “I will make their heart thick, and I will cause their minds to become blind, that they might not understand or comprehend the things that are said.” But these are things he says to those who believe in him and worship him!

In another place Moses writes, “He made the devil into a snake <for> [those] whom he possesses as his offspring.” Also, in the book called Exodus, it is written thus: “He contended against the [magicians]. When the place was full of [snakes] as a result of their wickedness, [the rod] in Moses’s hand became a snake and swallowed the magicians’ snakes.” 

Again it is written, “He made a snake of bronze and hung it on a pole… which… and… for the one [who will gaze] upon [this] bronze snake [will be saved]. For this is Christ; [those who have] believed in him have [received life]. Those who did not believe [will die]. 

The arguments here are, no doubt, powerful. Philo attempts to provide possible explanations in his Allegorical Interpretations III by claiming that wicked men, by their nature, flee from and hide themselves from God. This may well be the case, but surely no one can escape the sight of an omniscient, omnipresent God, yet it is God, not Adam who asks “Where are you?” At XVII, Philo attempts to explain this away by proposing several different senses in which the question might be understood, whereby God isn’t ignorant of Adam’s actions or whereabouts and instead asks the questions to compel a specific answer from Adam or to draw his attention to some truth. Philo’s suggestions are, no doubt, plausible, but they still do not adequately address The Testimony of Truth’s concerns about God’s begrudging Adam for eating of the Tree of Knowledge and preventing him from eating from the Tree of Life. 

Now, in addition to positing that a different creator was responsible for the Earthly creation than was responsible for the Heavenly creation, in some places Gnostic texts seem to add a third creation, corresponding to the expulsion from Eden. On this picture, it would be this third and last creation that would be the true Earthly creation, whereas the creation described in Genesis 2 would more properly be understood as a psychic creation. This picture is perhaps most clearly presented in the Apocryphon of John,  where we read, 

From the Foreknowledge of the perfect Mind, through the expressed will of the Invisible Spirit and the will of the Self-Generated, came the perfect human, the first revelation, the truth. The Virgin Spirit named the human Pigeradamas [“Adam the Stranger,” “Holy Adam,” or, “Old Adam”] and appointed him to the first eternal realm with the great Self-Generated, the anointed, by the first luminary, Harmozel. Its powers dwell within it. The invisible one gave him an invincible power of mind. 

And then later, 

Yaldabaoth said to the authorities with him, “Come, let’s create a human being after the image of God and with a likeness to ourselves, so that this human image may give us light.”

They created through their respective powers, according to the features that were given. Each of the authorities contributed a psychical feature corresponding to the figure of the image they had seen. They created a being like the perfect first human, and said, “Let’s call it Adam, that its name may give us power of light.” 

After a lengthy description of the roles that the various angels and demons play in giving rise to this new Adam we read, 

The human being Adam was revealed through the bright shadow within. And Adam’s ability to think was greater than that of all the creators. When they looked up they say that Adam’s ability to think was greater, and they devised a plan with the whole throng of archons and angels. They took fire, earth, and water, and combined them with the four fiery winds. They wrought them together and made a great commotion. 

The rulers brought Adam into the shadow of death so that they might produce a figure again, from earth, water, fire, and the spirit that comes from matter – that is, from the ignorance of darkness, and desire, and their own phony spirit. This figure is the cave for remodeling the body that these criminals put on the human, the fetter of forgetfulness. Adam became a mortal person, the first to descend and the first to become estranged.

Enlightened Insight within Adam, however, was rejuvenating Adam’s mind.

The archons took Adam and put Adam in paradise. They said, “Eat,” meaning, Do so in a leisurely manner. But in fact their pleasure is bitter and their beauty is perverse. Their pleasure is a trap, their trees are a sacrilege, their fruit is deadly poison, and their promise is death. 

They put their tree of life in the middle of paradise. 

I shall teach you what the secret of their life is – they plan they devised together, the nature of their spirit. The root of their tree is bitter, its branches are death, its shadow is hatred, a trap is in its leaves, its blossom is bad ointment, its fruit is death, desire is its seed, and it blossoms in darkness. The dwelling place of those who taste of it is the underworld, and darkness is their resting place. 

But the archons lingered in front of what they called the Tree of knowledge of good and evil, which is enlightened Insight, so that Adam might not behold its fullness and recognize his shameful nakedness. 

But I was the one who induced them to eat. 

I said to the Savior, “Lord, was it not the serpent that instructed Adam to eat?” 

The Savior laughed and said, “The serpent instructed them to eat of the wickedness of sexual desire and destruction so that Adam might be of use to the serpent. 

So, according to the account here, the first, Heavenly, Adam (Pigradamas) was created by the Most High to reside in the Heavenly Realm, forever devoted to God. The demiurge, Yaldaboath, then, along with his angels and demons, worked to craft an image of this original Adam which he then imprisoned in Paradise. This was but a psychic creation in which man was held captive by the pleasures of the Garden. It was only when Christ, following the suggestions of The Testimony of Truth, in the guise of the Serpent, beckoned Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, that they were able to break free and descend into the real, flesh and bone, material world, through which they had to pass in order to have any hope of being saved and allowed to return to their Heavenly home. 

So, in light of these considerations, it seems at least plausible that the Genesis creation narrative could discretely point to two, if not three, separate creation events, with a different God presiding over the first from the second. But what motivation do we have for supposing that a Demiurge somehow exists and participated in the creation of the world, beyond what is said in these ancient Gnostic texts? Some might contend that the Demiurge is a means of solving the problem of evil, by absolving the True God of any blame for creating fallen and sinful creatures and blaming the Demiurge for such circumstances. But this does not actually solve the problem of evil, but only pushes it back further, for though we may not hold God responsible for directly creating the evils of the material world, we will nonetheless be forced to admit that God did create the Demiurge whom He endowed with the power to create evil in the material world, thus the responsibility for such evil can still ultimately be traced back to God and, even if the Demiurge did somehow solve this problem, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Demiurge must exist. The problem of evil is a difficult one that we will no doubt have to return to at some later time. Still, there are other much better and surprisingly simple reasons for us to think that the Demiurge does indeed exist. To understand these reasons we must turn our attention back to Plato, particularly his Theory of Forms. Plato holds that all things are what they are as a result of their participation in forms. The apple is red and sweet because it partakes in the forms of redness and sweetness. Indeed, it owes its very nature as an apple to its participation in the form of “appleness”. Without participation in these forms, the apple would be completely and utterly unintelligible. Thus, if all things are what they are as a result of participation in forms, then, so too, must the world participate in form in order to be what it is. This then, at least from a preliminary perspective, is what the Demiurge is; namely, the Form of the World itself. And here we come to the strongest reason for us to accept Gnostic interpretations of Christianity over orthodox interpretations. Gnosticism admits the existence of the Demiurge and, therefore, admits that the world has a form and is thereby intelligible, whereas orthodoxy denies the existence of the Demiurge, thereby denying the world is a form and that it is intelligible. But the world does have a form and it is intelligible, therefore to deny the existence of the Demiurge is absurd and we must side with the Gnostics over the orthodoxy. (More precisely, we might understand the Demiurge as the principle, rather than the form of the world, but this distinction will become clearer in later writings. For now it will suffice to understand the Demiurge as the Lord of this World.)

It would seem that one of the chief reasons this talk of a Demiurge makes mainstream Christians so uncomfortable is that in their eyes to admit the existence of a being like the Demiurge is to violate the First Commandment, which orders us to have no other go besides the Lord God. But simply because we admit the existence of some other supernatural being by no means requires us to regard that being as being on equal or greater footing with the Lord God, nor does it require us to worship that being in any capacity. Indeed, the Bible itself testifies to the existence of other divine beings besides God. Exodus 15:11 asks, “Who among the gods is like you, LORD?” The eighty-second Psalm opens with the lines, “God presides in the great assembly; he renders judgment among the gods.” And again, in verses five and six, “The gods know nothing, they understand nothing. They walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, ‘You are gods, you are all sons of the Most High.’ And once more in the fifth through the seventh verses of the eighty-ninth Psalm, “The heavens praise your wonders, LORD, your faithfulness too, in the assembly of the holy ones. For who in the skies above can compare with the LORD? Who is like the LORD among the heavenly beings? In the council of the holy ones God is greatly feared; he is more awesome than all who surround him.” From these passages, it is quite clear that acknowledgement of the existence of other heavenly beings is in no way in tension with a belief in the existence of the Most High God, nor does admitting the existence of any such beings mean that we must worship them or fail in our duties to worship God. Though we can admit that the Demiurge exists and we may even admit that is due a certain level of respect, as our many of God’s other creations, we shall never allow ourselves to be deluded into the thinking that the Demiurge in any way approaches the greatness of the One True Most High God, and we shall never defile ourselves by bowing down to worship the Demiurge or any other being other than the Most High. Devout Christians, therefore, need not fear that they are in any way endangering their souls by entering into this line of reasoning. 

We have come a long way, but there is one more common objection to Gnosticism that deserves addressing before concluding, for this is, as it happens, perhaps the most serious objection against Gnosticism of all; namely that Gnosticism is docetic. Docetism is the heresy that denies Jesus’ fully human nature by claiming that his body was, in some way or another, merely an illusion. It is hard not to sympathize with the orthodox view that declares such views heretical for docetic claims directly threaten the central claim of the Christian faith that Jesus suffered and died upon the cross so that we might be forgiven our sins and saved. If Jesus did not really suffer, then perhaps we are not truly saved (Were you there when they crucified my Lord? I know that I’ve been saved by the Blood of the Lamb). Moreover, it is hard to deny the charge that at least some Gnostic texts suggest docetic themes. For instance, we read in the the Gospel of Philip, 

Jesus tricked everyone, for he did not appear as he was, but he appeared so that he could be seen. He appeared to everyone. He [appeared] to the great as great, he [appeared] to the small as small, he [appeared to the] angels as an angel and to humans as a human. For this reason his word was hidden from everyone. Some looked at him and thought they saw themselves. But when he appeared to his disciples in glory upon the mountain, he was not small. He became great. Or rather, he made the disciples great, so they could see him in his greatness. 

More explicitly, in the First Revelation of James, 

They were waiting for the sign of his coming, and it came after some days. James was walking on the mountain called Gaugela, along with his disciples, who still listened to him with desire. They had a comforter, and they said, “This is the second [teacher].” The crowd dispersed, but James remained [behind and] prayed…, as was his custom. 

The master appeared to him. He stopped praying, embraced him, and kissed him, saying, “Rabbi, I’ve found you. I heard of the sufferings you endured, and I was greatly troubled. You know my compassion. Because of this I wished, as I reflected upon it, that I would never see these people again. They must be judged for what they have done, for what they have done is not right.” 

The master said, “James, do not be concerned for me or these people. I am the one who was within me. Never did I suffer at all, and I was not distressed. These people did not harm me. Rather, all this was inflicted upon a figure of the rulers, and it was fitting that this figure should be [destroyed] by them. 

Even more explicitly, we read in the Revelation of Peter, 

When he said this, I saw him apparently being arrested by them. I said, “What do I see, Lord? Is it really you they are seizing, and are you holding on to me? And who is the one smiling and laughing above the cross? Is it someone else whose feet and hands they are hammering? 

The Savior said to me, “The one you see smiling and laughing above the cross is the living Jesus. The one into whose hands and feet they are driving nails is his fleshly part, the substitute for him. They are putting to shame the one who came into being in the likeness of the living Jesus. Look at him and look at me. 

Most damningly, we read in The Second Treatise of Great Seth, 

I was in the mouths of lions. They hatched a plot against me, to counter the destruction of their error and foolishness, but I did not give in to them as they had planned. I was not hurt at all. Though they punished me, I did not die in actuality but only in appearance, that I might not be put to shame by them, as if they are part of me. I freed myself of shame, and I did not become fainthearted because of what they did to me. I would have become bound by fear, but I suffered only in their eyes and their thought, that nothing may ever be claimed about them. The death they think I suffered they suffered in their error and blindness. They nailed their man to their death. Their thoughts did not perceive me, since they were deaf and blind. By doing these things they pronounce judgment against themselves. As for me, they saw me and punished me, but someone else, their father, drank the gall and the vinegar; it was not I. They were striking me with a scourge, but someone else, Simon, bore the cross on his shoulder. Someone else wore the crown of thorns. And I was on high, poking fun at all the excesses of the rulers and the fruit of their error and conceit. I was laughing at their ignorance. 

(Recently, controversy has erupted on X stemming from a rediscovery of the early orthodox opinion that Jesus never laughed and that Jesus’ laughter in a gospel, as displayed in these examples, was evidence enough that it was heretical. I take this controversy as further evidence in favor of Gnosticism, for how could Jesus have been fully human and gone through his life without so much as chuckling? Are we really to believe the infant Jesus never laughed? How unsettling? There is no doubt in my mind that God has a sense of humor. Truly. one of the great mysteries of Creation lies in the fact that it is both a Divine Tragedy and a Divine Comedy at one and the same time.)

So, what are we to make of these passages and the apparently docetic messages they convey? Are we to admit the orthodoxy was right all along and Gnosticism is a heresy that undermines man’s salvation through Christ by denying Christ’s suffering? To begin with, we must respond with what we said in the beginning, Gnosticism is not a monolith. Not all Gnostics did or do believe the same things. While these passages might point to docetic tendencies within some Gnostic groups they hardly prove that Gnosticism is inherently docetic. Indeed, there are a number of other texts that seem to explicitly point in the opposite direction. For instance, we read in the Gospel of Truth, 

This is the gospel of him whom they seek, revealed to the perfect through the Father’s mercy. Through the hidden mystery Jesus Christ enlightened those who were in darkness because of forgetfulness. He enlightened them and showed the way, and that way is the truth he taught them. 

For this reason Error was angry with him and persecuted him, but she was restrained by him and made powerless. He was nailed to a tree, and he became fruit of the knowledge of the Father. This fruit of the tree, however, did not bring destruction when it was eaten, but rather it caused those who ate of it to come into being. They were joyful in this discovery, and he found them within himself and they found him within themselves. 

In the Letter of Peter to Philip we read,

As they were going up, they spoke with each other on the way about the light that had appeared. And a discussion arose about the Lord. They said, “If even our Lord suffered, how much more are we to suffer?” 

Peter answered and said, “He suffered for us, and we must also suffer for our smallness.”

Then a voice called to them and said, “I often told you that you must suffer. You must be brought to synagogues and governors so that you will suffer. But the one who will not suffer also [will] not… [my] Father… that he may…

The apostles rejoiced greatly and went up to Jerusalem. They went up to the temple and taught salvation in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they healed a crowd. 

Even more explicitly, we read in the Apocryphon of James, 

I answered and said to him, “Master, we can obey you if you wish, for we have forsaken our fathers and our mothers and our villages and have followed you. Give us the means not to be tempted by the evil devil.” 

The master answered and said, “What good is it to you if you do the Father’s will, but you are not given your part of his bounty when you are tempted by Satan? But if you are oppressed by Satan and persecuted and do the Father’s will, I [say] he will love you, make you my equal and consider your beloved through his forethought, and by your own choice. Won’t you stop loving the flesh and fearing suffering? Don’t you know that you have not yet been abused, unjustly accused, locked up in prison, unlawfully condemned, crucified <without> reason, or buried in the sand as I myself was by the evil one? Do you dare to spare the flesh, you for whom the spirit is a wall surrounding you? If you consider how long the world has existed before you and how long it will exist after you, you will see that your life is but a day and your sufferings but an hour. The good will not enter the world. Disdain death, then, and care about life. Remember my cross and my death, and you will live.” 

I answered and said to him, “Master do not mention to us the cross and death, for they are far from you.” 

The master answered and said, “I tell you the truth, none will be saved unless they believe in my cross, for God’s kingdom belongs to those who have believed in my cross. Be seekers of death, then, like the dead who seek life, for what they seek becomes apparent to them. And what is there to cause them concern? As for you, when you search out death, it will teach you about being chosen. I tell you the truth, no one afraid of death will be saved, for the kingdom of death belongs to those who are put to death. Become better than I. Be like the child of the Holy Spirit.” 

And indeed, just as docetic views can not be ascribed to Gnostics in general, at times even a text that might appear to convey docetic themes, might, in the end, point in the opposite direction, as is the case with the Gospel of Philip where we also read, 

Philip the apostle said, “Joseph the carpenter planted a garden, for he needed wood for his trade. He is the one who made the cross from the tree he planted, and his own offspring hung on what he planted. His offspring was Jesus and what he planted was the cross. 

So, with this in mind, our worries over the first, seemingly docetic, passage in Philip  may be set aside. It seems that the author is simply explaining Jesus’ remarkable ability to appeal to all people. Indeed, the passage is reminiscent of the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 19:19-23 where we read, 

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. 

So, the passage in Philip need not be understood as describing Jesus as some sort of shapeshifter with an illusionary body, but can rather be understood in the metaphorical sense Paul surely intended when he said he became “all things to all people.” Still, however, if Jesus did have some sort of shapeshifting ability, does this really mean that he was not truly human, or might we merely take such an ability to be a further extension of his divine nature expressed in his other miracles? Surely other men cannot turn water into wine, walk on water, or raise the dead. That Jesus did these things, as most Christians have believed for two millennia, in no way means that he did not truly have a human nature alongside his divine nature. Why should a claim that he had a literal ability to change his appearance count against his humanity any more than these other, agreed upon, miracles? 

So much for the apparent docetism in the Gospel of Philip, but we still have the passages in the First Revelation of James, the Revelation of Peter, and the Second Treatise of Great Seth to contend with and the challenges the present are, to be sure, formidable. Let us begin with the former two books, for the challenges posed by the latter text are of a far more troublesome and difficult nature. It is important to begin by noting James and Peter never explicitly deny the event of the crucifixion. Indeed, James alludes to it and Peter explicitly speaks of it. The potential docetism in these books comes only from their insistence that Jesus did not actually suffer on the cross. But it is important to note that in both instances of Jesus insisting that he did not suffer on the cross, he is speaking from the perspective of his divine nature. Nowhere do either of these texts deny that, through the incarnation, Jesus’ divine nature was united with a true, non-illusory, human nature, in the form of a human body of flesh, blood, and bone. Nor do they deny that this body suffered upon the cross. On the contrary, Peter explicitly tells us that it was Jesus’ fleshly part that was nailed to the cross. It would seem, then, that what these texts are trying to convey is not that Jesus’ human nature was an illusion, nor that the crucifixion was an illusion, and most certainly not that someone other than Jesus died on the cross in Christ’s stead. Most importantly, Peter is also not saying that Christ’s human nature did not suffer on the cross. The point Peter seems to be trying to emphasize is that Jesus’ divine nature did not suffer and was not wounded by the crucifixion, but was preserved perfectly intact and unharmed. And does this not seem to be a necessary conclusion given that, commonly, impassibility is counted amongst God’s perfections? When taken alongside the passages from the Apocryphon of James, the Letter of Peter and Philip, and the Gospel of Truth, we can begin to get a clearer picture of what is going on here. In these passages, Jesus seems to be preparing the Apostles for their future suffering as martyrs, reassuring them that though their bodies might be destroyed, their true, spiritual nature could never be harmed, promising that, by coming to view earthly life with contempt and embrace the suffering and destruction of their bodies, they would, like Christ, be released from their bodies into that other, more perfect life. Is this not the very promise that has motivated and eased the fears of so many Christian martyrs? (I’ll have a new body and I’ll fly away) As Christ says in the Apocryphon of John, “Become better than I.” 

At last, we come to the troublesome Second Treatise of Great Seth. The case here is much more damning than in the other texts. Here we see it quite explicitly stated that Jesus did not die on the cross, while implying another, Simon, presumably the Simon of Cyrene mentioned in the three synoptic gospels as having carried Jesus’ cross. If this text is to be believed, then Jesus did not suffer and die for our sins and, consequently, we have no guarantee of salvation. Fortunately for us, we need not accept every word of every text as true or divinely inspired, even if it has happened to be included in a collection of other texts that do suggest divine inspiration. If a text, or part of it, contradicts something we believe with good reason to be true, we may freely call the authority of that text into question. Still, in keeping with our principle of omnis scriptura, a text such as this is still able to maintain its canonical status insofar as it is capable of informing us about how ideas emerged, developed, and were transmitted, as well as shedding light on the intuitions about the Divine that motivated such deviations from the traditional narrative. For instance, we might ask how such an idea as Jesus being replaced on the cross by another came about in the first place. Was there an earlier tradition that this text drew on? Or, perhaps, it represents a corruption or misunderstanding of some other teaching, such as the distinction between Christ’s suffering human nature and his unharmed divine nature? Was the text always in this state? Or has the copy through which it came down to us in a corrupted state? If the doctrine is a result of some sort of corruption or another, what caused or motivated the corruption? What does any of this tell us about the Divine and the way people think about it? For instance, perhaps the invention of this narrative that Jesus did not die upon the cross reflects some deeply held conviction about God’s impassibility, or perhaps the notion that Christ’s body was mere illusion is founded on a deep scepticism that God could ever descend to the depths of base materiality. Such intuitions could serve as a valuable entry point for inquiry into and meditation on the nature of the Divine. Though we will not concern ourselves with answering any of these questions definitively here, these are all legitimate questions whose answers might prove surprisingly enlightening, so, while we might have good reason to believe that Christ died on the cross and to reject contrary claims found in the text, we still need not completely disregard the text as spiritually, or, at the very least, historically irrelevant. At any rate, it seems we have sufficiently proved that Gnosticism is not inherently docetic and that several texts that might seem to suggest docetic doctrines on the surface need not be interpreted that way, thus orthodox concerns that Gnosticism denies the crucifixion thereby stripping away Christ’s promise of salvation can be safely set to the side. 

At this point it would seem that we have adequately dealt with some of the most serious orthodox objections to Gnostic thought and this, therefore, would seem to be a natural place to pause. I hope I have succeeded in quelling some orthodox hostility as well as in peaking some interest in Gnosticism. But it should not go unnoticed that in defending Gnosticism against millennia old slanders and controversies, we have had frustratingly little time to actually outline a substantive positive Gnostic doctrine at any length. This will have to be corrected when we return to the theme of Gnosticism in subsequent essays. In particular, there are two areas of pressing importance that shall occupy our next discussions. First, for the sake of our atheistic friends, as well as for our own spiritual edification, we must address perhaps the most important and fundamental question of all; why should we believe in God in the first place? In answering this question we shall draw heavily on the work of Alvin Plantinga, turning to modal reasoning through which we shall be able to see Creation and our place in it in a new light which shall point us toward a justification of the Christian faith in particular that is eternal and unshakeable and which need not rely on external or contingent evidence such as scripture at all. Our second essay will go even further to argue why we should believe that Jesus truly is the Son of God, drawing on as unlikely a source as Schopenhauerian philosophy in order to help us to begin to understand God’s nature on a deeper and more intimate level. These investigations may also prove to offer us an opportunity to resolve the tension between those Christians who, with Calvin, believe in predestination and the existence of an elect, and those who are more sceptical of such concepts. Until then, farewell and thank you for reading.