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Three Grains of Salt
Stuart
Holroyd: The Elements of Gnosticism. Element Books Limited, 1994. 121
pp.
In 1945, near a place in Egypt called
Nag Hammadi, two brothers unearthed a large clay vessel which proved to contain
a veritable treasure trove of ancient gnostic literature. Although the
collection of texts sat for a time in a heap in the family's kitchen, and
although the mother of the discoverers reputedly lit up pages now and then as
kindling for her stove, the bulk of the Nag Hammadi find eventually made its
way into the hands of European scholars and the Egyptian Department of
Antiquities.
The chance discovery in Egypt has
led to a burgeoning of academic interest in gnosticism. But not only that: it
has in some measure resuscitated gnosticism as a mode of belief among many
Western seekers. For devotees, the Nag Hammadi texts are the scriptures of a
new/old religion, one they are currently championing against the supposedly
more oppressive Christian faith that has formed and dominated the West since
late antiquity.
Stuart Holroyd's Elements of
Gnosticism is a book that sets out to present the teachings of the ancient gnostics
and to trace the legacy of their beliefs over the centuries. As far as the
first of these goals is concerned, namely his presentation of the major gnostic
doctrines and movements, the book is worth reading. It is only when Holroyd
sets his sights on finding gnostic thought in post-medieval Western society
that he becomes markedly less convincing. In these latter chapters, he is
usually reduced to exploiting as best as he can any thematic parallels he can
discover between ancient gnostic texts and the major works of such writers as
Goethe, Melville, and Sartre. After initially portraying ancient gnosticism,
Holroyd is clearly trying to expand the territory of what may be considered
"gnostic." A perpicacious reader won't give him all the territory he claims.
Holroyd's attempts to demostrate the
centrality of gnosticism as a sort of underground driving force in Western
literature are wrongly conceived. About the only convincing case he makes is
William Blake, whose unique status as a kind of late-Enlightenment gnostic
heresiarch actually merit him a more systematic presentation than Holroyd ends
up giving. Holroyd should have given up on Goethe, forgotten about Nietzsche
and Sartre and Hess, and worked harder to characterize Blake, the only truly
gnostic thinker of the lot.
Rather than writing about the
"Gnostic Revival" in the manner he has, Holroyd's book would have
been better served by a more thorough consideration of the existential
implications of gnostic theology for those who now choose to see it as a
correct description of the relations between the divine and the human. What are
the ethical, social, and pedagogical implications of gnostic theology? What is
being said and taught by the people who now, at the end of the twentieth
century, claim to be gnostics? Holroyd doesn't even touch on these interesting
questions.
Another major flaw in the book stems
from the writer's obvious grudge against the orthodox churches, in particular
the Roman Catholic Church. One begins to suspect it is Holroyd's hatred of
triumphant Christianity that has led him to champion gnosticism as an
alternative. It seems to be a case of the grass is always greener. For example,
if we are to believe Holroyd's frequent hints, there was something inherent in
classical gnostic systems that would have precluded their followers from ever
seeking and abusing temporal power the way the orthodox churches did. This is
clearly nonsense. It is a belief akin to Marxist beliefs of the 1910s and '20s
that the proletariat, once firmly in power, would never show the corruption
characteristic of bourgeois governments. The world has learned many painful
lessons concerning such delusions. In trying to assess Holroyd's claims for
gnosticism, one need only imagine the Roman emperors converting to Valentinianism,
then declaring some form of gnosticism to be the official state religion. One
need only imagine this religion allied to the Roman state, as orthodox
Christianity was allied. What would have been gnosticism's development
theologically, hierarchically? Wouldn't gnosticism's tendency to theorize an
elite of "knowing ones" have been abused under the pressure of
imperial support?
By these remarks, however, I do not
intend to dismiss Holroyd's book. Elements of Gnosticism is well
written and well organized. Holroyd provides a good presentation of the ancient
gnostic doctrines and the figures that forged those doctrines. That the book is
written by a writer sympathetic to gnostic beliefs makes it even stronger in
some ways. The reader receives something of a total effect, in that it is not
simply a matter here of encyclopedia entries on Basilides and Mani. Rather
there is an attempt at persuasion, what in theology is called apologetics.
Holroyd is among the contemporary writers one may justly call gnostic
apologists. It is a group that includes--to cite the most eminent--Harold Bloom
and Elaine Pagels. The ultimate result of such apologetics is that Holroyd's
book may be read as an historical or doctrinal account, but it is one that
needs to be read with three or four grains of salt.
Eric Mader-Lin
February, 2000
Order
it direct from Amazon.com.
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