THE CHALLENGES OF THE GNOSTICS

An Adult Discussion Group Presentation at the

Unitarian-Universalist Congregation of Lakeland
October 9, 2005

By Michael Segers

Copyright © 2005 by Michael Segers

All rights reserved

Msegers@Gmail.com

Contents

Vocabulary

The Challenges of the Gnostics

Notes on the Gospel of Thomas

Web-ography

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 Vocabulary

I believe that today more people are A group of Communists,

familiar with the word agnostic than with
the word gnostic. Although they sound
alike, they have very different meanings,
just like the words theist and atheist.
A theist believes in a theos, a god,
while an atheist believes in a-theos, no
god. Similarly, a gnostic believes in
gnosis, the direct knowledge of God,
while an agnostic believes in a-gnosis,
that is, in no knowledge of God, that we
cannot say anything about Him or Her or
It, not even that She or He or It exists.
having a demonstration,
were met by a group
opposed to them. In the
fracas that ensued, the
police began to arrest
everyone.
One demonstrator
objected, “But I am an
anti-communist.”
As he slapped handcuffs
onto the demonstrator, a
policeman said, “I don’t
care if you are an uncle
communist, I have no use
for any of you reds!”

Orthodoxy refers, literally, to “straight thinking,” just as

orthodontics refers to “straight teeth.” Actually, at the time of
which I am writing here, there was not yet a clearly defined
Christian orthodoxy or party line. Heresy refers to beliefs outside
the range of orthodoxy.

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 The Challenges of the Gnostics

Gnosticism is a spiritual path that has been seen throughout

history in many settings. I am referring here specifically to a
movement that occurred in Christianity mainly in the second and
third centuries of the Common Era (100’s and 200’s A.D.), largely
dying out by the Council of Nicea in the fourth century. Since
Gnostics put such emphasis upon direct personal knowledge of
God, it is difficult to make generalizations, beyond the belief in
salvation by knowledge of God and of self, of what they did or did
not believe.
One belief that many of these Gnostic Christians or Christian
Gnostics subscribed to was the belief in the dualism of existence.
All things are either physical or spiritual. Moreover, with some
oversimplification, the physical or material world is corrupt,
outright evil, while the spiritual world is good. While this may
seem alien to us, dualism seems to be a fundamental part of
human thought. One of the seminal thinkers in the Western
tradition is Plato, who was a dualist.
In his allegory of the cave (in The A great Platonist once
Republic), in our human existence, it is lectured to a group of
as if we are in a cave, chained so that undergraduates on the
we cannot even see the entrance of immateriality
material.
of the

the cave, only the light that shines in At the end of the session,
from it and casts shadows on the wall. one young man paused at
We don’t see reality, only the the lectern to remark, “Uh,
sir, your fly is open.”
shadows. Sometimes, someone (since The lecturer turned
a philosopher is telling this story, he around, fumbled at his fly,
says, a philosopher) can escape from and, annoyed, turned
the cave to tell us what is up there or, around and asked, “Why did
you say that? My fly was
possibly, even lead us out. zipped.”
Manicheanism is also dualistic, as is “If your fly and what is
the Kabbalah, which teaches that the back of it do not exist,” the
young man responded,
visible, physical world simply provides “then why did you care?”
us images and codes of the true

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reality. Some New-Agers even claim to see some sort of dualism
at work in quantum physics, which, I hear, amuses physicists.
Although many Christians seem to regard the material world as
somehow wrong, insubstantial, or not to be trusted, that is not
fundamental Christian doctrine. God created the material world
and all that is in it. According to a plaque I’ve seen in several
Christian homes, “I’m OK. God doesn’t make junk.” Some
Christian thinkers, however, have argued that although God’s
original creation was good, it became corrupt by human sin.
Moreover, God—in traditional Christian teaching—took on
human flesh in the incarnation (the in-meat-ation or enfleshment),
and in the Mass (according to Catholic teaching) the material
bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.
The Gnostics taught that we are souls trapped in physical
bodies. One Gnostic text has Jesus telling his disciples to cast off
their clothes and trample them. I do not believe that this is a call
for ritual nudity (like that of the Dukhobers) but rather a
suggestion that the body is a set of old clothes impeding the spirit.
In Christianity, on the other hand, there is no soul that is
going to fly heavenward in a lacy gown. Christianity demands the
resurrection of the physical body. (Gee, so I’m going to be stuck
through eternity in a short, fat body with bad eyes? Some good
news that is!)
Note: The word Christ like
Who is Jesus/Christ? the word Buddha (“the
enlighted one”) is not a
name but a title. Christ
In the canonical (New Testament) (Greek) or Messiah
Gospels, it is recorded that Jesus asked his (Hebrew) means “the
disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” anointed one.” Jesus
(Greek) or Joshua
We can come up with two answers to that (Hebrew) is the name of
question that are totally at odds with each the historical person. For
other. the Gnostics, the Christ
was a divine or spiritual
First, there is the answer that Jesus is principle. So, in this
a physical being, and nothing more, a discussion, it is possible to
Jewish teacher or rabbi, Joshua ben Joseph refer, depending upon the
(“son of Joseph”), as far as we know, a beliefs under consideration
to “Jesus and the Christ” or
good man, a great ethical teacher, who, in “Jesus or the Christ” or
his early thirties, got into trouble with the “Jesus the Christ.”

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authorities, and was brutally executed. And… he still lives… in
our memory, for the example he set us and for the teachings he
gave us. (And isn’t it a shame that so many of those who call
themselves his followers seem to have forgotten his example and
teachings?)
Second, we can answer that the Christ is purely spiritual, not
tainted by material existence, so much so that those who thought
they saw him actually saw just a fantasy, an image. (Today, we
might say a hologram, something that appears to have three
dimensions but is as insubstantial as the light of which it is
formed.)
As radically different as these answers are, they are both at
odds with orthodox Christianity, which dismisses both as heresy.
For the orthodox, Jesus is fully human, born of a human mother,
but a mother who is a virgin, since he is also fully spiritual,
conceived of the Holy Spirit. Orthodox Christians (such as Mel
Gibson) demand blood and suffering in a sacrifice extreme enough
to overcome the sin and death of every human being, so that we
can all attain atonement (at-one-ment) with God.
If Jesus were just a good person and great teacher who got
killed, so what? How is his death any different from the deaths of
Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? But, if the Christ
is only spirit, then, again, there can be no blood, no suffering, no
sacrifice. (Can you nail a spirit to a cross? Can a spirit bleed?)
The Gnostics offered a vision of a non-material Christ who did
not suffer and die on the cross. In fact, he was laughing at the
trick he had played on all of those who thought he was dying:

I saw him seemingly being seized by them. And I said "What do I

see, O Lord? That it is you yourself whom they take, and that you
are grasping me? Or who is this one, glad and laughing on the tree?
And is it another one whose feet and hands they are striking?" - The
Apocalypse of Peter

In one terrible Gnostic story, when Simon of Cyrene carries

the cross of Jesus (nowadays, scholars believe that it was just the
horizontal crossbar), the Christ pulls some sort of switch so that a
man is actually crucified, not the un-crucifiable Christ but Simon,
just someone who had taken his family out to a nice afternoon of

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crucifixion—good, free, family-friendly entertainment was hard to
find—and ended up being in the wrongest place at the wrongest
time imaginable.

How do you know? What are your sources for authority?

Catholic tradition reminds us that Jesus laid his hands upon his
disciples, who later laid their hands upon their disciples, who…
This may seem odd to us, but at the time, the laying on of hands
by a teacher was a sort of graduation ceremony or certification.
You have completed my teachings; now, go forth and pass them
on.
This succession continues from the time of the apostles
(hence, apostolic succession) to our own time, when the bishops
are consecrated by the laying on of hands (by three bishops, by
the way, in case two of them do not have legitimate successions).
One can find ecclesiastical family trees that show that the current
bishop had the hands of a previous bishop laid upon him, a
previous bishop who had the hands of a previous bishop laid upon
him… all the way back to one of the apostles, who had had the
hands of Jesus laid upon him. (In some non-Roman autocephalous
catholic traditions, groups of bishops may lay hands upon each
other… just to be sure.)
And so, the bishops and their church provide a direct historical
link to the basic mysteries of the Christian faith. The Gnostics
may have something to do with this, since they claimed to have a
tradition that reached back to the time when the Christ was
appearing on earth. By emphasizing the historical nature of the
succession of bishops (none of whom were Gnostic), the church
refuted the Gnostics. (Once again, Christianity shows its material
side, since a bishop’s hands are physical, and there has been
some discussion about whether a bishop whose hands had been
amputated could participate in the consecration of a bishop.)
Let’s fast forward over a thousand years to the time of the
Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther proclaimed that all that was
necessary for learning the way to salvation was to be alone in
your room with your Bible. You did not need bishops, priests, or
churches, just your Bible (another material object).

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 Let’s imagine now that I am an ancient Gnostic, happy with my
little library (since in those times, few people could afford any
library at all). One evening, there is a knock at the door. It is the
COPs (Christian Orthodox Patrol). As they look through my books,
they are shocked to see some books that St. Athanasius has
condemned, and so they take them away. Have I really lost
anything? No, because as a Gnostic, I have the potential within
myself to attain true knowledge, which cannot be contained in any
book.
Let’s speculate that an ancient Gnostic finds himself in the 21st
century, still with a small library, since it is in PDF files on CD-
roms. He reads in the newspaper an article about a mega-church
with several thousand members, a Christian family center,
complete with heated swimming pool, a Christian rock group, a
Christian rap group, a Christian weight loss program, various
twelve-step groups, about ten thousand members, some three
hundred staff members, acres and acres of paved parking, a video
production studio, an audio recording studio, and an annual
budget in the millions of dollars. He looks at his little old laptop
computer, his alley cat rescued from the pound, and his thrift shop
wardrobe.
Who, do you suppose, he thinks is winning? The mega-church,
with its investment in this corrupt, material world, or himself, with
his direct knowledge of God?
Gnostics do not need a material, historical connection (bishops
or Bible) to revelation. They do not even need their own books.
Their most important library is within themselves.

How do you attain salvation?

The Gnostics believe that Christ came to teach, not to suffer.

We attain salvation not through faith but through knowledge. But,
not everyone can receive the teachings. (Personal aside: the
Gnostics always seem a little snobbish to me.) The Gnostics say
that many are intoxicated, lost in darkness and ignorance, but few
can “wake up.” The Gnostics used the image of the rooster, the
first to see and proclaim the light of day. (Again, I don’t imagine
Gnostic roosters crow very much.)

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 There is an unusual passage in the canonical Gospels, in which
the disciples ask Jesus why he speaks in parables. As a teacher, I
use images, examples, stories, perhaps even parables to get a
point across, but Jesus has a surprising explanation, one that is
worth looking at in full:
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And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou
unto them in parables? 11He answered and said unto them,
Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the
kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. 12For whosoever
hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance:
but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that
he hath. 13Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they
seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they
understand. 14And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias,
which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand;
and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive. – Matthew 13

Make of this passage what you will, it gives us a hint about

reading Gnostic texts. Many Gnostic teachers hailed from
Alexandria, Egypt, which was a sort of southern California of its
day, with quite an assortment of offbeat religions, flakes, fads,
and fakers.
There was one tendency among many Alexandrian teachers,
and that was not to read a text literally but to read it
mythologically, symbolically, to find the spiritual meaning back of
the text. Orthodox Christians had trouble with this. When they
read Gnostic texts with their lush imagery and sometimes wild
mythology, they were shocked. Surely these teachings were
wrong. But, they were wrong only if they were taken literally.
With the Gnostics’ distrust of matter–“just the facts, ma’am”–
and their conviction that there is a higher knowledge that most of
us do not see, it is doubtful that they read even their own texts
literally.
Many educated Christians today, struggle to understand the
truth behind the stories of the virgin birth and the physical
resurrection of the body, without accepting the literal truth of
those events, but there are those Christians who will never accept
such speculation.

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 Such differences in the ways of reading are still very much
with us today in the opening years of the twenty-first century of
the Common Era. Let us consider a biblical scholar and a country
preacher talking about the opening of the book of Genesis:

In this story – actually, Brethren and sistern,

two stories, entwined – when our Lord and
we are told God created Savior, Jesus Christ,
the heavens and the wrote the Saint James
earth and all that is in Bible in his own blood
them in six days. That is and in our English, He
allegorical; no one said that God created the
knows how long those heavens and the earth in
days are. Rather than be six days, and He should
concerned with the know what He was
details, we need to look talking about, since It
at the greater meaning was His Own Daddy. He
of the story, which is, did not say five days or
among other things, that seven days or three
the Gnostics were thousand fifty-six days.
wrong, because all Do you know why? Why?
matter was created by Well, because it was six
God. days, no more, no less.

Gnostic books cannot be read literally. Some books teach that

there are two gods or many gods. The creator god of the Old
Testament, obviously, is a bad god, because he created all this
corrupt matter. And there are other books and more gods, more
visions and images and myths that are not true in themselves but
that communicate truths.

What is the greatest gift of the Gnostics?

Probably the greatest single gift from the Gnostics, which we

lost by losing their tradition in the Church, is their view of the role
of women. There is a spiritual being in Gnostic thinking called
Sophia, the personification of divine wisdom. And Sophia is
feminine. So, women are not considered frail, overemotional,
second-rate beings. Instead, Gnostics honor women as the
manifestation of Wisdom.

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 Just as there is some connection between the Christ and the
physical person Jesus, so is there a connection between Sophia
and Miriam of Magdala (Mary Magdalene). In some Gnostic texts,
there is an explicit association of Jesus and Mary. According to
the Gospel of Philip, Jesus “used to kiss
her often on her mouth.”
Somehow, we seem to have dropped
into the middle of a certain best-selling
novel, The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
Two amazing points about this novel
(aside from its having apparently
established permanent residence on The
New York Times Best Seller List) is, first,
Dan Brown did not make any of this stuff
up. The traditions he recounts in his
book are authentic.
Second, orthodox Christians are
reading and complaining about this
novel, which makes no presumption of
being anything but an entertainment, a
fiction, as if it were historical, as if it
were an attack upon their faith. Some folks just never learn more
than one way of reading. (Irrelevant aside: in recognition of the
novel, I wore my Leonardo da Vinci necktie.)

How do we know about the Gnostics?

For most of the history of the Christian Church, most

knowledge of the Gnostics was found in the works of those
“patristic” writers (“fathers” of the Church) who sought to refute
them, most notably in St. Ireneus’s Against the Heresies. It was
as if all that we knew about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was what
was contained in his FBI files.
In 1945, near an Egyptian village called Nag Hammadi, an
ancient clay jar was discovered that was full of books (not scrolls)
that made up a library of ancient Gnostic texts, some that had
never before been known. (The library of an earlier Jewish sect,
known as the Dead Sea or Qumran Scrolls was discovered about

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the same time and, for some reason, more captured the attention
of the public, although both sets of texts are available in English
translation in print and on line.)

What can we gain from the Gnostics?

From my own experience of reading about and reflecting upon

the Gnostics, I do not feel that they have that much to offer me.
But, my title, “The Challenges of the Gnostics,” hints at what I
believe to be the significance of the heritage of the early Christian
Gnostics (or, again, is it Gnostic Christians?), not so much their
beliefs as the issues they raise that are still with us: personal
spiritual freedom in contrast to institutional religion, multiple ways
of reading and understanding and attaining the truth, the equality
in the roles of women and men.
If you are concerned about spiritual development, then, it just
don’t get more spiritual than with the Gnostics. For me, in fact,
they get too spiritual, and I cannot see how any program of social
justice could develop in the environment of Gnosticism. The
material world is corrupt, for the Gnostics, and so, the more we
get involved with it, even trying to improve it, the further we get
from our true calling.
Finally, acknowledging the context of this presentation, I wish
to share the seven principals of Unitarian-Universalism. I have re-
arranged them, with the first three, I believe, being compatible
with Gnosticism, the last four, not.

* The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

* Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in
our congregations;
* A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

* Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

* The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within
our congregations and in society at large;
* The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
* Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are
a part.

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 The Gospel of Thomas

On November 13, 2005, I plan to lead a discussion of the Gospel

of Thomas in an adult discussion group at the Unitarian-Universalist
Congregation of Lakeland, at 10:00 a.m. I have often mentioned
that I am not a good UU, because I do not believe in the value of
discussion just for the sake of discussion. I hope that the background
on the Gnostics in this article, together with the reading of Thomas
by some people before the session will make an actual discussion
possible.
There are in fact two different books called the Gospel of
Thomas. One, which has been known all along, is a collection of
stories of the childhood of Jesus (stories not found in the canonical
gospels, those found in the New Testament). The best known and
most controversial of the Nag Hammadi texts, however, is a
collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus (some are found in the
canonical gospels, some are not). This is “our” Gospel of Thomas.
The text as well as a great deal of information and commentary
can be found online at these pages:

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl_thomas.htm
The Gospel of Thomas Collection in the Gnostic Society Library
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/thomas.html
The Gospel of Thomas - many links, versions, articles
http://www.gospelthomas.com/
Commentary on each verse of the Gospel of Thomas
http://home.epix.net/~miser17/Thomas.html
Gospel of Thomas Home Page

Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom
is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they
say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you.
Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
When you come to know yourselves, then you will become
known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the
living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in
poverty and it is you who are that poverty." – The Gospel of
Thomas

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 Web-ography

I. Gnostics
http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I - includes Irenaeus, "Against the
Heresies" (complete)
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html
The Nag Hammadi Library
http://www.gnosis.org
The Gnostic Archive (probably the best single source for Gnostic
writings)
http://www.cbel.com/gnosticism/
134 Gnosticism Resources, which show the varieties of Gnostic
experience today
http://www.gnostic-church.org/
“The Apostolic Gnostic Church in America,” which says it subscribes
to the teachings of the Nag Hammadi texts.

III. General Christian resources

Don’t be surprised by the inclusion of the Catholic Encyclopedia.
Although it has a definite bias, sometimes it has the most information
on the topics.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/
Early Christian Writings
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen
The Catholic Encyclopedia
http://www.ccel.org
Christian Classics Ethereal Library
http://wesley.nnu.edu/biblical_studies/noncanon/acts.htm
Non-Canonical Literature from Northwest Nazarene University
http://fam-faerch.dk/pseudigrapher/gnostic/gnosi.htm
Gnostic, pseudepigrapha, apocrapha, apocrypha, gnostic and other
scriptures from the world’s religions

IV. General religion resources

http://www.sacred-texts.com
Internet Sacred Text Archive
http://www.religioustolerance.org
Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

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