Histories of the Hidden God

Concealment and Revelation in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions

April D DeConick, Grant Adamson, April D DeConick, Grant Adamson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138664302
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134936069
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

In Western religious traditions, God is conventionally conceived as a humanlike creator, lawgiver, and king, a being both accessible and actively present in history. Yet there is a concurrent and strong tradition of a God who actively hides. The two traditions have led to a tension between a God who is simultaneously accessible to humanity and yet inaccessible, a God who is both immanent and transcendent, present and absent. Western Gnostic, esoteric, and mystical thinking capitalizes on the hidden and hiding God. He becomes the hallmark of the mystics, Gnostics, sages, and artists who attempt to make accessible to humans the God who is secreted away. 'Histories of the Hidden God' explores this tradition from antiquity to today. The essays focus on three essential themes: the concealment of the hidden God; the human quest for the hidden God, and revelations of the hidden God.

CHAPTER 1

WHO IS HIDING IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN?

RECONCEPTUALIZING JOHANNINE THEOLOGY AND THE ROOTS OF GNOSTICISM

April D. DeConick

I became intrigued with Johannine theology when I noticed that the standard English translations of John 8:44 obscure the Greek, which reads: ὑμεῖς ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ διαβόλου ἐστὲ. With the article preceding πατρὸς, the phrase τοῦ διαβόλου is a genitive phrase modifying the nominal phrase ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς. Thus: “You are from the father of the Devil.” If the statement were to mean, as the standard English translation renders it, “You are of the father, the Devil,” then the article preceding πατρὸς would not be present. In this case the phrase, “father” would be in the predicate position and could be expanded with an appositional phrase τοῦ διαβόλου, a grammatical choice that the author of John makes a few verses later in 8:56 when referencing Abraham: ᾽Αβραὰμ ὁ πατὴρ ὐμῶν, “Abraham, your father.”¹

This literal reading is confirmed by the last segment of the verse (8:44f) which straightforwardly acknowledges the present of two beings, the liar and his father: ὅταν λαλῇ τὸ ψεῦδος, ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων λαλεῖ, ὅτι ψεύστης ἐστὶν καὶ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ. The full verse reasons that the Devil lies since his nature is that of a liar. Why? Because not only is the Devil a liar himself but his father is also a liar. But this is not the sense of the standard English translation which is peculiar and strained. It reads αὐτοῦ as a genitive “it” referring to an unnamed singular antecedent such as “lying” or “falsehood.” Thus: ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ is rendered in the standard English translation idiosyncratically, “the father of lies.”

In order to sort out what was going on with this verse, I went back through the literature and discovered that this verse has a controversial history. In another publication, I have drawn out the parameters of the controversy.² I found that this verse functioned as a calling card for Gnostics who used it as plain evidence that Jesus taught that the Jewish God was the father of the Devil. A number of Gnostics employed this verse to prove that Jesus himself instructed them that there existed a god in addition to Jesus’ true Father. This other god is the God of the Jews and is responsible for the generation of the Devil and evil. They insisted that this verse demonstrates that determinism plays a role in human nature, especially in terms of the most wicked people, the apostates. According to these Gnostics, it is a wicked deity – the Jewish god – who fathered both the apostates and the Devil.

The early catholics faced a real dilemma when it came to explaining this verse. In order to neutralize it, they insisted that the Greek be read appositionally, “you are from the father, the Devil” even though they confess that reading it this way would be clearer if the genitive article before father were erased.³ Their ultimate concern is that the scripture cannot say “from the father of the Devil,” so they plead that another reading of the text is necessary, a reading that they regard as ‘better’ than the plain reading. They are so certain that that text means “from the father, the Devil” that they freely render it, “You are sons of the Devil,” and attribute these words to Jesus instead of the words found in the scripture. They are uneasy about quoting the Greek in the form it appears in the biblical passage itself. So they tend to substitute for it what they think the passage should say by paraphrasing the passage whenever they reference it.⁴

Early in the tradition, the catholics do claim the literal reading of John 8:44f, “because he is a liar and so is his father.” However, they come up with four interpretative strategies to deal with the problem that if the Devil is the liar, then he has a father who is also a liar. They argue that the passage is interpreted with reference to the Antichrist who is the liar and the Devil his father.⁵ The liar can refer to any evil spirit whose father is the Devil.⁶ Or perhaps liar is anyone who lies, and the liar’s father refers to the liar who fathered the lie.⁷ Some choose to allegorize the reference so that Judas and Cain are liars whose father is the Devil.⁸ Augustine is the first to have realized that the persuasiveness of the Gnostic argument for the existence of the Devil’s father was strongly tied to 8:44f – “because he is a liar and his father” – because the Manichaeans emphasized αὐτοῦ to make this point. So Augustine marks this as the ‘simpleton’ reading and then retranslates it idiosyncratically to mean the Devil is the father of “it” where “it” is falsehood.⁹

As I worked through this Catholic–Gnostic debate, it became clear to me that this debate was not a late development that we could sever from the production and first interpretations of the Gospel of John. Rather this debate was already raging in the Johannine epistles written in the first decade of the second century. Furthermore, the catholic interpretation did not appear to be primary, but secondary, put into place to domesticate an older Gnostic sentiment written into the very fiber of the Gospel of John itself.

A CATHOLIC–GNOSTIC DEBATE IN THE JOHANNINE EPISTLES

Just how early can we trace the dispute over the ‘authentic’ reading and meaning of John 8:44? It has long been recognized that 1 John 3:11-12a – “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, and not be like Cain who was from the Evil One and murdered his brother” – references John 8:44, although most modern commentators understand this reference to be a casual allusion.¹⁰ Given what I have learned about the history of interpretation of John 8:44, I have become convinced that the epistle was written as an exposition on John chapter 8, in order to dispute an interpretation of this passage that the Johannine secessionists espoused. I am of the opinion that the chapter represents an authentic historical dispute that took place at the beginning of the second century, written from the perspective of the presbyter whose opponents were the secessionists. The secessionists were members of a church congregation that was using the Gospel of John. They left the congregation due to a hermeneutical rift that involved as much the formulation of theology as it did christology.¹¹ The presbyter and the secessionists were arguing over the theological implications of John 8:44 and the impact of these implications on christology, anthropology, and soteriology as framed by the Gospel of John. The presbyter’s side of the debate is preserved in 1 John.

The presbyter is an advocate for an early version of the catholic hermeneutic that was developed to tame the plain or literal reading of John 8:44. He wants to set straight exactly who the “liar” is. He has issues with some teachings about determinism, and so wishes to establish whether or not believers are sinners. Finally he wants to resolve a thorny debate that was going on about Jesus’ nature and role.

Given that the interpretation and implications of John 8:44 were at the center of the schism, throughout the epistle the presbyter is anxious to clarify the identity of the “true” God and that god’s relationship to evil and the Devil. With allusion to John 8:19 – “You neither know me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” – he claims that he and his supporters “know” the Son and the “true” God, his Father.¹² Throughout the epistle, the presbyter argues that the “true” God is free from evil, he is light in whom there is no darkness. But God is also “righteous.” This assures kinship between himself and those who act piously.¹³ It also means that although he is a loving Father, he is a just god whose laws need to be obeyed.¹⁴ These laws are not “miserable.”¹⁵ Although there will be a judgment, the believer who is obedient to God’s laws has nothing to fear.¹⁶ God’s love is apparent through his action, when he sent his Son into the world “to be the expiation for our sins.”¹⁷ As for Jesus’ commandment to love one another, this is not really a “new” commandment, but is already part of the old law of God.¹⁸

Given that these were the presbyter’s emphases, what were the secessionists claiming that they knew about the “true” God? Their position appears to represent an early version of the Gnostic hermeneutic that read John 8:44 as a literal reference to the Jewish God and lawgiver as the Devil’s father, while Jesus’ Father was another God. They were claiming that they knew the “true” Father, and he is not the traditional god who gave the laws to the Jews. Rather the Jewish God gave “miserable” laws to be obeyed because he himself was wicked, associated with the “darkness” and “the world.” They emphasized that the God Jesus preached was to be contrasted with the Jewish God of the Law. Jesus’ Father was a God of love who gave a “new” commandment, to love one another, while the God of the Jews was a malicious god who gave the old Mosaic laws to burden people. The secessionists appear to have been claiming that they knew the “true” Father preached by Jesus, and that the members of the church were part of a sinless generation connected to the Father by nature.¹⁹

The presbyter wants it to be clear that this position is nonsense. A person’s affiliation with God or the Devil has nothing to do with a fixed nature. With reference to John 8:44 and in line with later catholic interpretation of this passage, the presbyter states that physical parentage does not determine whether a person is born from God or is “from the Devil” and considered a child of the Devil. Rather this is determined by deeds.²⁰ Here the presbyter is relying on the appositional reading of John 8:44a – “you are from the father, the devil” – to prove his point. The person who does right is righteous, the presbyter says, and the person who sins is “from the devil.” The presbyter then associates the “murderer from the beginning” in John 8:44c with the Devil. He explains that sinners are the Devil’s children “because the Devil sinned from the beginning” and sinners have imitated him. He uses Cain as an example. We should “not be like Cain who was from the Evil One and murdered his brother.” Why did he ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Introduction: In search of the hidden God
• Part I: Concealment of the Hidden God
• Part II: The Human Quest for the Hidden God
• Part III: Revelations of the Hidden God
• Afterword: Mysticism, Gnosticism, and esotericism as entangled discourses
• Bibliography
• Index