Gnostic Trends in the Local Church

The Bull in Christ's China Shop

Philliber

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781630879211
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Gnostic Trends in the Local Church lays out the basic tenets of ancient and modern Gnosticism. Though there are various authors who have written about Gnosticism over the past two decades, many of them deal with New Age teaching, or in a more limited manner, to answer the momentary surge of The Da Vinci Code and the Gospel of Judas. Instead of going in those directions, Gnostic Trends in the Local Church focuses on the more likely place one will meet Gnosticism: in their own home congregation.Michael W. Philliber shows what the trends look like within a congregation and offers ways to remedy them, while abstaining from alarmism. This is an important book for pastors and other congregational leaders for providing them with tools (modern, ancient, and biblical) that will help them guide their people more firmly into the historic Christian faith.

1

Gnosticism

“A faith that discards history . . . really turns into ‘Gnosticism.’ It leaves flesh, incarnation—just what true history is—behind.”1

To get a sense of Gnosticism in a brief view, 2 it might be helpful to ask the four worldview questions described by N. T. Wright: Who are we? Where are we? What is wrong? What is the solution?3 I will also add to these questions a short discussion on alternative authorities. By asking these questions, the reader can get a clearer view of the breadth of Gnosticism and a sense of its intricate network of ideas. More important for our purpose, asking these questions will help us to see more keenly the ways in which gnostic trends are cropping up in our churches.

Who Are We?

In Gnosticism’s view the created order is the work of a lesser divinity, and the creation of our human physicality is the work of the Archons.4 Because creation is a result of a precosmic fall, we are imprisoned creatures. This all simply means that the Archons created our humanity in order to keep the divine substance of the pneuma (spirit) captive.5 This “We’re trapped divinities” theme becomes a key point in the gnostic schema, especially when referring to the relationship between humans and Christ. In Elaine Pagels’s approving words:

What differentiated [the gnostics from orthodox Christians] was the level of their understanding. Uninitiated Christians mistakenly worshiped the creator, as if he were God; they believed in Christ as the one who would save them from sin, and who they believed had risen bodily from the dead: they accepted him by faith, but without understanding the mystery of his nature—or their own. But those who had gone on to receive gnosis had come to recognize Christ as the one sent from the Father of truth, whose coming revealed to them that their own nature was identical with his—and with God’s.6

Pagels’s assertion means that Christ is no more divine than we are. In other words our natures are identical, so that when we achieve gnosis we find that we are really Christ’s twin. This brings Pagels to point out that once we achieve gnosis, we no longer need to see ourselves as Christians, but as Christ.7 By pursuing this gnostic version of the divine, Pagels has thrown out the otherness of God, the I–Thou distinctive, so that the gnostic can now say, I am Thou.8 In this way Gnosticism strips Christ of “being the eternal Son of God,” who “became man, and so was, and continueth to be, God and man, in two distinct natures, and one person forever.”9 Consequently, as Pope Benedict XVI observes, Gnosticism offers a

Completely antirationalist pattern of religion, a modern “mysticism”: the absolute is, not something to be believed in, but something to be experienced. . . . Religion means bringing my self into tune with the cosmic whole, the transcending of all divisions.10

To summarize this point, Gnosticism holds that we—more specifically, the internal part of us—are divinities imprisoned in these bodies. It asserts we are as divine as Christ. What we need is not salvation, but gnosis, secret knowledge that will enlighten us to who we really are and give us a true knowledge that will set our minds free to be what we are, to “escape everything except the self,” to “escape from the world into the self.”11

Where Are We?

Gnosticism goes further and declares that our existence is hedged in by a marred creation, a creation that feeds an alienation between “The Father of truth” and humankind. At first this sounds similar to Christianity’s claim that we are alienated by sin, and all creation with us. But on further reading, it becomes clear that something else is in mind. “The universe, the domain of the Archons, is like a vast prison whose innermost dungeon is the earth, the scene of man’s life.”12 The cosmos in which we live was created by the demiurge rather than the supreme God. This demiurge is often equated with the rough-and-tumble God of the Old Testament. Therefore, when Gnostics refer to the Creator, they are referring to a lesser god. Also in their framework, the Old Testament God is completely different from the God revealed by Jesus in the New Testament.

In a nutshell, to answer “Where are we?,” the gnostic arrangement claims that creation is the result of rebellion; “a deep metaphysical alienation” is built into the creation. 13 Thus the God of the Hebrews, the God of the Old Testament who made creation, must not be such a good chap after all. In fact, there is another God, a good God, who is far removed fr...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Gnosticism
• Chapter 2: Searching for Trouble
• Chapter 3: Biblical Theology
• Chapter 4: Historical Theology
• Chapter 5: Conclusion
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Bibliography