Gnosticism:
Rethinking the Mother of All Heresies
By Michael Allen Williams
Princeton UP, 335 pages
If one seeks out a quick definition of ancient gnosticism, one is liable to get something like the following:
Gnosticism:
A religious movement that flourished in the Roman Empire between the second and fourth centuries C.E. Identified as heretical by both Christians and Jews, the gnostics taught that the world was created not by the true God but by a lesser, deficient being called the Demiurge, who ruled over his creation, our world, with the help of administrative powers called Archons. The realm of the true God (the Pleroma, or "Fullness") lay beyond this faulty creation, and it was the goal of the gnostics to escape the trap of this world and return there.
According to the gnostics, human beings contained a
spark of true divinity that did not belong in this lesser creation, but would
continually be reincarnated here unless redeemed by gnosis (the liberating knowledge of our true origins). Human beings were divided into three
types: the spirituals (those
predestined for salvation), the psychicals (those who could attain a kind of salvation through gnosis and various
purifying practices) and the materials (those who by their nature were permanently tied to the material realm). Gnostic religion was thus characterized
by a radical contempt both for the world (understood as a prison) and for the
body (each individual's prison cell).
Ancient sources show that this contempt led in some groups to a rigorous
asceticism, in others to an equally rigorous licentiousness (since the laws of
morality were merely part of the trap created by the Demiurge, some gnostics
taught that the spiritually liberated must demonstrate their liberation by
breaking as many of these laws as they could).
Christian gnostics understood Jesus to be a messenger
of the true God, sent from the Pleroma to bring the liberating teachings of
gnosis. They rejected the orthodox
doctrine that Jesus died to atone for the sins of men. According to the gnostics, the evil in
the world did not result from human sin, but rather from the Demiurge's faulty
creation: i.e., the world was evil because its creator was evil. Whereas orthodox Christians accepted
the Old Testament as part of their sacred scriptures, the gnostics saw in the
Old Testament God a depiction of the Demiurge. Only Jesus was sent from the "Father," i.e. the
true God.
Given its rigorous contempt for the world and its
concomitant rejection of social norms, most scholars understand gnosticism to
have been a religion of radical revolt.
The Bogomils in eastern Europe and the medieval Cathars in the south of
France are considered to be later incarnations of gnostic religion. A buried collection of ancient gnostic
scriptures was discovered near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.
Here in a few paragraphs is an example of how gnosticism is typically
defined in university classes and encyclopedias. It is a presentation buttressed by such classic modern
studies of gnosticism as Hans Jonas' book The Gnostic Religion. Through
force of repetition it has become more or less standard. But is this definition really apt to
the beliefs and practices of the ancient gnostics? How appropriate is it to what we find in the Nag Hammadi
texts? After all, most of the
elements of this definition were forged before the discovery of these writings. With actual gnostic writings now
available, scholars should be able to come to a more nuanced understanding of
gnosticism than was previously possible.
Has their reading of the Nag Hammadi texts changed our understanding of
this ancient religious movement?
In his book Rethinking "Gnosticism" Michael Allen Williams assesses the validity of such
usual definitions and finds them seriously lacking. To read his study is to realize to what extent this thing
called "gnosticism" is an amalgam of modern scholarly caricature and
uncritical reliance on ancient heresiologists like Irenaeus and
Epiphanius. Such reliance was maybe
inevitable given the previous lack of original sources. But now with the wealth of gnostic
gospels and treatises uncovered in Egypt, things have changed. Williams' work sets out to reveal the
extent of the needed change.
Williams' overall methodology is simple: take the current scholarly
presentations of gnostic religion and compare them point by point with what we
actually find in the gnostics' writings.
But also: take the ancient heresiologists' presentation of the gnostics
and undertake a similar comparison.
Do the gnostics' presentations of themselves in their writings
correspond to the doctrines attributed to them by Irenaeus? Do they correspond to what we hear from
the community of modern scholars?
If not, why not?
If Williams is right, our idea of gnosticism as an ancient religion
would not, in important respects, have been shared by the ancient gnostics
themselves. Our understanding of
gnostic doctrines and attitudes (to the body, to society, to ethics) has often
put the stress in the wrong place.
And our presentation of gnostic practices still relies on the
heresiologists, even though their portrayals have been given the lie by the Nag
Hammadi writings.
For one, gnosticism is usually presented as a world-denying religion of
revolt: a religion adopted by outsiders in a state of rebellion against social
norms. The gnostics were believed
to have erected a barrier between themselves and the surrounding world by
mechanically reversing dominant social values. This notion of the gnostics undertaking a kind of systematic
denial of everything society held sacred grew mainly from select observations
of gnostic readings of Hebrew scripture (for example, they frequently
understood the serpent in the Garden of Eden in a positive way, while Yahweh,
understood as the Demiurge, was seen negatively). But, as Williams points out, such instances of gnostic
scriptural interpretation do not necessarily indicate a rebellious attitude to
society at large. Using models
developed from the sociological study of religious movements, Williams argues
that in many cases the opposite was more likely true: that the gnostics were
actually interpreting Judeo-Christian ideas of the divine in ways more in
harmony with the dominant pagan society in which they lived. Williams' argument here is
convincing. Our interpretation of
the gnostic attitude as one of revolt against society has been foisted on us by
the heresiologists, who themselves, for obvious reasons, sought to portray the
gnostics as rebels against orthodoxy.
To claim the gnostics were radical social deviants is thus
anachronistic.
Williams likewise takes up the question of "gnostic
determinism": the oft-repeated modern assertion that the gnostics believed
mankind to be strictly divided into different types (the spirituals, the
psychics, the materials) or different races (the race of Seth, the race of
Cain), and that the doctrinal upshot of such divisions was that each
individual's potential for salvation was understood to be already determined at
birth. Williams shows that this
modern notion of gnostic determinism is not supported by the original
texts. A careful reading of the
sources shows that one is not "born into" the race of Seth: rather it
is a status one may attain or earn.
The race of Seth is more a spiritual community than a biological
"race" in our modern sense.
Likewise with the division into three types: one's status as a spiritual
is seen to be linked to one's behavior: one may lose this status through
abandoning the truth, and thus to be born as a spiritual is no guarantee of
salvation. The assertion that the
ancient gnostics were elitists in the sense of believing themselves predestined
to salvation (saved in essence) is
misguided. Williams demonstrates
that there was at least as much flexibility in these gnostic notions as there
is in more recent Protestant doctrines of the elect.
With these remarks I've
only scratched the surface of this subtle and wide-ranging study. Williams offers an important discussion
of gnostic hermeneutics (their practice of Biblical interpretation) and
reassesses gnostic notions of the body and how these might relate to the
different doctrines of salvation.
One abiding concern of Williams' book--and I've maybe been irresponsible
in skirting it until now--is the appropriateness of the term
"gnosticism" itself. On
the basis of the many disadvantages Williams sees in the term--its vagueness as
a category, the baggage it brings with it--he suggests scholars refer instead
to "biblical demiurgical traditions" when discussing much of what is
typically called "gnosticism."
He seeks to demonstrate that 1) the ancient people we refer to as
"gnostics" did not themselves use this term, and 2) modern scholars
have long had difficulty establishing a stable set of characteristics for
gnosticism: i.e., we still cannot define clearly what gnosticism is. The argument Williams finally puts
forward is that the term has impeded our understanding of the ancient religious
movements in question. It has led
generations of scholars to grapple with false problems and construct arguments
on the basis of unexamined preconceptions. This is a pretty serious charge to make. Whether or not Williams is right in
these assertions--something I'm in no position to judge--it seems obvious that
his book has brought forth much that is new in the field of "gnostic"
studies. And it seems clear that
many of his new perspectives on the "gnostics" grew directly from his
attempts to think beyond the (academic or heresiological) category "gnosticism."
Williams' book is not for scholars only, however. Even a reader only slightly familiar
with the Nag Hammadi texts can gain much from it. He helpfully begins the book with a chapter summarizing the
myths or doctrines of four important "gnostic" traditions: the myth
from The Apocryphon of John; the
doctrine of the Valentinian teacher Ptolemy; the myth taught by Justin the
Gnostic; and the teachings of Marcion.
These four different examples are then referred to repeatedly in the
remainder of the study in order to clarify this or that point. Williams has structured Rethinking
Gnosticism in a way that allows him
to write both for fellow scholars and the general reader. It is a successful strategy all around,
one that makes the book fascinating reading for anyone interested in
"gnosticism," the Nag Hammadi texts, or the history of Christianity.
Eric Mader
Check the book at Amazon.com:
Email: inthemargins03@hotmail.com
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