T HE
BE LIE FN E T
G UI D E
TO
gNOSTICISM AND OTHER VA NI S HED CHRISTIANITIES
A lso n·onilnble
T HE BEL IEFNET GU IDE TO .10BBALAH THE BE LI EF NET GU I DE TO SVANCE LICA L CHRISTIANITY T H E SE LI EFNET G U I D E T O JSLA11'1
THE
BELIE FN ET
GU I D E T O
gNOSTICISM AND OTHER VANISHED (HRISTIANITIES Richard Valantasis Pufau hy
Marcus Borg
Three leaves Press Doublt'day I New York
THR~~
L~,\1 ~' PR~ ,-,
PUIILI S iiED IIY D O UIIL E DAY
a division of Random H ouse, Inc. and its colophon are u·ademarks of Random House, Inc., and DOUBLEDAY and its colophon are registered u·ademarks of Random House, Inc.
THREE LEAVES PRESS
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Valanrasis, Richard, 1946The Beliefnet guide to Gnosticism and other vanished Cluistianitics I by Richard Vabnrasis ; preface by Marcus Borg.- lst Three Leaves Pressed. p. cm.- (The Beliefner guides) 1. Gnosticism. 2. Heresies, Christian- History- Early church, ca. 30-600. 3. Church history- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600. I. T itle. 11. Series. BT1390.V35 2006 299'.932-dc22
2005050577
ISBN 0-385-51455-7 Copyright © 2006 by Beliefnet, lnc. Preface copyright © 2006 by Beliefnet, Inc. All Rights Reserved PRI NTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMER I CA
First Three Leaves Press Edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
PREFACE BY MARCUS BORG
1x
INTRODUCTION: NOT ON£ RELIGION BUT MANY
T he Invention of Orthodoxy
xv11
xx1
T he "Big Bang" Theory of C hristian Origins
xx1v
TIMEL/NE: A CHRONOLOGY OF EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORY AND LITERATURE
x xvii
1. THE 1\i.L~NY KINGDOMS oF Goo
Jesus and Diversity
1
Multiculnual Paul
5
2. THE VARIETIES oF GNosTic E xPERIENCE
Bmied Treasure
9
What Is a G nostic?
12
\ .Vhat Did the Christian Gnostics Believe?
15
Hidden Knowledge-The Key That Unlocks the Spirit The Myth of Sophia
20
17
Gnostic Anthropology
23
Gnostic Systems of Salvation
28
Gnostic Biblical Interpretation Demons and Angels
29
30
Pmyer and Mystical Language
31
The Succession of Teachers
32
3. THREE GNOST IC SECTS
Who Were the Sethians?
35
What Did the Sethians Believe?
37
\1\Tho Were the Valentinian Gnostics? \/\That Did the Valentinians Believe? Who Were the Carpocratians?
A
49
54
What Did the Carpocratians Believe?
4.
44
55
NoN-GNoSTIC CHALLENGE TO 0RTHODO:>..'Y
Who Were the Marcionites?
63
The Marcionite Scriptures Marcionite Theology
64
67
5 . T HE OTHER GosPELS
The Gospel of iVIary The Gospel of Thomas The Gospel of the Savior
73
76 78
6. F EELING THE B uRN: AscETIC CHRISTIANITY AND THE QuEsT FOR BoDILY P uRITY
Who Were the "Continents" (aka Encratites)? A Different Kind of Romance Novel
83
What Was Solitary M onasticism? Who Were the Boskoi?
88
93
Who Were the Stylites?
94
Who Were the "Fools for Christ"?
95
Who Were the Vagrant Monks?
7. HoLY
82
96
R oLLERS AND SAcRED TERRORI STS
Who Were the Montanists?
99
What Did the Montanists Believe?
1 02
Who Were the Donatists and the Circumcellions?
1 05
8 . CHALLENGES TO CHRISTIANITY FROM THE R oMAN VVoRLD
Who Were the Manicheans?
11 5
What Did the Manicheans Believe? Who Were the Hermeticists?
121
The Legacy of the Henneticists \1\fhat Is Neoplatonism?
11 7
126
127
What Did the Neoplatonists Believe? The Legacy ofNeoplatonism
APPENDICES GLOS SARY
131
134
13 7 1 47
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
15 3
PRE FACE
BY MARCUS
BORG
T his book on ''vanished Christianitics'' puts us in touch with forms of c.arly Christianity that did nor survive. It thus describes directions Christianity could have taken but d idn't. Scholars and some C hristians have become increasingly aware of cad y Christian diversity over the past few decades. Until about a half century ago, we knew abour these groups primarily from t hc.ir Christian opponents. Bm in 1945, an early Christian library from the fourth century was discovered in southc.rn Egypt. It containc.d fifty-one Christian documents from the first few cc.nrurics of Christianity, most of them hit herto unknown. T hey wc.rc published in English n·anslation in
1977 as The Nag Hammadi Library. At about the same time., Elaine Pagels's book The G11ostic
Gospels became a bestseller. More recendy, her book Beyond Belief(anoth cr bestseller) contrastS the Gospel of Thomas wit h the Gospel ofJohn as t\\'0 very different fonns of early Christianity. Along with Bart: Ehrman's Lest Christianities, it has once again brought early Christian diversity to public attention. T h is book by Richard Valantasis not only stands in t he same
PRE f AC E
'
genre, but also makes a major contribution to our awareness of the, varieties of early C hristianity. Such a\varc.ncss is both intc.r-
cscing a nd important, cspcciaUy for C hristians, and for both historical and contemporary reasons. T o begin with why it's in te resting, here you will mcc.t '(vanished " voices from the first three centuries o f C hristianity. In this book, to mention only a fc.w of the Christian groups that Valantasis describes, we meet: Valcntin.ian Christians (sc.cond century): an dire. intellectual group who devised a sophisticated allegorical and s pirjntal in te rp retation of scJip turc. Marcionitc Christians (second century): a g roup who rejected Jewish scripture (wh at Christians now call th e Old T estament) and the God of Judaism, and produced a "New Testament'' consisting o nly o f a highly editc.d version of Luke's gospel and a collc.ction o f Paul's lc.ne rs.
Montanist Christians (second and third centuries): a c harismatic Spirit-filled ''radical fe minist" g roup {to usc Valantasis' language) t hat ordained women as deaco ns, priests, and bishops. Do natist Christians (early fourth century): a rigor-
ous group that rejected any Christians who had collaooratcd with Rome during the great persecution of th e. c.ar1y 300s, and whose "te rrorist win~., the C ircwncellions, physically attacked collaoorncionist Christians cvc.n as they also sought martyr-
dom.
F'R!;fACE
You will also encounter catly C hristia n documents fro m t his pe riod t hat d id not make it in to t he New Tcstame.n t: the Gospel
of Mary, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of the Savior, Semi Gospel of Mark, and so fo rth. T hese vanished fo rms of C hristianity in vite speculation about "counterfactua1" h istory. Such history im agines what the world would be like if t he historical process had de.vcloped differently. For example, what would our world be like ifHitle.r had vanquished t he R ussians by beginning h.is R ussian campaign a month earlie r in 1941 so that he could have. conquered Leningrad and tv[oscow before the Russian winter set i n? O r, to usc Phi lip Ro th's most recent novel Tht Plot Against A mtr-
ica as an c.-...:ample: W hat would have h appe ned if an isolationist and Nazi sympath izer had won the p residential election against Franklin Roosevelt in '1940? Valantasis engages in such ''countc.rfactual" speculation in his e ngaging o pe ning chapter, in which he imagines what Christian congregational life today might be like if one or ano the.r o f these. groups had continued as the ro ad most taken. An awareness o f early C hr istian itics is not o nly interesting but importan t and hdpful. For C hr istians in particular, it mattc.rs for more than o ne reason. Many of the questions that C hristians struggled with in the first three. cenrurics arc stiU with us: Is the Bible to be interpreted o nly litcrall)\ or may it be in terpreted metaphorically and spiritually? H ow should C hristians live. in a dominant cul-
ture whose values arc radically difiCrc.m fi·om the
xii
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Christian vision? Is Christianity primarily about an inner spiritual fre,cdom that can accommodate. itself to any domi nant culrure, or docs lt also lead to resistance to dominant culture? In early C hristianity, the dominant culture was the Roman Empire. In our tin1c, it is modern VVcstcrn culture. coupled (for Americans) with imperial power. How nmch can Christians comprotnisc with culture, with "the world,"' and still be C hristian? How much should d1e sacred scripture of Judaismwhat C hristians call the Old Testament-matter to Christians? Probably at least a slight majority of Christians today arc "Niarcionitc" without being aware of it.. There is a v.ridcsprcad Christian stereotype that contrasrs the God of the O ld Testament as a God of law and judgment with rlle God of d1e New Testament as a God of mercy and love. T his contrast is implicit :Marcionitism, e.ve.n as it is also wrong. To "'demote"' the God of the Old Testament impovc.rishes our understanding of the Bible and Christianity. There is yet another reason that awareness of early Christian dive.rsity matters. Namely, we arc living in a time of major change (and thus conflict) withi n North American Christianity. A way of being Christian (which I call "an earlier C hristianity"') has ceased to be. persuasive to millions of pe.oplc in our time, including manv who arc Christians as well as manv who ~ ' have left the church or never been part of it. Another way of being Christian (which I call "an emerging
F'R!;fACE
xiii
Christianity") is lx.ing embraced by many within the church . Opponents of this change frequently defend their form of Christianity as being '"traditio nal" Christianity, that is, as the right way of bc.ing Christian, the correct fo rm of C hristianity. But this book makes us aware that there has neva been one single form of C hristianity. As Valantasis ernphasizcs, we mistakenly rend to think of Christian diversity as a relatively late development. Our conunonly told story portrays the church and C hristianity as a unified institution until the eleventh century, the period of "the o ne true church." Then in 1054 the great cUvision betw~.n western (Roman Catholic) and eastern (Orthodox) C hristianity occurred. Some centuries later, in the Protestant Reformation of the si.xteenth century, western Christianity divided again, c.ventually into hundreds of denominations, many of them scelcing to return to the "pure" form of Christianity of the Nc.w Testament and the earliest ccnruries. But thc.re were many forms of Christianity from its earliest days. There have been many ways of being Christian fTom the beginning. No one way can c1aim robe the only way. So also in our time: no particular fOrm of Christianity can claim to be the o nly true form, the only right way. This awareness raises ano ther question: Arc there some ways of being Christian that aren't really Christian? To put that diffcrc.n tly, is every group that claims the name "Christian" authentically C hristian? I don't have a prc-eisc. answer. But two things seem dear to me. On the one hand, there arc ditlCre.nccs that do not disqualifY o ne from being Christian. I usc as an example the famous conflict bct'A•ccn t\vo Christian leaders of tl1e early fourth ccntUf)') Arius and Athanasius. They were the prim ary antago nists
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at the Council of Nicaca in 325 C. E., the council (as this book notes) that created most of the. Nicc.ne Creed that is used in churches to this day. At the cc.n tcr of the controversy was the ultimate status of Jesus. For both Athanasius and Arius,Jcsus \ll,'aS utterly ccnn·al. But was Jesus one with God, of the same substance as God, coeternal with God, part of the Trinity (Athanasius)? Or was Jesus of mmost importance but nevertheless a little. bit less than God, created and no t co-eternal (Arius)? Athanasius and his position won. But docs this mean that Arius wasn't really o r authentically Christian? 1\l[y own answc.r: of course. Arius was a Christian. T he difference bctwc.cn him and Athanasius wasn't great enough to disqualify him as a Christian. In general, doctrinal d.iffere.nccs like this do not seem to me to be the determining factor in whether a person o r position is Christian. On the other hand, it seems equally clear to me that there arc groups and thc.ologies that claim to be Christian that arc. not. To usc two obvious c.'\an"'ples, the Branch Davidians convc.ned by David Korcsh and white. supremacist "'Christian" groups arc far beyond anytlllng recognizably C hristian. About such groups, it is not ditlicult to say, '"Nor Christian.·• Of course, those arc the e.asy cases. Bm they do suggest that thc.re arc. boundaries to what can be called C hristian, even as those boundaries should not be narrowly drawn. Discernment about the boundaries of authentic forms of Christianity is less clear when we think about some of the forms of cad y C hr istian diversity that Valamasis reports. Fo r cx:unple, several of these groups disparaged the material wor1d as lxing the crcarion of an inferior god, a god who 'A'aS evil, and
F'R!;fACE
not the true God. So, do we say, "TI1cse people denied that the world was created by God, and therefo re they ,,.,eren't C hristian''? Or do we say, "These were Christians who denied that the material world was the good creation of G od''? Such discernment is difficult. Bur accord ing to a saying of Jesus reported in lVlatthcw's gospd} the p rimary test o f discernment is "'By t helr fruits~ you shaU know thc.m." The fruits arc o ften vc.ry mixed in t he lives of most Christians. O f the C h ristians whom Valantasis describes, we know very linle about the virtues their lives embodied. IVlost of th em viewed the world as evil. But were their lives filled with compassion, i n spite of their frequent disparagement of the world as evil? Or were their lives filled with judgmentalism, grounded in spiritual clitisrn or unredeemed anger or both? \ •Vould we sec among them~ if we knew more about t hem, the lives o f saints? Thus also in our tim e., the test of'wauthc.mic,. Christianity is
"By their fruits, you shall know them." The Spirit of God can and docs work th rough a varic.ty of \vays. So, I welcome you to this book. Read it to satisfy your curiosity about these vanished forms o f C hristianity, including some vc.ry strange ones. And usc ir to reflect about what it means to be religious today by struggling with the questions that faced th em.
I N TROD UCT IO N
NOT ONE RE LIGI ON
BUT MANY
l n the first cc.nturics aftc.r the crucifixion o f Jesus, a rich variety of beliefs and practices developed throughout the ancient world,
n1any of thc.m C h ristian in name but startlingly d.iffc.rcnt from what we thin k o f as Christiani ty today. !VIcmbers of long forgotte n Christian movements created dauntingly complex philosoph.ical systems- some of which dcscrlbc the world as the creation of a lesser God and Jesus as a mo rtal man. There
wc.rc pious monks who sat o n pillars in the d esert; others crawled about on their hands and knees eating grass to save the wor1d; still othe rs regarded fla tulence as an audible sign of d ivine grace. Thc.rc: were. ascetics and libertines; biblical fu ndamentalists and revisionists- some C.'
have bc.come much better known in recent years, not only through serious-minded populari7.ations by highly regarded scholars like Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman, but throug h b lockbuster novels like TheDa Vitui Code and the hit action movie The .Matrix.
ltviii
I NT RODUCT I ON
Better known, perhaps, but not widd y understood. Alternative Chrisrianities arc ''altc.rnativc"' only because o ther, competing fonns o f C h ristianity rose ro dominance. As a historian I o ften wonder what the world would have looked like if one of these now-vanished fo rms of C hristianity had assumed t he mantle o f o rthodm.:y---or if Christianity had rcmaine.d as pluralistic as it was when it began. Imagine for a moment rhat G nostic C hristianity had su rvived this early p rocess of narura.l sdection and that what we now call orthodox C hristianity had become c.xtinct. You arc a devout G nostic C hristian who has just moved to a new city. In the parish you moved avvay from, you participate.d in a G nostic spirirual g roup that eagerly devoted itself to Bible study, prayc.r, and meditation, both solitary and communal~ you also engaged in i ntense theological and spiritual debate. You and the mem bers o f you r spiritual g roup expected far more out of church than what could be garnered from a Sunday morning worship service and cofi"c:e hour. You believe in t he superioriry of t he spiritual world; you distrust t he matc.rial, created world. You bdievc. that the Bible provides instructions fo r an ascc.n t out o f the material wor1d and imo God's realm-and t he Bible you study includes books t hat don't appear in Catholic o r Protestan t Bibles today, such as t he Gospel ofT!Jomas, the Gospel ofMar)', and the Apocrypbotl of
john. You log on to the Internet to find a sirnilar church in this new CJty. T he Sethian Gnostics come up firs t. Their version of C hristianity seems qui te compatible with what you arc usc.d to. T he whole. community fu nctions like your o ld Gnostic srudy group: almost everyone meditates and most attend meditation services
I N TRODUCT I ON
XIX
at the church; they pray ecstatically~ and they have a re-ally incredible intellectual life. They sntdy rhe srars and find deep, hidden meanings in the most familiar of Bible passages. You never know what new r\Vist they'll give ro the liturgy. But when you look at o ther options, the Valc.ntinians seem very promisingt too. They advertise., howc.vc.r, that the service fo r the coming Sunday is only fo r the most spirirual members of their community. As a non-initiate you would not be v.•dcomc. You make a mental note to sec if they otTer catcchesis (instruction in the tenets of thc.ir spirirual system). Perhaps when you have. some tirne you can audit one of their classes. T he Encratite C hristians sound intriguing. Though not G nostics, the.y have a lot in common with them. Encratite means ''self-controlled'' o r "self- regulating, .. and these C hristians not only engage in punishing fasts and intc.nsc prayer but reject marriage and sex because they bdicvc salvation is available only ro rhe bodily pure. But your spouse might not be thrilled at the prospect of your joini ng this group, so you scroll down to the fourth option. The tv[arcionitcs arc not really G nostics, either, but they have always intrigued you. Like you, they distinguish bcrv.•een two Gods, one the evil creator of the. mate:rialunivc.rse and the other the loving spirimal God who is the father ofJesus. What is strange to you, howcvc.r, is that they have deleted every refen:ncc to the. lcssc.r creator God from their scriptures. T11cy do not acknowledge the O ld Testamem at all, nor do rhey include the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John in their canon. It would be interesting to hear from them. T he Net td ls you that their bishop will be preaching next Sunday: this might be a good tim e to find out what else .IVIarcionite C hristianity has to
I NTRODUCT I ON
offer. Your search completed, you arc heartened to know that your city has such a generous selection of Christianities from which you can choose. This fantasy gives a sense of what the possibilities might have been if orthodox Christianity had not prevailed over all other kinds of Christianity. During the. first centuries of Christianity, Gnostic, Sethian, Valentinian, Nlarcionit<"1 and Encratite churches thrived alongside orthodox churches that claimed Peter, James, John, o r some o ther apostle as thc.ir founder. Christianity 'A"'J.S not one religion but 1nany, brimming with wildly divergent beliefs, extravagantly differc.nt styles of worsh.ip, and theologies that bo th challenged and delighted the. mind. Christianity is similarly diverse today-there arc Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches, and innumerable denominations along the way. Presbyterians and Episcopalians, Russian Orthodox and Ro man Catholics, M ethodists and Southern Baptists usc diftcrent liturgics and offer radically different pc.rspcctives on some major theologica1 issues-but few today questio n whetl1er or not they arc all really Christian. T he. early varieties of C hristianity that will be discussed in this book wc.re. condemned as heresies; those who considered the.msd ves orthodox sought to stamp them out. Eventually they succeeded-if these divergent ideas couldn't be c.'-tirpated altogether (Gnosticism rentrned with a vengeance at the beginning of the second millennium with the Cathar heresy, for example; the Reformation revived some of the earliest challenges to orthodox C hristianity), all of these groups were exiled fro m the church and eventually disappeared.
INTRODUCT I ON
T HE INVENT I ON OF ORTHODOXY
Obviously this is not the story that most Christians learn in 01 Sunday school, when: they are taught that 0rthodox" Christianity is the religion that Jesus tOundcd, and these lost varieties, if they are mentioned at all, are dismissed as deviations from or corruptions of t he original model. Why do we believe this tn)~h?
Part of the reason goes back to the Roman cmpc.ror Constamine. In 325 C. E., the church was embroiled in a controversy about the namrc of Christ. Followers of Arius (ca. 25(}...336 C.E.),
a Libyan-born priest who had lxcn a deacon in Alexandria, believed that Jesus vvas not of the same substance as his Fathc.r but had been created by hirn- in other words, that there was a time when Jesus had not yet c..xistc.d. Bishop Alexander of
Why s.c.£. or c.£.? a.c.£. stands for "Before the Common Era,'' as opposed to s.c.,
which means 116efore Christ." c.r. stands for the Common Era" 11
and replaces A.o., which ls the abbreviation for the latin term onno Domin~ "Year of the lord." The new designations intention-
ally avoid dating people and events by reference to fesus Christ in order to allow people of other faiths to use a common dating .system without religious prejudice. It t.s also important for Christians because the dating of the lne of Christ has been adjusted to account for errors in tabulating the years that were made during the Middle Ages. According to the corrected calendar jesus was born in 4 B.c .E. and died in 29 c .E., which renders B.c. and A..o. meaningless.
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I NTRODUCT I ON
Alexandria conde.m ned the notion as heretical and removed
Atius from his post. but the idea quickly spread throughout the Christian world. Possibly because o f its intuitive appeal, the Atian heresy was particularly widespread and stubborn. Constantine, t he first C hristian empc.ror, needed Christianity to be doctrinally consiste.n t and centraUy organized if it was going to hdp hi m hold together t he vast empire he had tnhcrited. Ho ping to create a strong sense ofunity and cohe.sion among his subjects, he summoned some. three hundred bishops from Rome-. Alexa ndria, Athe.ns. Constantinople, Jerusalem, Italy, Greece., Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Gaul to a meeting in th e Turkish city of Nicaea. This first ecumenical council-so called because. its participants represented the entire '"'inh abited world'' (oeaunttu in Greek)-formulated a credo, a pledge that all Christians could recite th at affirmed their basic beliefs. Along with this N ice.ne Creed came a revisionist account of C hristian histo ry. According to th e bishops, Christianity originated in Jesus' teachings. which ,,.,ere then spread by his male disciples-first to t he Jews, and t he n through Paul ro the Gentiles. The bishops derived their aut ho rity from the Catholic (or ''unive.rsal") C hurch, which was founded by th e aposdes. lt was a mo nolithic, unidimensional description of how the church came to be. Constantine's plan did not succeed, of course. Unity cannot be willed. But by attempting to draw a straight line from Jesus to t hcmsdves as Jesus' representatives and successors on cart.h, and reviling any deviations fro m th is path as heresy, the bishops of the Nicenc Council excluded many alte rnative forms of Christianity. The word .. heretic" come.s from d1e Grc:ek word meaning
"~to
choose for one's self.'' T11osc who went their own
way, thinking di.tlCrc.nt thoughts fro m th e. bishops, living lives
I N TRODUCT I ON
IIXiii
Text of the Mcene Creed
We believe in one Gods the Father, the Almighty, creator of everything seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord 1esus Christ, the son of God, the only begotten of his Father, that is of the essence of the Father; God from true God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father through whom aU things were made, things in heaven and on the earth. For us humans and for our salvation, he came down, and he became enfleshed, and he became human, he suffered, and he rose again on the third day, and he went up to the heavens,. and he will come again to judge the living and the dead. And [we belie~!
cated from another substance or nature,N or that "the son of God is changeable or differentiated," these the holy Catholic Church anathematizes.
a little on the edge, maybe looking peculiar or sounding a little too lnrellecrually elitist to bishops' cars-those arc the ones the emperor and the bishops drove off. Too bad. The surviving church lost some really interesting people. The hunt for herc.tics didn't begin with the Nicene Council. lrenacus (ca. 130-202), the bishop of Lyons in Gaul, first stepped up to the plate, setting the tone for every subscquc.nt heresy hunter. His cantankerous attitude toward the Gnostics and other alternative Christianities~ as well as the sniping and disdainful tone of his writings, left no doubt that he was in
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I NTRODUCT I ON
charge. But lxfore he could launch his attacks o n the alternative C hristians, lrc:nacus had to create an alternative C hristianity of his own-one that we now call ''orthodox Christianity."
What Is Orthodoxy? northodoxyn is hard to define. The easiest way to understand it is that it is what remains of Christianity after all its heresies have been removed. Various ecumenical councils of the church decided what was and wasn't heretical; the positive articulation of doctrines (ruch as the person of Christ, the Trinity, the Creeds) al. most all came in reaction to some unorthodox thinking or practice that was being condemned. Orthodoxy may also refer to those churches that are in communion with the ancient bishops of Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople, or Antioch {in Syria), who led most of the earty ecumenical councils.
TH E uB JC BANe'' THEORY OF CHRIST I AN O R JCINS
After the Council of Nicaca, the i1npc.riaUy sanctioned and militarily supportc.d separation of C hristians into rwo camps, herctica1 and o rthodox, began. Prior to that time, C hristianity had gone off in a number of different directions simultaneo usly. This diversity of beliefs goes all the way back to the carlic.st days of Christianity-to the time. of Jc.sus hirnsclf. I subscribe to what ] might call, using an analogy from physics, the "big bang'' theory of C hristian o rigins. This theory bcglns not with the bishops' stories bur with the study of Christian literature in its histo rical and chronological sequence.,
I N TRODUCT I ON
lf we loo k at New Testament writings in their chronological order, this diversity becomes self-evident. Chronologically, Paul's letters-rather than any words of Jesus- provide the earliest evidence for Christianity. Paul's earliest lcttc.r (First Thessalonians) was written sometime in 50 C .£.1 approximately twenty years after the crucifixion ofJcsus. ln contrast, rl1c earliest gospel, rl1c Gospel of Mark, was composed sometime between 65 and 70 C.E. 1 some thirty-five to forty years after the crucifixion. Matthew (written ca. 90) and Luke (written ca. tOO) used Mark's gospel as a starting point, but sig nificantly revised it for their own particular communities. The author of John wrote his gospel about 110 C. E., giving an interpretation of Jesus' life and works that was altogether diffcre.n t from his predecessors'. Each author drew as weU on collections of Jesus' sayings and o ther sources, which offered up differe.n t accounts of the same events and altogether unique stories. Evc.n this brief chronology shows how diverse Christianity was at its very beginning. Each community of bdieve.rs used the materials it inherited to develop its own story about Jesus. Each community reworked the tradition to address particular issues that spoke to its own circumstances. No monolith here. The "big bang," an explosion of diverse Christianitics, was woven into the very fabric of the New Testame.n t. ln the end, Constantine and the bishops couldn't wipe out the alternative Christianitie.s that they had compete-d with for so long. They stood too dose to the heart of Christianity to be d rive.n out without killing C hristianity it.sdf. Alternative and orthodox Christianitics were closdy bound, if nor chalncd, to one another~ they compelled c.ach o ther to articulate d early
I NTRODUCT I ON
what they believed a nd how they diffe red. I n fact, t he bishops' story of ''orthodox" Christianity makes scan t sense unless you know the he re.tieal" ideas they were reacting to. C hristian d.i11
vc.rsity lived o n fo r centuries, and it is rccmc.rging in our 0\,.'11 era. T hat diversity is what this book is about. H ere you will read about Gnostics, imeUccntals, ascetics, and charismatics. T h c.rc. were Sethians and V.-.Jentinians, lVIarcionitcs, Encratites, and Montanists-aU of them inh erito rs o f th e scripnu-cs, aU of them claiming a deep and abiding relationship to Jesus and the Kingdom of God he proclaimed. You will learn about un£,miliar gospels-by Mary, Thomas, Philip, and oth ers-that taught differen t, chaUenging , and fascina ting theologies and expressed new ways ofexperiencing the Christian G od . Finally, you
will learn about some of C hristianity's strongest cotnpetitors from outside the faith-the Manichcans and the Neoplatonists. Ovc.r the course. of its h istory, C hristianity has lea rned how to incorporate different understandings, practices, and beliefs under one umbrd la. The Protestant Reformation undermine.d t he monolithic story that the bisho ps had tried to impose fo r so long; alternative C hristianities a rc. now accepted as legitimate denominations. The f:1.ntasy wtth which I began th is book may not be so outlandish as it sce.ms. T he various fo rms o f contemporary C hristianity often reflect t he same issues, the same modes of thin king, o r similar conclusions about holiness, the world, a nd t he way to salvation that we fi nd in eatly C hristian ity. But before we can make those. conn ections, we need to know where th at d iversiry began.
Note: Except whC'rc othC'r trnn.slators rue noted, all of the transbtions t h:tt ~p pt'at in this volume arc my own.
T I MELI NE:
A
CH RON OLOG Y Of
E ARLY C HR I ST IA N AND
4 a.c.~;.-29 c.t:.:
H I ST ORY
L I TE RA TU RE
Jcsus'lifc
Js c.t:.: Paul embraces his mission to include the
Gentiles J;-JS: Paul's missionary activity in Arabia (Gal l:l7)
38: Paul visits with Peter in Jerusalem (G al l:l8) 3S-4S:
Paul's missionary activity in Cilicia and Syria (Gal l:21) Collections of the Sayings of Jesus (until about 50 C. E.) Early sayings of the Gospel ofThomas Sayings collected in the Synoptic Sayings Source for Matthew and Luke Collections of miracles (until about 55 c.E.) The miracle collections o f Mark and the Signs Source of John
Healing stories in the Hellenistic mode (missionary competition) Apocalyptic scenarios (Paul's letters, Mark 13, and others)
XXV iii
t I ME l I N E :
A
C H R 0 N 0 L 0 C 'I'
.
•
.
.,s: Apostolic Council in Jerusalem (Gal2:1ff.; Acts 15} .._s oR 49: Paul's "'incide.nt" wlth Peter at Antioch (Ga12:1 Iff.) 5o: 5.:
Paurs 1 Thessalonians Paul's Le tter to the Galatians
52:
Paurs 1 Corinthians and the lctcn preserved in 2 Cor 2:14-6:13; 7:2-4 Pat~'s Letter to the Philippians, Philemon, and 2 Cor 10-13 Pat~'s letter preserved in 2 Cor 1:1-2:13; 7:5-16 Paul's Letter to the Romans Pat~ travels to Jerusalem; the collection; his impnsonment Paurs imprisonme.nt in Caesarca Paul travels to Ro me Pat~'s martyrdom
54-;s:
;s:
.ss-s6: 56: 56-5s: 58:
6o:
66-7o: The Jewish uprising 6:;-7o: The Gospel of J'vlark; the beginnings o f rabbinic
Judaism 66: Fighting
the Jewish revolt 68: Vcspasian proclaimed e mpe ror while in Palestine 68: Titus appointed to Palestine to suppress re,•olt 7o: Titus destroys the Temple in Jerusalem and takes
So:
the spoils to Rome Pauline school's Letter to the Colossians
9o: The Gospel of M atthew
T I MELI N E:
A
CHilONOlOC\'
.
.
•
)(XU
9;: Letter to the Ephesians (as CO\'Cr letter to the publica tion of the Pauline letters) 1oo:
The Gospel of Luke (Volume I of the Luke/Acts work)
1oo:
The Revelation of John
1oo-no: The Gospel ofJohn; Johannine letters (I John;
2 John; 3 John)
no: 1 Peter no: The
Gospel".[Thomas
n5: Acts of the Apostles (Volume 2 of the. Lukc!Acts work) n;: The Pastoral Epistles ( I T imothy; 2 Timothy; T itus) and the Aas of Paul and Theda u 5: Epistle to the Hebrews n;: Letter to Jude •3o: 2 Peter, James •J>-~Js' The uprising o f Simon Bar Kochba; Hadrian re-
names Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina t;o-t55 :
IV1arcion; Valc.ntinus.
1 THE MANY K I NGDOMS
or Goo
E"eryone who "'"""' in the Name ifthe Lord" ought to he md"'d. but Inter 'ivhm you haw aamintd him )IOU will knaw him, for )'(JII haw the mnprehewion ifthe good and the had Ifthe Gnf who
IO. fCUF. Xl l.l-l:
JESUS AND DJ VE RSJTY
Diversity in Christianity came directly from Jesus hi mself. It began long lxfore his death, with the first proclamations of the IGngdom of G od. TI1is aspect of earliest C hristianity-its multi.f:1cctcdncss, its inclusion of radically d ifferent conceptions of itsdf.-,,.•as buried by the triumphalist story that the bishops wrote after they'd successfully suppressed their rivals. It will take some digging to uncover it but it is worth the effort. \A./ c will need to put aside some o f our preconceptions before
we can understand Jesus' mission and why he encouraged such d iverse understandings of the religion he ended up founding. First of all, Jesus was not a C hristian. Jesus was a Jew who lived i n a region occupied by the Romans. There two very d lffc.re.n t cultures and religious o rientations thrived side by side,
2
gNOSTIC I S M .. .
t he Roman and the Jewish. The region was probably trilingual: G reek, spoke n by all; Aramaic, spoken by the local people of Palestine and Judea; a nd Latin, th e official administrative language of the Roman occupation forces. Jesus probably spo ke two of th ese languages. We presume he spo ke Greek because aU of his p re-Served sayings-and in fact all of th e earliest surviving Christian lite rature--exist primarily in Greek. Greek v.'as the common language of the peoples living in occupic.d Judea, and it had been the intdlccrual language of the Jews since the time of Alc:-.;andcr the Great thn:.c cen turies before. It
is virtually certain that Jesus spo ke Aramaic since it was the commo n language of t he indigenous peoples o f his region . Second, Jesus never said he was God. I know this is hard for many contemporary Christians to u nde-rstand, but it is true. nonetheless. Christians affinn that Jesus is God, but that is something that C hristian s say, not anything t hat Jesus eve r said about himself. Jesus focused o n proclaiming the !Gngdom o f G od, a d ivine empire u nder God's sole imperial authority. He never clearly defined his own role in that kingdorn. H e never even define.d precisely what constituted the Kingdom. H e just proclaimed it to a nyone who understood Greek. In the Greek-speaking Ro man world there wc.re many ways of undc.rstanding the d ivine nature. of a person. Roman em perors, fo r example., were made gods upon their death, making the living emperor a ;'son of God." ,4Jthough Jews maintain ed a monotheistic theology, they also included divin e figures, o r at least semidivine c haracters, in t he.i r worldview. Sophia, the divin e mind of God, whose name. literally means "wisdom," was one such figure. Jesus would have appeared as a divine messe.n ge.r to Romans by virntc of his
THE
MANY
K I NCO OMS
Of
COO
3
proclamation of the Kingdom of God and to Jews as wcU by virtue of the. divine. wisdom that he spoke. But Jesus never de-
clared himself divine. Third, if]csus preached in G reek as opposed to Aramaic, we have to assume that he intended to communicate with anyone
who could understand the language-Gentile and Jew alike. Jesus' message was no t ddivc.rcd just to the Jews and then carried to the Gentiles by Paul after his death 1 as most of our histories o f C hristianity te.U us. Jesus intentionally undertook a universal mission him sdf. T he usc of Grcc.k as the primary lan-
guage of the proclamation ofJesus and the proclamation of the Kingdom of God by Jesus' followe rs emphasizes the universal mission of early Christianity. It is because this mission \ll,'aS al-
ready universal that Paul began his mission to the Gentiles. None of Paul's adversaries objected to his mission; they objected only to his dismissal of Jewish relig ious rites and practices for the Gcntilc. Christians. The early church undc.rstood Paul's mission to be a continuation of Jesus' own.
Fourth, Jesus told people to enter the Kingdom of God and to create it in their own contexts. He said such things as ''the
Kingdom of God is dose to you!" (Luke 10:9), and ''the Kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21), and "blessed arc the poor because the Kingdom of God is yours'' (Luke 6:20). And of course Jesus often introduced his parables with "the Kingdom of God is like . . . " followed by a stoty. T11e Kingdom of God was his message. TI1e Kingdom of God, howevc.r, did not
look like any other kingdom of the world. You might say it looked like the opposite.. The poor, the meek, and the hungry became lc.adc.rs in that kingdom. \\Then abused, the members
of the Kingdom turned the other check. They did not expect to
4
gNOST I C I S M .. .
earn any inte rest on mo ney loa ned o r even to have th e money returned. Jesus proclaimed a really remarkable. Kingdom o f God t hat rurnc.d cvc.rythi ng on jrs head. H e p roclaimed it both to Gen tiles and to Jc\
c.vc.ryonc could understand. O f course, there were some, like James, John, and Peter, Mary Magdalene, and Jesus' mother Mary, who knew Jesus personally during his lifetime. But realistically, most of Jesus' early fo llowe rs probably knc.w him only
by reputation, by hearing some repo rt about Jesus' words o r deeds, o r by a kind of mystical experience o f the Kingdom Jesus proclaimed. But all of them sought to c.xtend the Kingdom of G od as t hey understood it and gather all the peoples of d1e world into it. The King dom and the people who prodaimc.d it spread like wildfire. These earliest King dom movements remained as diverse as t he people who p roclaimed them. We can sec this in th e Epistles of PauL Some movements followed Jewish Jaw as it was given in the O ld Testament while others rejected it. Some. movements insiste,d that me n be. circumcised; others rejected t he custom. Some claimed to perform miracles; o thers rcjcctc.d t he possibility. Some devoted the.msclves to u nderstanding the revelation in the Old Testament; o thers lived out their lives guided only by God's spirit. Most of these communities, howevc.r, diffe red starkly in one. ""Y fi·om Jesus' own preaching. Tilt)' recognized h im as God's own So n, not just as a divine messenger, but as a divini ty in his own right. T heir proclamation o f Jesus as God's Son and the savior o f th e world through his death and resurrection ncvc.rt hdess rcsulte.d in a multiplicity of beliefS and practices. The New Testament attests to that great dive rsity; indeed, it pre-
THE
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KI N C O OMS Of
COO
served in its own pages many of the confticts and arguments about what \-.•as central to the faith.
MULT I C ULTURA L PAU L
Paul's lcnc:.rs provide a window into the conflictual divc.rsity of early Christianity. By examining his rdationship with othc.r Christian missionaries we can uncover the roots of some of the lost C hristianitie.s. Almost eve.ry one of his lc.ners begins with his self-designation as "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ." Paul differed from the other apostles in that they had known Jesus personally, whereas Paul knew him only spiritually. Sometime after the crucifixion, Paul had a vision ofJesus that was so powerful that he not only lx
6
gNOST I C I S M .. .
Jesus had sent him to the Gentiles to bring them i nto Israel's inheritance-but that did not include the law. The law was appropriate fo r Jews, but Gentiles could enter the !Gngdom through faith in Jesus alone. Here were two radically different understandings of the C hristian life-and both of them arc found in the Christian scriptures. At last the a postles compromiSi:.d , ag reeing that t he only law Paul and his churches needed to obc.y was to rcmcnlbcr the poor (Galatians 2: 10), which Paul was eager to do anyway. T h ey sc.nt Paul on his way. A t first everything went as well as could be expected among people who disag reed so seriously. But as Paul reUs us, it turned out to be an uneasy compromise. Paul started off to\-vard Asia 1'\ll i nor a nd G reece to build churches among the Gentiles. T he Jerusalem apostles had hoped that these two kinds of Christianity, Jewish and Gentile, could coexist. But almost immcdiatdy there was friction. \ 'Vhilc Peter was o n his own mission to the Jews of Antioch he visited one of the churches that Paul was founding amo ng rhe Gentiles. Peter and Paul found themselves at a mixed dinner party ofJews and Gc.ntilcs, aU followers of Jesus and members of rl1c !Gngdom of God. Paul was delighted: to his mind, this was precisely what Jesus wanted- Jev.'S and Gentiles eating together at the same table. But Pc.ter couldn't bring hirnself to violate the Jewish dietary law. Yes, Gentiles and Jews could cat together, he said- provided that rl1e Gentiles first adopted Jewish customs. Peter withdrew and a furious Paul confronted him face to face; they parted Jess than friends. The contour of the perpetual argument within Christianity between unity and divc.rsity had been set. Paul's troubles d.jd not end there. His o ppo nents and ene-
THE
MANY
K I NCO OMS Of
COO
7
mies dogged his tracks, attempting to undo his work in the churches he. had already founded. Paul complained about these rival Christian missionaries i n 2 Corinthians. Two groups were particularly inimicaL About the first g roup, Paul says, "'1\n not like those others, the peddlers of God's Word!" (2:11). These so-caUed "peddlers'' came with letters of recommendation from o ther cities. A letter of recommendation was a meal ticket-one. pc.rson writes another to commend a person for free room and board, or some o the.r matc.rial assistance. These n·avc.ling-salcstnan-rype evangelists llved well while. they preached the gospel; in contrast. Paul complained that he. had to ,,.,ork with his own hands to support himself. Paul did not argue with their message but with their methods. He ""lued self-sufficiency; they valued the good life. They brought lettc.rs of recommendation to get provision; PauJ wrote his own letter of recommendation on the hear ts of the Corinthian believers. 1\lloreovc.r, these rival evangelists embarrassed and humiliate.d Paul, saying that he did not deserve to be supported, impugning both his person and his message. The second g roup was even more vicious than the firs t. Paul referred to them moclcingly as those ''supcr1ative apostles'' (12:11 ), but he had to fight fie rcely to hold on to the Corinthians he had convened. These superlative apostles claimed that while Paul's letters were powerful, h.is personal presence v.-as we.ak and contemptible (10:10). They told the. Corinthians that Paul's lc.n:ers were aimed ar terrifying them. Infuriated, Paul countered that his adversaries preached a diftCrcnt Jesus; they had a different spirit; they prodaimc.d a different gospel. H istory has not pre.sc.rvc.d the exact content of his rlvals' teachings.
8
gNOST I C I S M .. .
but we can surmise by Paul's defense o f himself that th e.gospel t hey proclaimed was mo re oriented to Jewish p ractice: t hey announced themselves as H ebrews a nd Israelites (11 :22); they boasted of special visions and revelations (12:1-5); rhey performed miraculous deeds (12:12). Paul insisted that he was all
of those, too-he was a H c.brcw1 he had recc.ivcd visions, and he knew Je-sus. Evc.n tually the Corinthians reconciled wit h Paul, bu t he. had a hard time . Some of 2 Corinthians reads like testimony from a painful divorce trial. Paul's letters indicate just the tip of the iceberg of early
C hristian d iversity, a state of afFAirs that would cvcnmally drive t he bishops ro distraction and, a few centuries later, in1pd the
first Christian emperor to the usc of fo rce
to
establish and
maimain uniform belief and practice. They provide. a record of t he vigorous competition between the. early evangelists, th c.ir profound disagrccmc.n ts about what is true and important, and t he violent emotions inspired by t hc.ir theological positionsaU in all, of the incredible varic.t y of exp ression that charactc.rizc.d Christianity in its earliest years.
2 TH E V A R IETIES oF GNosnc ExPERIENC E
_Wtsdom is radiant and Jtnfoding. and ;he is t.asi&rdim·rned hy thou who l&ve her, and is found by /Mst who seek htr. She hastens to makt hmelf kuownto thott who dtsirt her. One who rises t.ar!y to u.ek htr will ha·ve no dijfoulty,for she will be found silting at thegate. Toft.,· ones thought on hfr is perftct tmdmtanding. and one who is vigilant on htr account will soon htfru ifcart, bt
STA~ O A R O
6:12-15
\'t:RSI O N
BU R IED T R EASU RE
G nostics have. so ofte n been caricarurcd throughout the course o f \ Vcstc.rr'l history tha t it is difficult fo r us to envision them as rc.al, li,~ng, serious-minded pc,oplc. Actually they arc not as strange as t he popuJar im aginat ion has made them out
to
be;
they were simply rdigious enthusiasts with an intd lc.c rual bc.nt and an intc.n sc spirituality. G nosticisrn was subtle. sophisticated, and audacious; it d azzled the mind. Gnostics of every variety th ought of themselves as a spiritually vital, intellectually curious religious e lite.
10
gN O S TI C I S M . . .
Gnosticism made the cotwc.nrional church look drab and boring, alm ost stupid in comparison. This dismayed the bishops. who did not appreciate be ing characte rized as the. leaders of a flock of dullards and the spiritually lax. So the church's opposition to G nosticism began c.arly and stayed late, starting in the second century and continuing rig ht up umil the present day. T he biggest difficulty wlth studying G nosticism is that until very rccc.n tly it was defined exclusively by its o pponents. tv1ost of what we know about it comes fro m arguments again st it, written by irs c.n cmics in the second, t hird, and fourth centuries. lrcnaeus (130-200) and Tertullian (160-240), H ippolytus (170-236), and Epiphanius (310-403) were irs most prominent critics. Even the non-Christian Plotinus (205-269), a third-century Ne.o platonist philosopher, took a shot at it. It scctns that the G nostics were threatening to everyone. Thc.ir opponents made them look like comic book villains. accusing them of everythi ng fro tn stupidity to incest and cannibalism. T his n:.lentlessly one-sided vision of Gnosticism might have remained unchallenged had it no t been fo r a remarkable discovery in Egypt. O ne day in 1945, an Egyptian youth named M uhammad Ali al-Samman and his brothers rode thc.ir camels out to the Jabal al Tarif, a huge cliff across the Nile River from the town of Nag Hammadi, to dig fo r sahakh, a soft, nitrogen-rich soil that they used for fertilizer. \•Vhcn thc.y uncovc.red a large rc.d earthenware jar, they wondcrc.d if it didn't contain a jinn, a spirit. But they had heard legends that gold was buried in d1e caves that dotted the cliff, so they broke it open. T hey were disappointed-all they found in the jar were.
THE
VAR I ETIES
Of
CNOS l l e
E X PERIENCE
II
some old codices (books written on papyrus). They brought them back to their house and Jcft the.m ncar the oven . Their mothe r put the books to practical usc, tearing pages out of the m and using them as kindling for her fires~ but e.ve.ntually- whilc the police were questioning the brothers abo ut a murder they'd committed in a blood feud-the books were entrusted to a lo-
cal priest for safekeeping. After a long, fraught journey through the black market~ they came into the hands of scholars~ who identified them as Coptic translations o f long-lost Gnostic
tc.xts that had originally been written in Greek: the Gospel if Thomas, the Gospel if Pbilip, cl1e Aperrypbon ifjoht1, cl1e First and Se.-qnd Apocalypse ifJames, the Gospel ifTruth, 0 11 tbt Origi11 if the World, the Sophia ifjesw Ch,.isl, and many more. Most likely a monk whose bishop had forbidden him to read unsanctioned books had hidden them in cl1e late fourth cen-
tury. Now that they had bee n miraculously recovered, fo r the first cimc we could hear the Gnostics in their own vo iccsl not
mediated through clle distorted, parodic paraphrases of their o ppo nents. One point still nee.ds to be made.. Fo r the. most part, gnosis had a positive connotation in the early days of the c hurch.
Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-215), a significant secondcentury C hristian theologian~ used the te nn "true Gnostic" as a legitimate category for unde.rstanding the Christian life~ and no o ne questions his o rthodoxy. Cleme nt's kind of Gnostic v.-as fine~ but othc.rs were not. Even l renaeus distinguished bctv~·cen
true and ''falsely so-called gnosis" in his compendium o f he resics. The opposing bishops made sure we knew the difference be t\veen true knowledge, which they taug ht, and the false
knowledge taught by the Gnostics thc.y opposed.
12
gN O STI C I S M .. .
Very few people in antiquity actually called t hem selves G nostics. M any philosophers, Jewish biblical interp reters, a nd C hristian apostles and tcachc.rs, as well as adherents o f o ther ancient religions such as t he Hc.nncticists (sec c hapter 8), used t he tc nn ··gtlosis, • t he Greek word meaning knowlc.dgc., to refer to a wide assortmcnr o f thi ngs. T he tc.nn "Gnosticism" it-
self docs not appear in ancient texts; it is only since the mid-e ig hteenth century t hat scholars have used t he designation as a convcnic.n t mea ns of unifyi ng the complex and variegated movements o riented toward gnosis.
W H AT I S A G N O ST I C ?
I\1orc than knowkdgc, guosis conno tes understanding, intuit ive perception, insight, learning. In the. most general tcrmsl Gnostics arc simply those who arc o riented toward knowledge and underscanding-or perceptio n and learning-as a p articular modality fo r living. M o re specifically, G nosticism refe rs to the various associations a nd movements tOu ndcd in t he first centuries o f the Comrno n Era (though varieties of Gnosticism have em erged in every age) by t hose wh o called t hemselves Gnostics-or, more importa nt, whom othc.rs charactc.rized as such. In evety generation th c.re arc some people who simply can not accept or fi nd much satisfaction in t he standard a nswers to t he ultimate questions o f hum an existence. They want somet hing more, fo r themselves and for th c.ir corclig ionists, t han what they pe rceive to be. th e lowest lcvd of understanding, so t hat t hey might know the best and most fulfilling way to live.
THE VAR I ETIES Of
CNOS l i C
E XP ER IE NCE
13
Seeking a greater depth of understanding, the Gnostics investigate and pursue religion in the light of the most complex and richly variegated intellectual tradition of their day. They analyze what constitutes proper social relationships, in o rder to create. profoundly cohesive associations of people with similar in tellectual and spiritual interests. They embrace current science and seck to understand the connection betw«.n the physical and rhe spirirual realms. Gnostics doggedly pursue the very knowledge that o thers seem not to grasp, a knowledge that dra'A'S them from rhe safety of known catego ries and ideas to the insecurity of religious and spiritual questing. T his description of Gnosticism underscores its elite mentality. Gnostics pride thc.rnsclves on having access to information that's no t fo r the consumption of rhe genc.ral public but reserve.d only for those few who arc capable. of study and understanding (esoteric, as opposed to exoteric, knowledge). Gnostics, in short, represent seekers of a particularly intellectual and spiritual sort. We have all known the type. G nostics know that the world they c.xpcrience. on a day-today level is illusory and wicked. In the movie Tbe i'Jatrix, the hero discovers that the world he thought he lived in--a present-day American city-is actually an illusion created by an evil intelligence who wishes to keep humans asleep and rhus enslaved~ in another movie, The Troman Show, the hapless protagonist discovers that the only world he has ever known is a stage set-that everyone. and c.ve.rything he's cvc.r cared about arc f,, lsc and that the god of his world, the rurcctor of the TV show that he has unknowingly starred in for all of his life, has deliberately kept him in igno rance of his true nature. T he popularity of the paranoid science fiction of Philip K. Dick (his
14
gNOST I C I SM .. .
novels provided t he plots for such popular movies as Minority
Repcrt, Blade Runner, and Total Re.-a/1) a nd th e seeming ly irresistible appeal o f X-File; conspiracy-mongering about everything from UFOs ro the. Kennedy assassination and t he origins
of AIDS suggest that dtis suspicion-that "reality" is not what it seems, that malicious powc.rs are deliberately lylng to us- is hard-wired into the human b rain. If Gnostic religion is rare nowadays, Gnostic bdicfs and attitudes arc nor. As with most religious moveme nts, the Gnostic sc.cts o f the early C h ristian e ra have a few t hings in common, but more. t hlngs diffc.rcntiatc and contrast them. Later chapters will explore spccjfic Gnostic t raditions, movcmc.nts, beliefs, and practices. But here let me outline the commonalities among the different versions of C h ristian Gnosticism, b ased on my wide reading in both the a nciem texts abom the writings of heretics and t he. ne.w ly discovered Gnostic lite rature. But first we should ask a basic question: Where did these earlv C hr istian Gnostics come from? '
It is an interesting and u nsolvable p roblem. Scholars have argued about it for centuries. All agree that Gnosticism was a product of cultural and i nte llectual dashes. Did it emerge. in t he pre- Christian era when Pe rsian dualism, a belief in the strict separatio n of light and darkness o r good and evil, a nd the monothe.istic Israelite. religion, a belief in the one true God of Israel, were at odds with each o ther? ]f ycsl this would make
.
G nosticism a vtn' o ld religion. Or was Gnosticism c.n tirdv a ~
dualistic Persian import to the W est? Also ancient. Perhaps G nosticism
\\'aS
a product of the dash betwcc.n the H ellenistic
Greek culture put in place by ;\lcxander the Great and h is followers throug hout rhe l'vliddle East and a newly emerging
THE VAR I ETIES Of
CNOS l i C
E X PERIENCE
)5
Christianity, what the influen tial scholar Adolf von H arnack called t he "acute He.lknization of C hristianity"? Cc.rtainly G nosticism and C h ristianity coexisted for many years. Possibly G nosticisn1 first arose. among t he Jews, as a theological response to the traumas they sufiC red during t he Jewish wars with the Ro mans. Since all o f Gnosticism seems to be particularly interested in what the first few chapters o f G enesis said about the c-reation of t he world and hun1an beings, this makes in tuitive sense. But still othe.r scholars say no, Gnosticism arose primarily as a C hristian movement t hat broke. away fro m o rthodox Ch ristianity. All of t hese. theories arc plausible; no o ne can prove o r disprove any one of them beyond the shadow of a doubt. We simply do not know where Gnosticism came from o r v.•hat caused it to become so popular. But popular it
\<\
if we can believe
the repo rts o f the heresy hunters, lt penetrated to every cornc.r o f the ancient C hristian world.
WHAT OlD THE CH RJ ST IAN GNOSTICS BE L I EVE?
A G nostic of the first five centuries o f t he Common Era fc:lt imprisoned by his or her body and by the physical world, which prevented the. exploration of true insight and knowledge, or
gnosis, that the G nostic so avid ly desired. T he body and the physical world were problems to be solved: material existence, whethe.r of the self or o f the cosmos, was by narun:. bad. This belief, t his problem of the body and material existence, emerged from a particular undc.rstanding of t he rdationshi p betwc.cn the spiritual and the material worlds. Gnostics under-
16
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stood these worlds to be separate. and divided: the material ,,.,orld was a place of entrapment, the spiritual world aflOrdc.d liberation. The Gnostic myth of creation describes the. origins of this dualism. Gnostics believed that an evil dcmiurgc-thc term they used
to describe the fabricator of the physical universe- created the material world and the bodies that inhabit it. T he true spirirual God-anothc.r deity altogether-created t he spiritual world and the spiritual bodies of humans. The demiurge, who o pposed the true God, probably out o f ignorance and arrogance, entrapped people in their bodies and within the material world to prcvcm them from attaining the purd y spiritual and inunatcrial world that was created by the true God. This problem of materiality and its ddctcrious effect on the human pursuit of rcalitv was the foundation of all Gnostic svstems. ' ' The Greek \1\.' ord demiourgos (which literally means "'artisan') had some stature in Platonic philosophy, notably Plato's Timaew, in which it charactcriz.c.d and rcfe.rrc.d to t he. f.1 bricato r of aU material creation. The ancie.nts assumed the preexistence of matte r prior to the creation of t he world, so the dc.m iurgc used material already available to create t he world and the humans who live.d in it. In Platonic philosophy, this \'lo'as an entirely postttve process. The Jews and the Christians, however, could not usc this term to describe a God who created the world out of no thing (ex nihilo), as described in Genesis. The.Jewish and the orthodox Christian God did two things: first God brought bc.ing out of nothingness~ and second~ God cre.atc.d both the material and t he spirirual worlds-in o ther words, the creator God and the dc.miurgic G od of Gnosticism were one and th e same. Ho\1\.'-
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ever, while the Gnostics valued and appreciate.d the world of the spiritual creator God, they believed that the demiurge had fabricate-d the material world precisely to prevent hurnans fro m understanding and knowing the n·ue creator God. T he physical world was a trap that caused a seeming narcosis, o r a sleep state, among humans. G11osis, true knowledge and insight, began when the stupor induced by the demiurge. was overcome. T hat awakening required a savior who would come. to release the Gnostics from their stupo r of materiality. The savior's work was to proclaim the existence of the spiritual world and the rc.aliry of the true, spiritual G od. T his proclamation was a clarion call to throw off the dulling effects of material e.xiste.nce and to begin to pursue the way to true., spiritual knowledge.
H I DDEN K NOWLEDGE -
THE KEY
THAT UNLOCKS THE SPI RIT
Bur how
to
do this? How could the Gnostics transcend their
matc.rialiry and asce.nd to the higher~ more spirirual world? T he demiurge locked their true spiritual selves behind the door of matc.rialiry. Once the Gnostics had the proper key to unlock that door, they could enter the tntly spiritual world. The key was gnosiJ, secret and 1nysterious knowledge. But what was this hidden knowledge? Each Gnostic system answered that question in different ways, as we will sec in subsequent chaptc:.rs, bur I can provide a general charactc.rizarion here. That knowledge consisted first of all in the recognition that the material world and embodied existence prevented Gnostics from knowing their true selves and their true and
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spiritual God. T rue knowledge was deposited in the sacred scriptures, the Bible. So much of Gnostic knowledge eme rged
from the interpretation of specific biblical passages: in the Old Testament. the creation of the world and o f the first human be -
ing in Genesis 1:26-28 and especially the second creation story of Genc.sis 2:-1-3:24; the killing of Cain by Abel (Genesis 4: 1- 15); and the stories about Seth (Genesis -1:25); in the New Testament, the story of the mustard seed (Luke 13:18-19; Matthew 13:31- 32) and the parable of the workers for the harvest (Matthew 20:1-16). When properly interpreted, these biblical passages (and many o thers as well) provided the Gnostic with the saving knowledge that would thwart the dcmiurgc.
That knowledge. also involved the rc.cognirion that the mind needed to be awakened from its matc.rial stupo r befo re it could
be connected to the truly spirirual wor1d and to the divine mind that created it. Theological anthropology, the religious understanding of the nature of the human being, provided the rationale. Human beings consisted of body, soul (psyche), and spi.rit (ptuu11U1). Gnostics believed that only the spirit, not the soul, could intuit the divine rcalnl. Therefore, rhc body needed to be trained to submit to the sout and the soul, in turn, to submit to the spirit, which connected the human to God. Gnostics oftc.n described this process as discovering and fo llowing a ''divine spark.. that resided in the. pe rson, a divine spirit that,
properly unde .. tood, would lead to true knowledge of self and of the true God. To defeat the demiurge and gain access to the divine mi nd of God, Gnostics also required up-to -date "scientific" knowl-
edge, which they gleaned from cosmology, astrology, demonology. ang dology, medicine., physics, mathematics, geomc.n·y, and
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sophisticated int~.rpretations o f the scriptures (rcme.mber. the "scientlfic method/' with irs objective proofs and c.xperimentation, was still more than a t housand years in the future. Nluch o f what t he Gnostics considered scien tific. we would d assify as metaphysical). These scientific t heories frequently oolorcd G nostic speculation. The. cosmo logy of t he day. for c.xa.mple. mai ntained that t he physical world was characterized by dense n"'atc.rialit)', but that the cosmic sphc.res became. more and more spiritual in substance as they moved o utw·ard toward God. G nostics applied their knowledge of the physical universe and the planets to help t hem advance from the physical world and in to the e.thercal realms o f the spheres. The Gnostics knew that good and evil supernatural entities regulated the human body. From their studies of ang clology and demonology, Gnostics learned how to manipulate t hese be.ings in o rder to rc.lease t he body from its material limitations. Nluch o f their literature includes various incantations of d ivine lettc.rs, mag ical spells, secrc.t names, and other mysterious phrases to assist in this endeavor. All o f this knowledge remained out o f the reach of the normal person; it was available o nly to those select few who could hear the savior's call-and had the intdlc.crual and spirimallnsig ht to respond to it. The Gnostics thought o f them selves as a select or elect people who had knowledge of the divine spark planted de.c p within them and who could follow it from their body th rough the entire cosmos to a mystical u nion with God. The knowledge sought by these intensely intcilcctual seekers constituted a kind of doctoral-level education in the t hlngs o f the spirit while the rc-.st of humanity remained stuck in elementary school. Gnostics believed t hat o nly t hey had access to
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t his elite knowledge. Only t hey u nderstood the nature and goal of human existence. Only they knew where they caine from and where th ey were going. As for those ignorant unfo rtunates who were oriented only to the body and the soul, not to the d ivine spirit. many of them found n1Uch ro rcsem in the Gnostics' smug sense of election. Resentment o f the Gnostics• scc.m ingly arrogan t presumption, as nmch as a ny doctrinal issues. fuc1cd the intense opposition t hat would cvcnntally drive thc.m underground. Often th ese t hem es of t he G nostic caU, the spark of knowledge, and the Gnostic election coalesce in Gnostic sayings. The foUowing saying from the Gospel ofThcmas reads almost like a
Gnostic crtif:.d:
jesm said, 'Ifintmsted people sa)• to you, 'From whm do y011 'ome?' reply to them, 'll'e
1fthey nsk )'011for proof that the Father dwells in )'011, amwer timn in ibis Wt.?'• 'lt is motionn11d rest. •·" -1'1/f: C:OSP£L OP TIIOM,tS, SAYI NG )0
THE MYTH Or SOPHIA
Where did the d cmiurgc come from? And what is the o rig in of this falsct material univc.rsc that we a rc. stuck in? The. Gnostic myth of Sophia oflCrs one answc.r. In some ancient Jewish tra-
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ditions, Sophia (the Greek \\'ord fo r ~wisdom") was represented not only as the personification of God's wisdom but as his consort. She appears in the so-called ''wisdom books" of the Bible attributed to King Solomon-Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and the Song of Songs. A reference to Sophia is also found in the peculiar plural used by God in the creation story, '"Let us make man in our own image, according to our likeness" (Genesis 1:26). The plurals "us• and "our'' arc understood to refer ro God and his consort, \Nisdom. ln Gnostic tradition, Sophia was one. of the spirirual beings that cm anatc.d from God. Bm whereas in Genesis God was the creator of the wo rld, in Gnostic mythology W isdom took the initiative and attempted to create the world without God's approval. Sophia's attempt 'A"
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22
dwc:Ucd. As they undertook their own journeys to salvation,
Gnostics reversed the arrogant desire of Sophia and dcconstructcd the matc.rial world of th e dcmiurgc. Ironically, it was Sophia's f.1.1l from d ivine grace t hat made
possible the Gnostic asC<'nt toward grace. As the Gnostic moved from t he. known material world to t he unknovm spiritual world, fro m the nantral world to the s upcrnarura1 world, fro n1 the imitation world of th e. dcmiurgc ro t he true spiritual world of God, he or she retraced the ste ps o f creation, back co t hc.i r spiritual source. The material world was but a poor copy
of the spirintal world-but it looked enough like its original to show t he. Gnostic the
\\'ay
back to truth and salvation.
Once in the spir itual world, the Gnostic would no longer be
subject to birth or death. Bc.ing born and dying marked rl1e material world as mutable, temporary, irnpermanent, and imperfect. The di,~n c. realm revolved about cycles o f rcgc.n eration and renewal, the opposite of the material cycle., C lcmcm of Alexan dria, t he leading o rthodox teacher of the famous Christian school in Al c.xandria, preserved some sayings of one of his contemporaries, a Gnostic teacher named Theodorus. In a passage that explains t he basic tenets of Gnosticism, he writes:
Baptism a/on~ drm n/JI Javt us. We are S~X~ed by the knrro»ledge ?[who'"' art and whtrt '"" btgan, fJJhere •wt ha-~ hem and •what 'Wt have hecome,
whm '"'are going and whot has libtrattd w, what tomlitutes {rea!} birth and
JS:;:
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Simply by knowing about the irnmutab1c wor1d and initiating steps to advance toward it, the Gnostic made significant headway in his or hc-.r ascc.m.
GNOST I C ANTHROPOLOGY
G nostic philosophy divides the cosmos into different 1cvcls o f purity and holiness- from the coarsest and most material to the finc-$t and most spiritual. In the second century, a Gnostic teache r na.rned Ptokmy wrote to an aristocratic Roman lady name-d Flora, urging he r to join his group. In his lcttc.r, Ptolemy
explained that the scriptures have three levels: the pure law of God, the law the Savior ovcn hrew and rejected, and the. sym-
bolic law.
My dear sister Flora, Although the III'W was estahlislud through Moses, 110t mauy people haue undmtood it properly. JV!ost haw an iuacmmte knowledge both ofthe oru who established it and ofthe law it-
"/f .. .
First, J"'" should uudmtand that the totality ofthe law in the Pmmkt"h of Moses was not instituud by only one legislator I mean by this that some [ofthe Pentateuch] comesfrcm G.d alone, SOI!It ltr
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mated wme II>Ws through his otvt: thoughts; and the third part if tlu law should he ascribed to the people\ eldm, 'o»ho seem to hot•e mated some cfthtir V/ the law<>/ God is mi.<ed with inftl'ior and unjust thinking. The Savior mmr tc destrcy this part cfthr law because it "-VIS forrign to the Sa<>ior) naturt. The third part<>/ the lo:w (Omists ofmaterial that i1 a//egoriall and 1)'11lbolic. It prtunts 1m image of tramandmt spiritual realities. Thtu the Savi(IT' metaphfffi:ud, taking material from the phyma/ and W <>jGcd is itselfdivided into three parts. Thr Sawor cwpleted the first, for he it1dudes thm: in his prohibiting ofanger, lust, and oath-taking the commandmmtJ: "You shall not kill. You shall not commit adulfn'J'· Ycu shall ·not swear falsely." The Savior complete{)' destrO)d th< mond part: here the oppositt rtplaus ';>In eye jor an rye and a t()Oth fer a t()Oth, • u•hich is filled with injustite. Tht Sa
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mor~ abtJul our ttarhing about tht origin
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ofal! thingJ in a situ-
pie, unmAted, incorruptible g.M. There is time enough for that. . . . Later, God wi1li11g, )'{JU wil!lear~~this and 1111Uh more about the .rigin and motion rfa11 things when ) 'OU have hem tesud aud found vxmhy to rerei" the apostolir tradition to whirh uv ourse!<Jes have surueded. At that time u~ wi11prove a11 these truths to )W frqmthe /eathi11g rfthe Savior. This has bteu a briif!mer, my sister Flora. I ha<>e not tired "')'st!fout, hut hatv treated {these mailers] rursorily and with St!f!io'ent titta;!.for an introduction. You V.!ill IMrn more in the future, ifyou ha" hetome theftrtile ground upou which the ued has bunthroum. -
f ROM T HE l.E1'TER 0 1' F T Ol. EMY T O ft.OR;\ f'RESERVE L> I N
t:f'l f' H .'\NIUS's .Hf:J)ICI N£ Cllf:S1. A CAI!\'STALl. 1/f.'RF.Sir:S XX X 11 1. 1-7
Ptolenly makes h ierarchical distinc tions in the purity and qua1ity of biblical rcvdation as reflected in the three sources of the law: there is t he law t hat comes from God alone, the law that
Moses created, and the law that the elders promoted. At each successive level t he purity o r san ctity d im in ishes, from the pur.:.st and holiest to the most c
beings. For Gnostics three d assc• of people existed: the hylic (from che Greek word byle, meaning "mactcr''), the psythic (from the G reek word psyche, meaning "soul"), and the. pmumatic (from the G reek word pneuma~ which mean s "spirit" or "mi nd"'). The sa me p rogression from matc.riaJity to spiriruality in the o rganization of the cosmos was replicated in the understanding o f the th ree natur.:s o f human bc.ings.
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gNOSTIC I S M .. .
The hylic pe rson was complc.tdy o riented toward the material world. T he hylic person had no intimations of the divine. spark, could not hear the call of t he. Savlor, and was cotnplctcly lacking in the insight o r knowledge to bc.gi n an ascc.n t toward t he divin e. The hylic was asleep and un aware, complc.tdy en-
trapped in the material world. Hylics existed as animated corpses, o r as brute beasts, unable to u nderstand cithc.r thcmsdvcs o r othc.rs, and thc.y cc.rtainly could not comprehe nd the nature of God. The psychic person was one step beyond the hylic. The psychic person had an inkling that th e spiritua1 and divine realm existed. Psychic people knew enough to understand that the
material world debilitated them. but not enough to perceive t he divine spark, or ro hc.ar the call of the Savior, or to bc.gin to ascend. G nostic Christians considered regular churchgoing Christians to be psychic Christians. The. psychic Christians a t least knew that there is mo re to life than me re a ppearance and materiality, bm th ey did not know how to transcend them. The Gnostic was a pneumatic person. These. people understood their de.c tion to ascent; th ey recognized th e interior divine s park. They had heard the Savior's call, and they oriented t hcm sdvcs compktcly to their asce.n t to the d ivine. rcahn. The pneumat ics alone understood the true nature of t he world as a de.m iurgic imitation of the true spirirua1 world o f God. The.y alone pursued t he knowledge necessary to progress throug h the cosmos toward divin e u nion. Gnostics were by nature. pneumatics; all other people must be c.ither psychics o r hylics. The three categories revealed t he fundamental nature of each person. The system explained why some people (the hylics)
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simply do no t understand why o thers (the psychics) seem to understand and yet reject true knowledge, and why still others {the pneumatics) seem to thrive in the divine realm and eagerly pursue their exit fro m the material wo rld and their entrance into the divine. From the Gnostic perspc.ctive, some people will never understand, others will catch a glin1pse, and still others will come to true life and regeneration. T he system explained not o nly the Gnostic identity, but also the. rc.lationship of the G nostics to all the o ther peop1e in their society. The pneumatic person, the Gnostic, was engaged in the cosmic struggle for rdeasc from the imprisonment of the matc.rial world. This meant that the Gnostic experienced the self as alienated from the world; he o r she actlvcly resisted the effects of mate.rial existence. T his struggle between the material and the divine did not arise because of a cosmic struggle bcrv.•een two equal fo rces, good and evil. The struggle arose rather in the desire to know the real, as opposed to the ephemeral and imaginary world, and to know the spiritual, as opposed to the. false image of the real as it was poorly reflected in the demiurge 's creation. The Gnostic's true home ,,.'as the divine realm, the
plerrJma, not this alienating and confining world of materiality. One of the. manuscripts found at Nag Hammadi was a partial translation of Plato's Republw-though Plato was no Gnostic, the Gnostics saw the world in some ways as Plato described it in his parable of the cave: as a shado"'Y simulacrum of a transcc.ndent reality. G nostics experienced their pneumatic status while still locked in their bodies. The body served as the medium fo r their ascent until they could leave it behind altogether when they ascended
gNOST I C I S M .. .
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beyond the final sphere. Gnostics used a number of dificre nt metaphors to express th is trans-figured bodily state. For example., Gnostic C hristians compared their embodied lives to a body rcs-
ur rc.ctcd from the dead) a corpse that was tillc.d with the divine. presence, a bodily life. already manifesting o utward ly its inward
divine spark. Gnostics spoke of thcm.sc:lvcs as already Uilmonal.
T hey undc.rstood their election as a guarantee of t he ir cvcntua1 union with the divine and therefore they u nderstood thcmsdvcs,
c.vc.n in their embodied state, as having already achieved immortality. Hylics and psychics could not achieve. this stams: their nature condemned them to the confines of mortality. But the Gnostics cou1d cxpcric.ncc the wonder of thc.ir own regeneration and divinization while. still in thc.ir bodies. Gnostics looked in t he wo rld around them for signs of the regeneration th ey sought. They "read" other people and the cosmos in the same ''-'
explained why the law of God came either from God, or 1VIoscs, or t he elders of Israel. It also explained why some people never understand, others understand a little, and still others achieve an understanding that p ropc.ls t hem toward asccm and union with God.
GNOSTI C SYSTEMS OF SA LVATION
Sotcriology is the study o f systc.m s of salvation. The Gnostics devc.lo ped a very s pecific model of how salvation worked. Their
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syst~m
began with the Savior whom the suprem~ God sent to wake up the world. TI1is Savior, as we will sec in later chapters. was called by differen t names: Jesus, C hrist, Messias, and Seth, just to name the most prominent ones. In the Sophia myth, fo r example, the Savior descended into the material world to remind those capable. of hearing that they have a divine spark within them. Unlike all o thc.r people who take on matc.rial existence, this Savior always rem ained fully awake. The Savior was a model for imitation by the Gnostics, as well as their guide back to the place of their origin. Salvation began with the response to the Savior's call and continued with the process of shedding the material body, ascending through the cdestial sphc.rcs, and uniting with the supreme and truly spiritual God. The G nostic's return restored what had been missing from the pleroma as a result of Sophia's an ogance and the false matc.rial crc.ation of the demiurge; salvation completed the cycle.
GNOST I C B I B LI CA L I NT E RPRETAT I ON
Biblical interpretacion o r exegesis was a primary tool that the G nostics utilized in their return to the divine fuUness. Ptolemy's letter is just o ne example. The scripturc~'i provided the G nostics with primary information, but they needed to understand the scriptures o n a deeper level as well. The G nostics' subtle interpretations of scriptures trained their m inds so that they could sec God properly. T he prologue and Saying I of the Gospel ofThomas shows
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how G nostics approached the sayings of Jesus: ..These arc the mysterious words of the li\•ing Jesus, which Jesus spo ke and which J udas Thomas recorded. A nyone who finds the meaning of t hese words will live foreve r." In oth c.r words, interpretation can confer immortality! Gnostic interpretations of th e. creation story in Genesis 1- 2 led rhc Gnostics fro rn a prope r undc.rstanding of creat ion to t hc.i r rerum to the paradise from w hich God c.xpdlcd the o rigin al hum ans. The G nostic syste m of salvation was concerned
v.•ith much more than t he fa tes of individual souls. ln repairing what Sophia had broken, the Gnostics restored the divine fullness to God and to other divine bein gs. In this sen se, the fate of t he entire cosmos d epended on t heir cfl"Orts.
D EMONS AND ANG ELS
Gnostics believc.d that demons and angels rukd and controUed t he body. Throug h various mean s, o ften associated with mag ic in the. modern world, a G nostic ,,.,orkcd to wrest t he body from its controlli ng fo rces. Knowing the names o f the dcrnons o r angels that regulated a particular parr o f th e body gave t he Gnostic power over them. T he Apoayphott
of joht1,
for exa mple,
describes th e formation of Adam's body and gives the names of the demons associatc.d with each part. The Gnostics could also
e nlist the suppo rt of good d c.m ons or angels to support th c.n"' in thc.i r effort to comrol or transform their bodies a nd to counter t he debilitming effects o f mate riality.
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3)
PRAYER AN D MYSTJCAL LA NGUAGE
The Gnostic entered the divine fullness t hrough prayer. T he mind exte nding outward in prayer c.n tcrc.d the divine fulln ess to join th e.Aeom (sacred beings that emanated from God-the word literally me.an s ''age'' o r "l ife.t ime" in Greek) a nd othe.r divine beings in t heir p raise of the supre me a nd true. G od. In p rayer, the Gnostic's mind lite raUy left his o r her body and e ntered t he pleroma, a kind of foreshadowing of what would eventually happen to the Gnostic's whole being. O fte n the Gnostic's prayer o f praise erupted in to a kind of mystieallanguage, similar to the ''speaking i n tongues" or g lossolalia c.xpc.riencc.d by charismatics throughout h istory. This Jang uage consisted of vowels set in various patterns that exp ressed the Gnostic's ecstatic cxpc rie.nce.. Like t he parts o f the body, the alphabe t also had mystical power, especially the vowels. A passage nom the Allogenes (61 :3-17), a N ag H ammadi docu ment, o ffe.rs t he foUowing example.: This is the son's thanksgiving for his enljghtc-nment: ~o Grace! After (I ha\•e c.xpcrienccd aU] these things 1 thank you by singlng you a hymn. For life has rome down to me
from you when you gave me wisdom. 1 praise you.] call you by that name hidden [deep) \\~thin me. a 6 ec 0 CCC 000 ii 0000
00000
0000 uuuu 00 060000600 OOl:J0600 00
00. You arc (ccrt.tinJy) the one who Jives in the spirit.
Rcverc.n tly, I sing you a hymn." T he Gnostics' mystical language. usc.d t he power of these vowels in praye-r as a means to propel t he.m in to an experience of
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t he d ivine fullness and to project t he m furth er along the path of their own reunion with t he divine realm.
T HE SUCCESS t ON OF TE A CHERS
Gnostic teachers passed on their secret knowledge and skill to thc.ir students, who in rum became teachers to still others. Pto lcmy,s Jetter to Flora mentioned an apostolic succession of
teachers, from Jesus to the Christian apostles to the Gnostics t hcmsdvcs, and irnplicd that, should Flora join his commu nity, t his knowledge would be passed on to her. The orthodox C hristian church es appropriated the idea of apostolic succession fro m the G nostics in o rder to counter th c.ir claim to special knowledge. In both the o rthodox and the G nostic carnps, t he phenomenon remained th e same: their teachings were said to have bc.c.n handed down to thc rn d irectly from the Savior. T he Gnostics' sophisticated belief systems enrich o ur understanding of tiuniliar Bible stories and parables. \.Ye'U d ose this chapter with the following selection from the Gnostic "'Hymn of t he Pearr' (from a G reek manuscript o f the apocryphal Arts
if T!Jomas,
which I have slightly paraphrased), which traces
t hc.ir system o f salvation i n richly symbo lic an d poetic lan guage- a splendid e vocation of t he. rich ness and subtlety of Gnostic thought. When I was just a baby living in my Father's very wealthy
and )\L\:urious pa1ace in the East, our native land, my parems provided me with great treasures from their enormous wcaldl and scnr me off with it. , , . They took otT
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my bejeweled and gold-encrusted robe, which they had made. for me because of their great love for me, and made a deal with me never to forget the robe with my name written on it. They said, "'Travd to Egypt in search of the one pearl, which adorns the destructive serpent. If you return with it, we.will rerum your gold-and-jCM•cl-cncrustcd robe to you, and you wiU reign with us as the heir to our kingdom." So off I went out of the-East following a tormrous and dangerous road. I had rwo guides because I was unfamlliar with the route .... As soon as we got to Egypt my two guides left me. So I went as fast as I could to find the serpent, whom I found asleep in his nest. I wanted to take the pearl from him. So I changed my appearance to look like an alic.n, not Gkc othc.r Easter-n people. l met another Easterner who looked like a r
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My parents became aware of this and grieved deeply. They sc.n t out a proclamation to all the kingdom .. . which everyone had to sign, saying: "'From your Fathc.r the King of Kings and your mother who rules aU the East, . .. to our Son in Egypt: Remember the pearl that you were scot to rc.rricvc from Egypt, and rcmcrnbcr that you arc royalty, for you have cntcrtd into bondage. Remember also your gold-cncrustc.d robe. Your name is written in the Book of Life . . .. ··Then the king scaled the proclamation with his ring. AU of a sudden the proclamation Acw down to me and became living speech. I took it and kissed it, eagerly read
it. And I knew that it was conveying infom\ation that was written in my heart. Then 1 remembered the pcarJ 1 was sent to Egypt to reclaim. I began to weave magical charms against the wicked serpent. Using the powerful name of my Father, I pm the serpent to sleep. Then I rook rhc pear] from him and rcrurnc.d it ro my parents. I took otl' the filthy clothes of the Egyptians and left their land in orde.r to return home. As I travded, I fOund the letter thar awakened me. That letter had a voice and roused me when I slept, and it guided me as a light on the pad> homeward. i\11 I could sec before my eyes was the royal robe awaiting me.
3 THREE GNOSTIC SECTS
T he writings of the early Christians who studied the so- called heresies (hercsiologists) list many kinds ofGnosties.The foremost
are the Scthians and Vakncinians-cvcryonc seemed concerned about their teachings. So 1 prcsc.nt them here. From among the varied G nostics o f lesser concern, I have chosen the Carpocracians, who had a very peculiar sort of Gnostic system, bm one t hat provides a fascinating window on a kind of Gnostic practice. WHO WE RE THE SETHIANS?
For I .1m lhrfirst and thr las/. I am the honored otu aud the srorned ont. lam the where and thr haly one. lam the wifo and the
•Nag Hammadi LibrniJ' in English. NHLE cit"J.tiunli rc:fer to 'l'ht Nag Hammodi Libnny in English, edited by j :tmes M . Robinson, H arperCoUins, 1990 (rc:vis('d edition). NHL refers to the Nag Hammadi Librmy; translations by the author.
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gNOST I C I SM .. .
T he. Scthians wc.rc like n1any people I know today who arc spiritual seeke rs, who restlessly travel from one religion or s-pir-
itual tradition to another in search of wisdom. One of my friends is a typical example. She and I started our in the same C hristian denomination, but she sccrncd to nc.cd more. H old ing on to her C h ristianit)\ she began to do yoga. T hen she added Hindu meditation. Next came New Age crystals and scents, t hen some Wiccan rituals. She seemed capable o f expanding her horizons with each c.ncoumcr. She never really gave up hc.r C hristianity; she simply addc.d new traditions at each turn to expand her undc.rstanding and hc.ightc.n her religious c.xpc:.ricncc. This is how I understand the Sethian Gnostics. T hey wen:. vc.rsatilc an d eager seekers who in tegrated cvc.r y
n·adition t hey could find into t heir t hought and practice. O f all of the Gnostic sects, Sethian G nosticism had t he dearest sense of what constituted crue knowledge. Like my friend, the Scthians n1oved fro m religion to religion, incorporating what seemed appropriate, fo rever combining and refining their knowledge. Their texrs display the history of their pilgrimage throug h the in tellectual world around t hem. Jo hn D. Turner, i n his essay "Sethian Gnosticism: A Literary History" (in Nag Hammadi, Gnostitism, a11d Early Chris-
tianity, edited by C harles H edrick and Robert H odgson, Hendrickson, 1986), describes the development of t he Sethians fro m chcir origins in t he first century B.C. E. as a baptisma1 sect t hat amalgamated P latonism with Jc.\,.'ish biblical in terpretation. Then, in t he first and early second centuries C.E., these Jewish Plato nists adopted some Christian ideas and practices.
By t he third century Sethians had become dissatisfied wit h C hristianity and moved a\\'ay from it, splintering imo a variety
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o f G nostic g roups. Turner's h.istory shows how the Sethians engaged with every movement that offered promise. for developing the in terior life and for perfecting its adherents. Much has been learned about Sethian teaching from the Nag H ammadi d iscovery, which yielded a rich lode of fifteen texts.
WHAT DI D THE S ETH JANS BE LJ EV E ?
T he Sethian G nostics considered Sed1, t he third son of Adam in t he book of Genc.sis, to be both a rcvcaJc.r and a savior. This is consistent: since knowJc.dge saves, the rcvealer of mysterious knowledge is a vehicle of sa1vation. Here's a passage from the ending of the Aporaf;opse if Adam, an early and foundational Sethian tc.xt:
Adam made these revelations known to Seth, his son. And the son taught his seed about them. This is Adam's concealed knowledge, given to Se.th. 1r constimrcs a holy baptism for those who understand the eternal knowledge that comes from those born of the word and the undcsuoyablc illuminators. They came from the holy seed: Ycssc:us, J\·1azarc.us., Yassedckeus, the Livlng \\~1tcr. Adam gave knowlc.dge to Seth, who in turn revealed t hat saving knowledge to those who had been baptized. This text d isplays all the familiar G nostic dements: revelations, d ivine figures, baptisma1 rites, secret knowledge, a chosen and saved race of people. The playful reference to •vesseus" (Jesus) suggested that this knowledge might even be good fo r C hristians
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or come from C h ristians, and it was probably written during Sethian Gnosticism's pe riod of c.ngagcmc.n t with C hristianity, whc.n Jesus would have been a representative of the savio r Seth .
Knov.•lcdgc and salvatio n merge-a classic Gnostic system. Scthians saw themselves as the dirc(t dcscc.n dants of Seth, t he spiritual seed planted in the material world to provjdc fo r its redemption . The Hypostmis if the Ar,hom ("The Reality of t he Rulers"), a nothe-r Sethian text from t he Nag Hammadi archive. describes t he Scthians' o rigin s:
You and your chlldrcn come from the original father. Your souls come from above., from an indestructible light Therefore the. ardxms cannot approach them , because the spirit of tmth dwdls in them. And you who have their
gnosiJ of this way Jive without dearh among dying people. The seed of Seth bestowed immortality. T he Se th ia ns described themselves as an incorruptibJc race, a ge.n eration not ruled by a king, as t he holy people o f a g reat savior. The Sethians may have lived in the physical world marked by mortalil)\ yet they also dwe.lt in a spirirual world whe re irnmortality re ig ned. Sethian mythology was o rgani7.cd around a primary trinity: t he Fath er (the Invisible Spirit), t he Mothe r (Barbelo), and the Son (Autogent.s, "t he sdf-ge.nc.ratcd one," also some.t imcs callc.d
Anthropos, '•the human o ne"). The Apocryphon ifjolm, a nother Se thian text, amplified rhc three clements o f the. rrinity: ''[T h e Father] is t he Invisible Spirit. D o not consider him a god o r something like a god, bc.cause he is much mo re than a god. Nothi ng exists above him. No o ne rules over hirn . .. . He is completely perfect." It described the M o ther as t he Invisible
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Spirit's first thought. T he Invisible Spirit invested her with fo reknowledge, indc.o;tructibiliry, etc.rnal life, and truth. T he Son, conceived by the Father and Mother, was pure light. T he Sethians knew the Son as the Christ, the. anointed one., who created the spiritual realm. Scthians used the ITI)~h of Sophia to explain their concept of salvation. As recounted above, Sophia was one of theAeom created by the Invisible Spirit, the Barbclo (Mother), and the Christ. Sophia desired to create something by herself without the consent of the Father. She willfully created what appeared to be a monstrous bc.ing, whom she called Yaltabaoth, but
Seth ian Text.s at Nag Ham mad i Allogenes The Aporolypse of Adam
The Ap<xryphon of fohn Eugnosros the Blessed The Gospel of rhe Egyptians The Hyposto:.is of rhe Archons Hypsiphrone Morsones MeJchjzedek On !he Ongin of lhe World
The Thought of Noreo The Three Steles of Seth The Thunder: Perfect Mind The Trimorphic Protennoia Zosrrianos
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gNOST I C I S M .. .
whom o thers also called Saklas ("the fool") and Samad ("the blind'). Yaltabaoth, thinking himself to be the supreme Father, created tl1e physical universe. Sophia repented of her willfulness, so the true Father atte nded to the seed of Seth by creat-
ing a path of salvation for Seth's descendants that would release them from the bondage ofYalrabaoth's physical universe. This path of salvation is hidden in the biblical narrative found in Genesis 2:4-3:24 and can only be discovered tl>rough deep exegesis. The outlines of the story may be f:1.milia.r, but the. theological signlficancc that the Scthians derived from it is quite distant from traditional Jewish and C hristian understanding. Here. is a Sethian interpretacion of Paul's lcttc.rs, which rc-
tcrs to the "blind' demiurge, who ignorantly and falsely thinks of himself as the o ne true God.
The great apostle [Paul}, writing about the realities ofthe pouw> and itiSpired by tbt spirit ofthe Fatheroj'Tr11th, reftmd to the "jxr<1:<m o/ darkness" {Colossiam 1:13] by saying 'ourfight is not against blood andJlrsh, but agaimt the archons [i.r., rulers] o/the uni<.uu and wicked spirits' {Ephesians 6:12}. So I send)'(Jll this trtatise betai/Jr you inquire about thr rralit)' o/the rulm. [First o/ai!J their
The Ser:hians believed they were the central characters in a great saga of the salvation of themselve-s and thc.ir \,.'or1d. They
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cxperic.nccd the.msclves as living both in and out of time: in time for the appearance of Seth, and om of tim e to escape from the bonds of mortality. They divided histo ry tmo three periods, each with its O\,.'n savior: Noah's great flood, the fire. of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Judg ment. Seth appeared during each of those periods to save his seed. T he. story of Adam and Eve was a prologue.; the rescue of the. spiritual seed of Seth in the Roman period \\'aS the. culminating evem. The Apocalypse of Adam recounts in sublime language the history of the succession of thirte.en kingdoms and their leaders. l11e description of each of these kingdoms ends wtth the phrase, regarding the leader, "'And thus he came to the water." T his connection of historical periods with baptism culm inated in the establishme.nt of the final people, "the generation without a King over it," the Sethian Gnostics, who no longer submit to any authority save that of the supreme Father. In fact, Sethians saw their personal and collective. salvation as intin'latdy connected-not only with the salvation of the. cosmos, but with the salvation of every people in every age. ln the surviving religious treatises, the mysterious language of''dcscent" and '"ascent" appears often, correlating the knowledge of the savior's descent to the cxpc.riencc of the Gnostics' ascent. The Nag Hammadi tc.xt Allog~nes describes how G nostics were trained to move up the path of ascent. Knowledge and experience fused in the ballet of descending and ascc.n ding. The Scthians also articulated a kind of negative theology, which may be difficult to g rasp at first. In the Western religious tradition, most mystics practice negative theology, which sc<:ks to experience God by firs t ascribing a category to the divinity
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("G od is good") and rhen negating ir ("bur God far surpasses every knovm good")> in o rder to bring a person to knowledge in u nknowing. T he Apocryphotl ojjoh11 described the Father, the
Invisible Spirit, in this way: He is a pure, holy, spotless and inestimable light He is unurtc.rablc, since he is perfect in incorruptibility. He is not (known) in perfection, nor in bcatirudc, nor in deity, but he is far superior [to all these categories). He is not embodied nor is he bodiless. He is neither large nor is he small. No means c.'\:ists m answer, "What is his quamiry?" or ''What is his quality?"' for no one can know him. He docs not exist as one person among others, rather he exists far superior [to them), but his substance docs not participate in rhc aerms nor in rime. Negative theology expressed the sublime nature of God while acknowledging the utter inability of humans ro comprehend a
divinity chat so surpassed any human categories of knowledge. Sethians readily acknowledged their inability ro know the In-
visible Spirit and t heir simultaneous experience of his glory and presence both within t hem and outside them. Sethian prayers and hymns expressed bo th the mystery of negative theology and the wonder o f ascent. The Tbru Steles of
Seth consists of seven hymns o f praise, ending with the follow. . . mg tnstrucnon:
Those who recall rhese (hymns) and perpetually praise
will indec.d bcrome perfect among all other pc.rfecr: beings. They will become supremc.Iy impassive. For to-
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gether and alone they sing praises, and then they become sl1cnt. And just as they were ordered, they ascend. After they become silent, they dc.scr.nd from the third; then they sing praisc.s to the second, and then the first. The
way of ascent is the way of descent. A t c.ach phase of ascent and descent, th e:. Sethian G nostic prayed and sang ecstatically. The Gospel ofthe Egyptiatii exemplifies t hat ccstasy in a prayer: I bear your great name, 0 Autogmes, the perfect one who resides within me. You who appear to everyone, I sec you .... Knowing you now, I have blended rnysclf with the immurable. I have pur on rhe armor of Jjght. In fact, I have become light. .. . I glorii)' you truly, for I have understood you, sou ies ide aeio aeie ois, 0 aion, neon, 0 siknt God. I honor you. I rest in you, 0 Son es es o t, the one without for m who dwells in those without form. T hese ccstaric and mystical prayers literally carried the mind upward to th e divine realm to pray a nd to praise, to be silent and to sing hymns, to rest a nd to begin to descend. So much of the Sethian literature was destroyed-or delibe rately distorted by the hercsiologists' paraphrases- t hat we o nly rarely encounte r it directly. But some times they appended pe rsonal notes to t he ends of their treatises. The scribe of the
Gospel ofthe Egyptiam has even g iven us his name: T he Gospel of the Egyptians. This book inscribed by God, holy and secret. Let grace, knowledge~ perception,
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and self-co mro} ancnd the one who has written it, Eugnostos the bc:loved in the Spirit. ln the flesh my name is
Gongcssos, and I am one of the community of the incorruptible tights. The holy book of the great, Invisible Spirit is inspired by God. Amen. T his scribe bore two names, o ne in the fl.csh, Gongcssos, and one in the Sethian community, Eug nostos, wh ich means literally "well-knowing." H e prayed for his own cnlightcnrncnt
while also commc.n ding the book as sacred and inspired, and in doing so he revealed the intensity and joy of these indefatigable believers as they communicated divine gm;sis to o ne another on thc.ir mystical path into the divine.
TI1c Scthians were. one of the most intriguing and compelling of the Gnostic communities. tvlany of thc.ir doctrines and beliefs found their way into mainstream Christian teach ings o n prayer and the ascent to the d ivine, negative. theology and the Trinity, and the uses of Plato nic thought in theol-
ogy. Despite the o rthodox church's untiring dforts to exclude them, the Sethians had a d ram atic and lasting impact o n Christianity.
WHO WERE THE VALENTJN I AN GNOSTICS?
Light aNd darkness, lift and dtath, right and lift, are brothers if
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dissolve into itJ t.ar!iest origin. Butthos.e who art exa/ud ab&iJe the W!Jr!d are it~disJolub!e, ttmwl.
If the Seth ian Gnostics were like N ew Age seekers, tirdc.ssly exploring o ther religious traditions for whatcvc:.r divine wisdom they could g lean from thc.n"', the. Valentinians were like professors of theology-learned, self-confident, not a little conceited . T hough Christian, the Valcntinians made no bones about the low re.gard in wh ich they held the vast majority o f t heir cord ig io nists, whom they considered to be little. mo re than imbeciles. Only Valen tinian knowledge could make sense of the scriptures and explain how their revelations cohered; o nly the Valentinian s could show the way toward u nion with God. Or a t least so t hey thought. The Valc.ntinians never left the church; rathe.r, the chu.rch kicked them out. Here is I.rcnaeus on the Valentinian Gospel of Truth (Agaimt
Heresies, ill.11.9). He can hardly contain his d isgust at their .
prcsumpnon.
But Valcntinus's people arc completely frivolous be.cause they write their own books and pride themselves in having more gospels than really cxjst. Truly, they have such a high degree of audaciousness that they give the ride to their very ne.w writing, "The Gospc1 ofTruth." But that gospd has nothing in common with the gospels of the apostles. It is not rcaUy a gospel; it is filled with blas-
phemy. If what they have published is the Gospel ofTruth, so dissimllar from those given to us by the aposdes, any-
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one can sec that what the apostles have gi\·cn us cannot
be considered a gospel of truth. AU you need to do is look at the. scriptures themselves [and compare. them).
It is interesting to contrast the actual words of a Valcminian treatise with lrcnacus's bilious characterization o f it. l\ll any scholars believe. Valentinus himself was the author of the Gospel ofTmth, whose opening uncs appear below. It is self-evidently neither frivolous nor blasphemous; but
it docs perhaps imply
that some: well-meaning Christians remain trapped in e rror,
fruitlessly searching creation for answers that can be. found only in the supernal rc.alms.
The gospel of truth is (sheer] joy for the ones who have obtained the grace of knowing him from the Father of truth. (This grace came] by means of the Word's power, which proceeded from the fullness. This [Word] exists in the thinking and the mind of the Father. It is the one called "the Savior," because that names his work, toredeem those who do not know the Father. The (Word's] proclamation is a gospc1 of hope, a discovery for those searching for him. The totality searched about for the one from whom all
things had issued. (But the totality did not understand] that the totality already existed within the one [whom they sought]. (Theone whom they sought] is the incomprehensible and inconceivable one who is superior to every manner of thinking. (This futile search tOr something already within] created ignorance of the Father, and that ig norance. created torment and panic. That tormem
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grew like a fog so that no one rould sec any longer. T hat explains why error became so powerfUl. Not knowing the truth, it foo~shly explored its own matter. It explored the creation, powerfully and beautifUlly preparing the substinnc for the truth. Perhaps o f all the adherents to G nostic systems. Valc.nt.inian G nostics posed t he greatest t hreat to orthodox Christianity. T hey supported the chu rch as a recruiting ground fo r po tential members. while at the sune tiJne calling into qucsrion its theological and in tellectual statme. They were the first to write commentaries o n the scriptures (especially che Epistles o f Paul and the G ospel ofJohn} to elucidate their d ccpc.r meani ngs for their foUowc.rs. T he orthodox churches would foUow suit. providing exegeses of their ownJ and the wars of scriptural intc.rpretation would never end. continuing even to our own day. TI1e Valentinian Gnostics set t he basic parametc.rs fo r the. development of Christian theology, even thoug h t hey lost the battle for teaching their version of it wit hin the. churches. T he Valcntinian school was founded by the philosopher Valentinus (ca. ]()(}...175 C. E.). He was educated in Alexandria, Egypt, t he primary cenrc.r for p hilosophical. scientific. rdigious. and literary srudy in the anciem world. Smnctime. around
136 Valentinus came co Rome. where he participated actively in the churches and became a very successful Christian teacher and a revered expositor o f the deep meaning o f scripture. H e moved to C yprus in 160, after he lost an election fo r bishop of Rome. That he could have even bc.cn seen as worthy to be considered fo r an episcopate shows t he great regard in which his teachings were held.
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T he Valcntinian school attracted some superb students: Pto lemy, whose letter to Flora was c.xccrptcd above; H c.raclcion, known best for his b rilliant and controversial commentary on the Gospd of John; Thcodotus, whose writings wc.rc. collected by Clement of Alexandria; and Nlarcus, best known for his numc.rologica1 and mag ical p ractices. VaJcntinus and h is fo llowc.rs all remained members of the local C hris tian church . They regarded regular church teachings, the catcchcsis, as a ppropriate for the o rdinary, or psychic
level of believer-and as a kind of preparatory education fo r t he deep er spiritual teachings provided by t he Gnostics. The
VaJc.ntinian Treatise
the Resurrettion, discovered at Nag Hanunadi, describes the difference between sirnplc and pro011
found kvcls of s tudy:
:f\1y son Rhcginos, many people want to srudy many things when they have a question for which they need an answer. If they succeed in finding their anS\\'c.r they usua11y consider themselves great. But, I think, they have not really studied from within the Word of Truth. In tact,
thc.y simply seck their own rest-the rest that we have received comes from our Savior, rhe Lord ChJ'isL VVe received the rest when we acquired knowledge of the truth and resred ourselves solidly upon lt. T h e Valc.nr:in ians considc.red those. who have fou nd a n anS\,.•er and s topped t here
to
be filf in ferio r to those who have sought
a deep knowledge and found true rest in their seeking. The in ferior person belonged o nly to th e psychic church, while the supe rior seeker belonged to the. pneumatic.
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SI:CTS
WHAT OlD THE VALENT J NIANS B ELIEV E?
Most Valentinian reaching revolved about rhe reading of scripture and the elucidation of t he rites of the church . The Valcntinians parsed and reparsed t he scriptures, digging past the lite.ral events of Jesus' life, his crucifixion, and his n:surrcction
to u ncover the mysterious information necessary fo r the Gnostic to fi nd true salvation. For cxarnplc, rhe Treatise on tbe Res-
urrution explains the significance of t he resurrection: You are. nor ignomnt of the fact that the Savior swaJJowed up death, because he overcame the perishable world. Transforming himsc:lfinto an imperishable Aeon, he raised him-
self up. The
im~siblc swallowed up the visible, and the
Savjor provided us with a way of salvation. This is exactly as the apostle said, "'\Ve suffered with him, and \•.re were resurrected with him, and we ascended
(0
heaven with
him.·· Now if we show oursdves in this world as wearing him, we become his beams, and he embracc.s us until our own setting, our own de.ath. He drives us to heaven, like the beams of the sun, unrestrained in any way. This truly
is a spiritual resurrection that swallows up the psychic just as he swallowed up the fleshly.
Even L'cnacus, who was the first to attack Valentinian teachings, admitted i n his treatise Agaimt Heresie> (1.3.6) that such readings were ooth intelligent and subde.
Valcntinian teaching is not easy to summarize. Its cosmology is vc.ry co1nplcx but worth describing in broad terms. In the Valcncin..ian system, the cosmos was created through a series of emanations from an original pair or dyad (the. Ineffable and Si-
so
gNOST I C I S M .. .
M ajor Valentinian Texts at N ag Hammadi
The Gospel of Truth The Gospel of Philip
The Treorise on rhe Resu"ection The Exegesis on lhe Soul
A Volentinian Exposition
k nee), which in turn created by their union another dyad (Parent and Truth), which in turn created four o ther spiritual beings (the vVorld, Life, Human Being, Church), aU of which made up the p!et~ma, the divine Fullness. These spiritual beings in tum creatc-.d thirty Aeons, subordinate. spiritual entities, who joined the superior spiritual entities to sing hymns of praise to the. Fullness.
1r is noteworthy that the namc.s of each
of the spirirual figures above had philosophical significance (such as Silence, Truth, C hurch). Giving a name to something inctla blc renders it substantial, or hypostatizes it. ln their creation story, the Valcntinians connected the generation of philo-
sopttical concepts to the creation of the spiritual realm, and
then, as ,,..c will sec bc1ow, rc.latcd the physical world back to that conceptual framework.
One of the Aeom, the Mother, fell from grace and from that fall o riginated the created physical universe. lrenaeus (Against Heresies 1.11.1) explained it this way: the Mothc.r revolted and crossed the boundary that separated her from the Fullness and frOI"n the Parc.m. Rcmc.n""!bcring the divine realm, however, the Mother prod uced two figures: the Savior and the Shadow. The
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Savior, however, separated from the Shadow and rc.t urncd to the Fullncs.s. The Mother, now remaining with o nly the Shadow, produced the Demiurge as the supreme God of everything he created. Jesus was t he Savior who separated frmn the Mother and ascended to the Fullness. Truth produced the Holy Spirit as a guide. through t he Aeom. The Savior, who was Jesus, was sent again from the Fullness to the created world in orde.r to rt$tore lost people to spiritual salvation by undoing the debilitating cfiCcts of material existence caused by thc.lVlother's falL In the Valc.ntinian view, the goal of human endeavor \vas to trace the way through t he merely physical and psychical existence created by the Demiurge back to the contemplation of the d ivine sphere, the Fullness. Valcncinians guided others through the salvation process by im itating the work o f t he Savior. This system explained no t only how the physical univetse was generated but also t he vast C..'\tcnt o f the spiritual universe available to those capable of contemplating it and entering it th rough meditation and prayc.r. And Valcntinians tried to do this within the fra.rncwork of the Christian scriptures and liturgical traditions. h cnaeus explains their approach in this way:
Thq [the Va/entinimu} tell 11s that this knowledge has not been open&, Jisdoud becaust. no/ N.Jt')'()llC has the ability to reaiw it. Rather [thry argue} that the sa.,ior mystically Tt".Ualed the knowledge in the pnrablts to/hose provtnlapahle iftmdmtanding it. This is bvw they do it. The thirty Aeons rifers lathe thirty ;~ars during whirh the &rvior did nothing in publi<, and to the laborers in the 'Vinryard [that is, those sent 0111 attb.•third, si.vlh, and ninth hours}. They also argue that Paul ifien directly refers tothe Aeons when he
S2
gNOSTICI S M .. .
writes, ''To all thtgmtratirms ifthe aeons o/the aeon." Yts,lhty argue that •we refer/() tbt Aeons evm whm we ((Jildude f/Ur Eu(harist with the words "'T(J aeons ofaeons• {fore-iJer nttd t-iler}. - .'fC,UNST IIF.RF.SI £S l . j . l
He re we sec how Valcntinian s ascribed deeper meanings to b a-
sic fo rmulas of C hristian worshi p, such as the traditional ending of prayers with the phrase ···forever and ever'' {litc.rally "to
aeons of aeons11 in Greek, which they interpreted as referring to the Aeom, beings of the spiritual re.alm). Unexplained and seemingly trivial details and numbe rs in the scriptures (such as
Jesus' thirty years of earthly lif<:, the hours at which the laborers in the vineyards were sent out, and t he multiplication of the.
g rain that produced thirty- and sixty-fold) all became opportunities fo r the Valc.ntinians to reveal profOund philosophical, re-
ligious, and mystical meanings that would have remained hidden from ordinary psychic Christians. TI1e Valcntinians taught that the existing sacraments of the church also had deeper meaning-and they created new sacram ents of their own as well. Sacrame.n ts arc rirua) acts that embody and make manifest in ph)~ical life the realities and g races of the spirirual realm. The o rthodox sacraments of the time. most likely included baptism, the Eucharist, chrism (the anointing of the sick with oil), and ordination {the laying on of hands fo r commissioning missionaries and aposrlcs). Valentinian sacraments, or ''mysteries," as described in the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Philip, included these and also the mystery of Redemption and the Bridal C hamber: "The Lo rd did everything in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber."
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53
Valentinians imbued the sacraments of the orthodox church with Gnostic meaning: baptism conferred resurrection and immo rtality and rernade the person, much as dye.changes the color o f doth, C hrism bestowed the d ivine light, enabling the Gnostic to sec th e spiritual world, The GoJpel ofPhilip quotes part of the fulJillment prayer: ''H e said o n that day tn t he thanksgivtng, 'You who have joined the perfect lig ht with the H oly Spirit, un ite t he angels with us also, as being the images.' "'The Valentinians also developed their own sacraments. T he Redemption ccle.bnucd the pc.m1anent release o f the Gnostic from the bonds o f the dcmiurge, a release dfected both ritually and t hrough
gnoJtJ, And the Bridal C hamber celebrated the complete union o f t he Gnostic wit h the divine realm, a permanent a nd immu table status o f perfCction and rest, which characterizes the goal o f Vakntinian Gnostic life. A Valcntinian inscrip tion fou nd at the. Via Latina in Rome and housed at the Capitoline 1\'[useum shows th e relationship of some o f the Valentinian sacraments. It is a four-line poe.m, he re. translate.d in prose: Carry a torch for me for bathing [in water), my fellow brothers of the bridal chamber. [It is for) banquers in our rooms that they hunger, extolling the Father and praising the Son. l n that place may there. be. a single well and a Aowing [spring) of truth. T he Valentin ian system made sense of th ings that otherwise seemed incomprehensible; t his probably explains why it was so popular, despite its elite mentality and in tellectual complc.xity. H ad Valentinus been elected bishop o f Rome, th e ve ry face of Christianity would be d ifferent today, Cerrai11ly the worship
54
gNOST I C I S M .. .
and t he scriptures would remain the. same, as wcU as the ethics and concern for the poor, but t he in tellectual life of th e church would have been far mo re developed, more inte nse, mo re vigorous, and less timid in its th eological explorations. The C h ristian church o f Rome might have supplanted Alexandria as the imcllccmal cc.ntcr for early C hristianity.
WHO WERE T HE CARPOCRAT l ANS?
For I am krwwltdge and igntm~nce. I am rhame and bo/JneSJ.
I am shame/tis; I am ashamed. I am 1/rength aud I am ftar I am war andpeace. Gkoe heed to m.t. I am the one who is disgraaJ and the great (lilt .
Earlier in this book, I said t hat Gnostics were accused of everyt hing from incest to can nibalism. The. Carpocratians, a Gnostic sect founded by Carpocrates of Alc.xandria in the first half of the second century C. E., wc.rc v.ridcly condemned for their depravity during the four centuries of their existence~ they and t hc.i r "unspeakable teachings.. figure prominently in a controversy that has roiled the world of Bible studies for the past forty years. It began in 1958 when Morton Smi th, a professor at Columbia University, was cataloging texts in the library o f 1vlar
T HREE CNOSTIC
S I:CTS
55
Saba. a 1,500-year-old monastery that is carved into the walls of a desert canyon ncar Bethlehem. Smith glanced at the endpapers of a printed book dating from the seventeenth century and discovered a handwritten copy of a lettc.r fro m C lement of Alexandria. the great second-cenmry C hristian tcachc.r, that was addressed to an otherwise unknown individual named T heodore, who had apparently been involved in disputes with the Carpoc-ratians. Not only has its original nc.vc.r been found, no o ther copy of this letter (actually a fragmc.nt of a letter- it is tantalizingly incomplete} exists. Smicl1 photographed the lette.r and returned the book to the shelf, eventually he would publish several books and articles about ir. (Sec Appendix 1 for the complete text of the letter.) Clemc.n t's letter rc-Spo ndc.d to questions that Theodore had asked him about an edition of the Gospel of Mark that he had seen which contained episodes that were unfamiliar to him, including one where Jesus raised a wc.althy young man from the dead and then instructed him in the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. The narrative seems to fit neatly between the canonical Mark's 10:3-1 (Jesus' prediction of his persecution, death, and resurrection) and 10:35 (Jam es's and John's request fo r special status). Clement recognized the passage~ he knew precisely what Theodore had read. It was a rank fo rgery, the unmistakable handiwork of the notorious Carpocratians.
\1\.'HAT D ID T HE C ARP OC RAT IA NS B ELIE VE?
Epiphanius wrote that Carpocratcs "taug ht his followers to perfo rm every obscenity and every sinful act., Carpocratians
S6
gN O STI C I S M .. .
bdicvc.d th at t he physical wor1d was the base creation of inferior angels; God had never taken any personal lmcrcst in this world or its inhabitants. Then Jesus, a normal, fl.csh-and-blood man whose fa ther ''-'as Joseph, was baptized and his immortal soul awake ned. Suddenly he "perfectly rem embe red those t hings that he had witnessed wit hin the sphere of the unbcgottcn God." Aftc.r his awakening, Jesus
\ll,'aS
able to resist the in-
vidious dTccts of his materiality and ascend to the. supreme.
God; thus em powered, he taug ht o thers how to make the asccm as well.
It was hc.rc th at C arpocratian t heology of salvation took a strange rurn. Sin ce the world was illusory and godless, t he C arpocrat ians declared that good and evil could not have any objective. c..x.istcncc; thc.y were mc.rcly categories that had been invented by the. minds of me n. C arpocratia ns also believed in reincarnation, o r as lrc.n aeus pu t it, ''th e transmigration (o f the soul] fro m body to body." These swn ingly sep arate beliefst hat the world is utterly godless, that good and evil arc subjective categories, and t hat souls travel fro rn body to body-all came together in t he C ar pocratian model of salvatio n. Before mate rial creat ion could be tra nscended , t he Carpocrat ians believed, it had to be experienced thoroughly. Ircnacus c.xp1a.ined: "'souls should have cxpe.ric.nce of every kind of life as well as every kind o f action" so t hat th ey mig ht be released fro m the physical world and ascend like Jesus to the spiritual realm. '"]n th is way;'' lrc nacus continued, "all souls arc saved, whether their own, which, guarding against all delay, participate in all sorts of act ions during one incarnation, o r t hose, again, w ho, by passing from body to body, arc set free., o n fulfilling a nd accomplishing what is requisite in every form of
T HREE CNOSTIC
S I:CTS
57
life into which they arc sent, so that at length they shall no longer be shut in the body." The release fi·om the bondage of the material world and the ascent of the soul to its original home imitated Jesus. Jesus was the un-incarnatc one who led the way for the incarnate ones to escape the cycle of reincarnation and return to the unbcgorten-but the path to the spiritual led first through every experience of the. world- including even the. most base and corrupt. Just how corrupt is not c1car; but several church authorities attested to the fact that the Carpocratians held their wives in common and didn•t respect private property. It v.-as perhaps Chr istianity's first e.ncoumer with antinomianism, !Vlartin Luther's term for the belief that if good works didn't lead the way to salvation then neithc.r did evil works hindc.r it. Now back to Clement and Theodore. Clement began his letter with a sound condemnation of the Carpocratians for their carnality: "'bragging that they arc free, they have become subject to the.ir base lusts ... He contested the Carpocratian concept that categories of good and evil arc human creations with the argument that f.Uth dedarcs some things good and othc.r things evil: ;,Such men arc to be opposed in all ways and altogc.thc.r. For, even if they should say something tmc., one who loves the truth should not, even so, agree with them. For not all true things arc the truth, nor should that truth which merely seems true according to human opinions be prcfc.rrcd to the true truth, that according to the faith. ·• Clement then went on to explain that the Carpocratians had altered the mystical edition of the Gospel of Mark to justify their evil practices. But it was more complicated than that. Even before the Carpoc-rarians came along, thc.rc had been m•o
58
gNOSTIC I S M . . .
different versions of the G ospel of M ark. The first, o riginal vc.rsion did not contain a ny esote ric teaching, but was inte nded
for the general public. Clement described it this way: "Mark . .. narrated t he Lord's activities, though he did not discuss all of his deeds nor did he suggest any secret th ings. Rather M ark chose what seemed the most helpful fo r increasing the faith of the people undergoi ng instruction." This is the gospel for the simple bdicvc.r. But after Peter's death, Mark mwdcd from Rome to Alex-
andria, whc.rc he. ''wrote a more. spiritual gospel to be used by those people seeking pe rfection." This esoteric gospel for the spiritually pe rfect, the. Secret Gospel of Mark, added other episodes- such as the story of t he young man raised from the dead that T heodore had been so startled to read-and teach ings not found in th e gospel fo r simple believers. Mark "included certain sayings that he, precisely because he v.•as a rnystagoguc, knew would kad seeke rs into the most exclusive temple o f truth enshrouded by sc.vc.n veils." V\fhat is a "*mystagoguc"'? A person who initiates others into mystical secrets. All religious traditio ns have thctn, not just Christian Gnosticism. In the orthodox Christian monasteries, for exarnpk, elder monks would act as myscagogues when the.y hc1pcd novices learn to live the monastic life. Clc.mcnt calls Mark a mystagoguc; in t he Serre! Gospel ofMark, M ark portrays Jesus as o ne as well. In fact, as we will soon sec, it is precisc1y because Jesus
\YaS
so c haracterized t hat there has been so much
controversy about this letter. Precisely what did Jesus do whe.n he initiatc.d his foUowcrs into the. mysteries? And precisely what arc t he g rea ter mysteries? The Greek term for a sacrament was JJI)'Steffl11, a mystc.ry. The. mystc.rics
T HREE CNOSTIC
S I:CTS
59
o f baptisn"' and r:he Eucharist were t he basic sacraments of the early c hurch. Baptism initiated a person into the Body o f Christ~ th e Eucharist join c,d th e pe.rson to r:he mystical pres-
ence of Christ made real in t he. bread and th e \1\ri ne. These were the lesser mysteries. The g reater myste ries comprised mostly secret teachings handed ove r from rnystagogues to their most advanced students. Now back ro the letrer and t he Secret Gospel of Mark. According to Clement, C arpocratcs, in structed by demons a nd using "foul arts,'' e.nslaved a presbyter of the church in Alexandria and got him
to
hand over a copy of the esoteric Secret
Gospel ofMark. Nor only did C arpocrates interpret it according to h is blasphe.mous and carnal d octrines, he 01pollmed ·• it by interpolat ing his own words into the manuscript, ..m ixing with the spotless and holy words utte.rly shameless lies."'This, C lement declared,
V.'aS
the gospel that Theodore had seen.
IVIode.r n scholars had long suspected t hat more than one ve"ion of the G ospel of M ark had circulated in the ancient world. Clem en t's letter, painstaking ly copic.d in to a book some fifte.cn hundred years after it was writtc.n, and then fortuitously d iscovered almost three hundred years after tl"!at, confir med their suspicion. O ne vc.rsion o f t he gospels ,,.•as inrc.n ded for si mple C hristians (psychic Christians, as the G nostics would say), the o ther fo r rhe spiritually advanced (pneumatic). But what depravities had the Carpocracians introduced in to th is h itherto u nsuspected t hird version? As we have seen, th e Semt Gospel of Mark tells how Jeous was broug ht to th e tomb o f a rich young man by his sister. H e raised him from t he dead and instructed him. And "when it was even ing, the young man went to h im with a linen cloth
60
gN O STI C I S M .. .
draped over his naked body."The two me n passed t he night together, while Jesus taught h im th e mystery o f t he IGng dom of God . All o f th at material is true., Clemen< to ld Theodore, but by
no means should he believe the part about ''naked man with naked ma n''-that is one of the Carpocratian alte rations. A nd afte r just a few more line-s (frustrating ly, right after Clement promises "the. true. explanation even according to t he true p hilosophy""). the fragmc.nt comes to an end.
W ait a minute: ..Na.ked man with 11aked man..? Now pc.r haps you u nderstand why T heodore. was so nonplussed by what hc•d read . Nc,cdJcss to say, t hat phrase set off a fircstorm when I\1orton Smith prcsc.n tcd his d iscovery to t he scholarly world. Modern-day heresiologists castigated Smith a nd called his integrity into question, contcrnporary analogues of t he Carpocratians-an obscure religious sect in C alifornia th at practices free love and advocates gay libc.r ation-drcw him into their figu rative e.mbrace, and any nutnber of latte r-day C lemen ts attempted to explain the controvc.rsy away. Did an a ncient version o f d1e Gospel of M ark d1at declared t hat Jesus a nd the boy were naked together really exist? W as t he Secret Gospel ofMark's big secret d>at Jesus was a p racticing homose).'Ual? Could Smi th be a hoaxer? Surp risingly, considering how little p hysical evidence exists to suppo rt Smit h's discovery, th e philological and li nguistic evidence is strong. The scholarly consensus is that C lc.me.n t's letter ro T heodore is indeed authentic.
Were. the C arpocrat ians so shamc.less t hat t hey libelc.d Jesus-or were the. hc.resiologists so eager to protect Jesus• reputation fo r chastity th at t hey libeled the Carpocrat ians? Could
T HREE CNOSTIC
S I:CTS
61
Jesus, acting as a mystagogue, have employed t-antric-like practices whc.n he in itiated the youth lnro the mysteries, to create an ecstatic c.xpcrience? VVas the language. simply metaphorical? T he battle continues. The Secret Gospel ofMark opens an amazing window into the varieties o f early C hristianity as they vied wit h each o ther, not o nly to produce a '"true'' gospel, but about the most basic tenets o f fait h and morality.
4
A NoN-GNosTic
CHALLENGE TO ORTHODOXY
Some also heardfrom Pol)<arp [a """'d bishop who""" martyred} that the I.mrl! discipleJohn, mitring a bathhouse in Ephesus, saw Cerinthus {a kutr<JJI/ herrtir] there. john ran out ifthe baths screaming, 'Get out if hm. The bathhouse itselfmight rollapse buause Ceriuthu~ truths tt~emy, is imide. • And Polymrp himselfresponded to lvfardon, who whm !Meting him asked, .:Do;~u k11ow mer' Pol)'<arp amv.:tred, '1 dt; indttd JmtJ'W )\'JU, firstborn ifSatan: - I Jll': NA EU S , A CAI.V$T 1/J:' H.f:Sif!S III . .J
Among the early Christians were sects that radically challenged some of the core lxlicfs of the orthodox church. These groups-like some fundamentalist Christians today-had a few nonnegotiable bedrock beliefS that they used as a litmus test to settle every question. from which books of the Bible
,,.,ere legitimate. to how Christians should live their lives. This prlnciplc-bascd intellectualism diffc.rs from the Gnostics• ap-
proach to theology. Gnostics made an ctTort to blend their 0\,.'11 intcUccrual tradition with that o f the psychic churches, supplementing, but not supplanting, their theological and biblical teachings.
A
NON .C N OST t C
CHAllENGE
t O
OJt t HODOXY
63
T he principle-based believers, on the other hand, wc.re revisionists and refo rmers. They came to certain conclusions and then tried to mold the church and its scriptures to suit the.ir belief<. They edited known gospels, developed new gospels, or even founded independent churches based c.xdusivdy on their ovm principles. These alternative churches often retained all the trappings of the o rthodox church-ordained leaders, teacherst organization~ missiont lirurgiest and sacraments-but their teachings were quite different. The challenges they presented and the reactions they precipitated would have a long-lasting effect o n the orthodox church. Such were the IVIarcionites.
\I!.' HO WE R E T HE MA RC IO NJ T ES?
Like some of today's
tde\~sion-smr evangelists.
there were an-
cie.m preachers who became. wealthy enough to buy or to build their own churches. Marcion of Sinope (ca. 85-160 C.E.), a prosperous shipowner from the seapo rt of Po ntus o n the Black Sea (modern Turkey), was one of them. When he moved from Pontus to Rome (probably to engage in the lucrative Roman shipping business), he presented the Roman church with a gift of 200,000 scstcrccs, a huge. fo rtune., comparable to the price of entry into the Ro rnan nobility, and tried to usc the influence it bought to permanently alter the church. According to Tertullian (Agaimt Marriot1 1:19), in July of 144 C.E. the Roman church condemnc.d his teachi ngs, excommunicated hi m, and rerurnc.d his gift. H e reinvested it in a church of his own, purified and reformed based o n his princjplcs . These Marcionite
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gNOST I C I S M .. .
churches spread t hroughout the Roman E mpire-. especially in t he eastern empire and beyo nd . Eviden ce exists for t heir surviva] well in to th e fifth century C. E.
THE MARCJON ITE SC R IPT U RE S
So what was 1\l[arcion's p roblem with o rthodox C hristianity? What v.-as the b asis o f his d issent a nd reform? \ V hc n 1\llarcion read the scriptures of the O ld and New Tc-~c;tamcnts, he could not understand how the God o f the O ld Testament and the God of Jesus in the New Testament could be o ne and th e same. For M arcio n, the God of the lsracutes appeared to be vengeful, judgmental, and ang ry. constantly sending prophets to u pbraid his people tor (tiling to meet his standards, and inflicting floods a nd o ther catastrophes o n them whc-.n h is patience gave out. To Marc ion, this God seemed bo th unfaithful and contradictory in nature. In comparison, the G od of the New Tcstarnc.nt was loving and consisten t, oriented toward peace and brotherly love, and eager to heal people, bo th physically a nd spi.r irually. O ne God
\-\'aS
o riented toward law and retribution,
t he o ther toward love and me rcy. 1vlarcion concluded that they were in fact two entirely differem G ods. The creator G od o f the Old Testament was a lesser dcmiurgic G od; his whimsical. vloknt, and irrational creation stood in opposition to the. true God. the G od of Jesus, whose wo rld was loving and consiste nt. The dcmiurgc had total sway over the physical wo rld, while the God o f Jesus contrailed the spiritual world. T he m-ain would never meet.
A
NON .CNOST t C
CHAllENGE
t O
OJt t HODOXY
65
T he G nostic myths may have allowed that the world v.-as created by a lesser divinity, but rhey never denie.d that rhe true spiritual God played a role in cl1e Hebrew Bible. They resolved the conund rum of God's personality by reading allegorically. T he literal text was simply a jumping-off point for fu rther study; the rc.al impo rt of scripture. was not ne.cessarily to be fou nd on its surface. For bo th G nostics and orthodox Christians, exegesis was enough to sn1oo th over the rough edges between the Old Testament and the New. Properly imerpretc.d, the two pans of the Bible told a larger story of salvation--<~ steady and consistent prog ression leading fro m the C reation to the Second Coming of Christ. tvlarcion, howcvc.r, rejected allegorical and spiritual readings of the scriptures as unfaithful to truth- to use the modem technical tenn, he was a literalist, a lite.ral rcadc.r of the Bible. Read ~terally, and without the benefit of any glosses, he found so much of the Bible to be so objectionable thar he decided it could n't possibly be God's Word. So first he rejected the Old Testament in its entirety. T hen he set about purging the New Testament of its many allusions to the O ld Testament, which he presumed had been i ncorporated by biased editors. He became the first tc.xtual critic of the New Testame.nt, only instead of using philological and histo rical criteria to identifY the sources of its tc.xts, he edited and shaped it to fit his theological principles. And Marcion was as fearless a critic as he was rigorous. He determined that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Jo hn were so corrupt that he threw them o ut in their entirety. O nly Luke's gospel could be trusted, because it prcs.c.nts Jesus in a much
66
gNOST I C I S M .. .
more Roman than Jewish \<\'3.)'1 as a kind of holy man who only passes throug h the physical world on his way ro the spiritual, resurrected world. Yet even Luke's gospel needed robe radically altered . Marc ion did not believe that Jesus had a human body. IfJesus nc.vc.r became. in carna te, then he could not have bc.c.n born of a human mother. So i n addition to th e Old Tcsmmc.n t allu-
sions, all the birth narratives, inc1uding Luke's, needed ro be deleted. Presumably, although it is difficult to say fo r sure si nce only fragments of the Marcionitc BibJc have come down to us, IV1arcion also adjusted the crucifixion in o rder ro deemphasize t he physical killing of Jesus o n d1e c ross. And he passed over
the resurrection withom comment because if Jesus didn't die t hen his resurrection would be superfluous.
1vlarcion's Bible retained ten of Paul's letters, again "cleansed It of problematically Jcv.ish material, so tha t Paul's pure message of g race a nd salvation could shine through. H e "'corrected" the texts o f Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans. 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians (which :rvl arcion knew as Laodiccans), Colossians, Philemon, and Philippians, and gat he red t hem into a book he called Apostoliko11. T hose texts, plus d1e revised Gospel o f Luke (rhe Euagtllion), were the Marcionitc Bible. A comparison of Nlarcion's and the canonical Philip pians 2:6 and 7 is revealing. Marcion omitted o nly a few words bu t he c hanged th e text's n1eani ng comp1ctcly, so th at Jesus never really takes on human flesh, but has- only the appearan ce ofhurnan em bodiment:
Who, existing i11 tht form if God, he did not
A
N 0 N • C N 0 ST t C
C HAllEN C E
t 0
0 Jt t H 0 0 0 J( Y
67
slm:e, fond] ht cam~ to e:
2:6 -7
1\l[arcion's version is this:
WIM, e.
MARCJON I TE T H EOLOGY
1\l[arcion described Jesus' body as a mere phantasm, a p hysical illusion, or an ephemeral appearance. If Jesus did not have a body, and if Christians must imi tate the life of J esus, then it stands to reason that a believer should reject t he p hysical body, too. The :rv1arcionites did not shy from this conclusion. They were celibate; t hey rcje.ctcd the personal usc o f money and emb raced a life o f poverty. The IVlarcionitcs became ascc.tics p recisely to im itate Jesus and to obey his injunctions not to worry about food or clothing. The problem with Je.sus' physical body emerges from the problem of the demiurge. If t he demiu rge-a f,, lsc and lowly god--<:rcatcd rhc p hysical world, then Jesus could not possibly have entered in to it enflcshcd. And if Jesus did not have a real body, then real Ch ristians o ug ht to strive to cast off their own,
68
gNOSTIC I S M .. .
to create a heavenly body on earth that would undo the effects of the dcrniurgc. Although he held some bdiefs in common with the Gnos-
tics, particularly with regard ro t he d cmiurgic creation, !Vl arcion was not a Gnostic. Unlike the Gnostics, M arcion d id not c-reate cornplcx philosophic-a] o r theological systems; nor did he engage in the kind of expansive thinking empowered by allegorical and spiritual in terpretation of the scriptures. His rejection o f the O ld Testament resulted in an impoverished undcrscanding of history a nd historical dcvdopmcnt; unlike t he Gnostics and the orthodox church, he did no t acknowledge an ovcrarc-hing biblical narrative that rc.vcals G od worlcing t hroug h history, ste.adily guiding humanity toward salvation. Marcion didn~t believe that Jesus came ro save the world, either-to him it was hopelessly unredeemable. Salvation was possible o nly to t he exrcnt that people rejec ted t he world. If the Gnostics sought to enh ance church teaching, I\1arcion sought to pu rify and radically simplifY it. lvlarcion's chut ch retained the orthodox structure, with himself as bishop. The church order consisted o f bishops, presbyte" (priests), and deacons. They celebrated th e same liturgics, although probably signilicancly alrcred to accommodate I\·1arcionite th eology. Marc ion's p rofession as a shipping magnate gave him access to the widest possible geographic venue for spreading his church. His elnbrace o f poverty in t he midst of a ve ry lucrative business assured him the financial resources to build a church that ,,.,ouJd glvc the orthodox c hurches a run for their money. And it d id. The appeal of t he Marcionirc churches and the key to their
A
N 0 N • C N 0 ST t C
C HAllEN C E
t 0
0 Jt t H 0 0 0 J( Y
69
longevity probably resided in the. fact that the.rc were no contradictions to be. explained away; 1v1arcion's radica1 revisions of the scriptures saw to that. TI1at Marcion posed a sig nificant threat to orthodox C hristianity is evident in the numlx.r of Christian apologists who, over the course of two hundred years, felt impelled ro write anti-Marcionite n·eatises: as mentioned earlier, Tcrtullian penned an extensive response to 1\l[arcion~ Justin Martyr opposed him , as did lrcnacus, Hippolytus, Rhodo of Rome, Epiphanius, Bardesanes of Edcssa, and many others.
5 THE OTHER GosPELS
Wbm the boy}nuJ uvufivt >""' old, he WOJplaying at theford ofa rUJbing strt.am. Ht was collecting theflowing •water into ponds and made the U.Ylltr imtantly' purt. He did th£s with a single t fl1fllnand He thm nwdt 1ojt day and Jhaptd it into tu~fw parro"''· He did thiJ on the sabbath day, and many other boJ• '""" playing with him. . .. So }oJ4h u•ent there, and aJ J!)()n 01 he 1potud him, he Jhouted, 'Why are)~11 doing what) not pmnitted on the sobbotJJ?" But}ems Jimply cfopped his hands and shouted to the sparrow: "Be off; fly mua)~ and remember me, )'Ou u,!xJ are oliver And the sparrows /(J!)/:. off tmdjfew aumy noisi~v. -TIIF.I.II,'I-: -Il\'CYCOSP£L OP TU OM..-fS !:1-J•
s-6
(!iC I-iO t.A RS \'E II. SION )
Some t'A•cmy-fivc mi llion readers around the world have snapped u p The Do Vin.-i Code, which makes ir o ne of the bestselling novels of all tim e. There is no question that it ls an expertly paced and plotted t hr iller. Its heroine is gorgeous, its hero is smart and handsome, and its villains arc frightening and charismatic. VVirh its spectacular setting and its edge-of-thescat chase scc.ncs, the movie will undoubted ly break box-office records. But how docs it stack up as a \1\.'ork o f history?
THE
O t HER
COSPELS
71
T he question is worth asking, h«ause its autho r claims that all of its historical sources arc genuine. A nd it's worth asking
here, because its plot turns on some of the very "altc:.rnative Christianities" that are this book's subject. TI1e. shore ansv.•er is that Tht Da Vinci C()de is a work o f fiction. Many of the events and documents t hat it refc.rs to, such as the Council o f N icae.a and the Gnostic gospels, arc real (though the Priory o f Sion, the ostensibly thousand-year-old society that plays such an important role in the book, was actually founded in the 1950s by a French con man), but the.y don't necessarily have the significance TheDa Vi11ci Code atrributc-.s to them a nd certainly don't substantiate the supposedly vast conspiracy ro suppress the truth about Jesus' relationship to Mary Magdalene th at is at the h eart of the novel. Just as Tht Da Vinci Code declares, many gospels, w ith a great variety o f messages, were ,,.,ritten in the first three. hundred yc.ars aftc.r Jesus' death. ;\s we have scc.n in chaptc.r 3, these gospels we re no t chapte rs o f a fully formed book wh ose contents were set in stone, but a series of indepe ndent tc.xts that a community would copy fo r themselves and perhaps pass o n to others. For instance, hc.rc is a fragment from the o~yrhynchus gospels, discovered in 1903 in the Egyptian city
o f the same name: VVhcn the scribes, Pharisees, and priests noticed him, they became incensed because he me with sinners. But Jesus heard them and said, "The weU don't need a doctor. And pray for your enemies) because the one who docsn)t oppose you is on your side. The distant one today comes ncar tomorrow."
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A local community migh t possess a G reek translation of some of t he OldTcstaJn cm, one or rv.ro gospc.ls, maybe. a letter o r two of Paul, and a few oth c.r texts like t his 0:\:yrhynchus fragment.
Few churches had access to the comp1c.tc Nc.w Testament (whatever a "complete'' N ew Testamen t was deemed to be at the time) until Constantine commissioned them to be produced fo r t he major churches of the empire in the fourth century.
A Ust of Known Gospels (Narrative or Sayings) In the New Testament : The Gospel of Mark The Gospel of Matthew The Gospel oii.JJke The Gospel of John
In the Nag Ham mad i libra ry: The Gospel of Thomas The Secret Book of james The Dialogue of the Savior The Gospel of Truth The Gospel of Philip The Gospel of the Egyp!ians
From other manu scri pt so u rces: The Secret Gospel of Mark The Gospel of Mary The Gospel of the Savior The Gospel of Peter
Fragments q uoted and p r eser ved i n w ri tings of early churc h leaders: The Gospel of tJie Hebrews The Gospel of the Ebionites The Gospel of tJie No.zoreons
So a large varicry of gospels (many of them markedly diftcrcnt in tone and content from the four canonical gospels), and even more gospel fragments, were circulating in the first fc.w centuries of the Common Era. In later years, many of these communities-and their scriptures- would be looked upon with disfavor by the bishops, but in the beginning they were simply one fo rm of C hristianity among many others. TI1e great variety of early gospels wcm with the g reat variety of early Christianities.
T HE GOS PE L OF MA RY
Portions of the Go1pel '![Mary survived in their original G reek in two fragmentary manuscripts dating from the third century. Portions of a fifth-ccnmry Coptic translation have also been recovered. T he. first of these was discovered in 1896, but it wasn't translated and published until the 1950s. The Mary of the title is Mary l\llagdalenc. No, this gospel doesn't con finn an earthly marriage between her and Jesus- far from it-but it opens an incredible. window into the intdlecntal and spiritual world of the second cc.ntury c. E., when it v.-as originally composed. ln the canonical gospels, it is Mary who
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learns o f t he resurrection and reports it to the o ther disciples. In this way she is the fi rst apostle-the firsr to proclai m the good news t hat Jesus was risen. No small part to play in C hristian rcvdation.
It should come as no surprise that there would be a gospel in Mary·s name, but t he gospel irsclf sheds lighr on why rhis idea is so controversial. Aft er IVIary s hares her revelations with t he aposdcs, A ndrew objects that they arc too strange to have come from Je-sus. Pe te r chimc.s in , arguing th at 1) Jesus would not have revealed s uch im portant teachings to a won"!an, and 2)
her stature cannot be greate r than that of the n1aJc apostles. Politics as usual.
J ust as Paul called upon James, Joh n, and Peter to adjudicate v.•hc.n he came into conffict with the o ther a postles, Levi (also known as 1VIatth cw) mediates between :rvl a.ry and Pc.t cr here. Levi fo rces Peter to admit t hat it is his hot temper and p ride. t hat compds h im to reject rvlary; Pe te r concedes that her revelations arc auth e.ntic. So what in Mary's message \\'aS so strange to A ndrew? There
arc three par ts to Mary's gospel: a d ialogue between Jesus and t he disciples (unfortunately t he fi rst six pages of this a rc missing); !VIary's own revelation; and the concluding argument
among tl1e disciples. From tl1e little that's left of th e opening dialogue, it seems t hat Jesus n1ostly talked about t he nature of material and spiritual existence, maintai ning that c.ach will dissolve into its root. Sin, he said, came from mixing the spiritual with the material, which caused a disturbance in the believer. Aft e.r Jesus left t he disciples, havi ng commissioned th em to
proclaim the good news of rhc King dom of God, t hey ''were distressed and wept cxcccdlng ly... rviary comforted them, turn -
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ing their minds to spirirual things to refocus their atte ntion . T hen Pe te r asked her what spec ial revelations Jesus had g iven to her alone. Unforrunatcly, four pages arc missing from t his secnon: Pe.rct said to
l\·lar}~ ~My
sister, we understand that the
Savior loved you more than any othc:r woman. Relate to us the sayings of the Savior that you know, but that we have never heard.» Mary anS~A•ercd , 01 } wlll relate to you that which I remc:mbcr that you do not know.'' So she began to teU them these sayings. ~In a vision I saw the Lord, and I said to him, 'l saw you in a vision today, Lord.' He. said to me, 'You are indeed blessed for not fal te.ring at seeing me, because where your mind is, that is (where you will find) your treasure.' I said to him, ' Lord, how is ir thar a person who has a \~sion se.cs it-by means of the soul or by the spirit?' The Savior responded, 'Neither with the soul nor with the spirit docs the one who sees a vision sec it, but with the mind that mediates between these rv.•o.'" VVith so ma ny people experiencing visions of Jesus, and some even writing about them, t he question of how such a vision is rcceivc.d became im portan t. U visions indeed come from the mind, then it was quite possible for
rvrary to have a vision that
was given o nly to hc.r. The second part of M ary's teaching presented information on the ascent of t he soul from its entrapment in material cxiste.nce to its liberation in the spiritual realm. The ascent involved such questioning as "\.Yherc arc you going?" and "From
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whc.rc have you come?" Speculation about whether the soul achieves pe rfection in the body o r only after d eath pcn'lldcd t he religious and philosophical literature o f the age; l'vl ary's conversation with the risen Jesus addrcssc.s some of the hottest
issues of the day. Her gospel also manifests in its own text the arguments that were already raging in the chmch about who would present the teachings of Jesus and what the contents of t hose teachi ngs should be., foreshadowing irs own eventual sup-
.
prcssJOn.
THE GOSPEL OF T HO?I.'IA S
"These arc the mysterious sayings spoken by the living Jesus and recorded by D idymos J udas Thomas," t he Gospel ofThomas begins. VVhat a n intriguing introduction: mystc.rious a nd sccrc.t
words, a living Jesus, an apostolic recorder. Engaging with these sayings will bring inunortalicy, not just understanding: ''whoever discovers t he inrcrpre.t ation o f these sayings will never taste dcad1."Th e Gospel ofThomas exemplifies an important dynamic o f earliest Christianity: t he impulse to collect the saylngs ofJesus a nd pro nmlgatc t hc.m as the basis o f individual and corpo rate meditation. T he Gospel of Thomas gathers rogcthcr 1 H b rief aphorisms, parables, a fe w short narratives, and some dialogues with the disciples. T h ere is no accou nt ofjc.sus' birth, crucifixion>or resurrection, no healing stories~ in short, none of the stuff th at makes u p the canonical gospels. What the gospel docs feature in abundan ce is Jesus' unmcdiatc.d voice, a voice that always speaks in the p re-Scm te nse, challe nging readers a nd hearers to
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e ngage with the mi nd o f God, to hear divine wisdom, and to apply this wisdom to the.lr own life circumstances.
The earliest sayings probably date from Jesus' lifetime. T he latest come from the period just before the publication of the.
gospel, around 110
C.E.
M any seem to overlap the rcxt that
scholars believe IVlatthe.w and Luke must have drawn on to
supplement their revision of the Gospel of Mark. T his hypothetical "urtext"' is commonly called
Q, for the German word
for "source" (Quelle}. The sayings collected in the Gospel if Tho-mas jump from subject to subject without apparent or obvious connections, but most o f them arc intc.nded to challenge the norms of daily living. Jesus instructs his followers not to worry about food and
clothing (Saying 36}, not to perfo rm pious acts such as fasting and almsgiving (Sayings 6 and 104}, to hate their parents and siblings (Sayings 55 and 101), to lend money without expectation of interest or repayment (Saying 95); all in all, to adopt a thoroughly countcrcultural mode oflife.. No family values here! The o nly fi1mily that counted were those who were engaged with the living voice of the living Jesus. Thomas's Jesus invited his followers to become a new kind
of person-a single-minded person selected by God for special favor and grace (Sayings 23 and 49) and self-sufficient in understanding. "'If you do not f.1st from the world, you will not fi nd the (Father's) kingdom. If you do no t observe the Sabbath as a Sabbath you will not sec the Father" (Saying 27). He urged his list~.nc.rs to lc.ave the realm of those fated to die i n order to
live fo rever in the mind of God (Sayings 1, 11, 18, 19, 111 ), to join him in as intimate a communion as if they had gone into
the bridal chamber together (Saying 75). "\.Yhocvcr drinks
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gNOST I C I S M . . .
from my mo uth will become like me; ] myself shall become t hat pe rson, and t he hidden things wiU be rc.vcalc.d to him" (Saying 108). Not everyone. can aspire to this level of religious cornmitrnc:.nt, and that was precisely what got the Gospel ofThomas into
n·ouble. The creation o f an dire group of people, empowered by an immediate apprehe nsio n of the divine mind, without the mediatio n of bishops and o ther clergy, t hreatened t he dominan t church. And so the church relegated it to the dustbin of history. 1r \vas a tremendous loss for Christians, thc.n and now.
THE GOSPEL OF T HE SAV I OR
About a decade ago an impromptu meeting V\"aS called at the annual meeting of the Society ofB ib ljcaJ Lite rature to c.ncourage younger scholars who knew Coptic, a dialect of Egyptian imo which 1nany early Christian texts were translated , to edit and conserve documents from Egypt that had bc.cn sto red in metal tins at the Be rlin Egyptian Museum- some. of them sin ce t he late nin eteenth century. The d ocuments were quickly disintegrating and in desperate need o f presc.rvation. One volunteer discovc.red fragments o f a previously un known and u nattested gospel. Only a few sheets of what appears to be a much longer tex't have survived rdativcly in tact. tv1ost of its pages arc mere frag me.n ts, sometim es with o nly a letter or two that can be deciphc.rcd. Althoug h t he words 'j esus Christ'' and "'his disciples.. do not appear in any part o f the text, th e gospel seems to be a d iscourse betwcc.n the Savior and his followers.
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lt contains some. surprising clements. The first is the Transfiguration, t he episode. where 1\'loscs and Elisha speak with Jesus on the mountain and his clothes become dazzling white. In this version it takes place after the crucifixion, not before, as in Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Mark 9:2-10; Matthew 17:1-9; Luke 9:2S-36). Second, the Savior addresses a long speech to the cross. At one point, he. says, "You were eager for me, 0 cross; I also will be eager for you.'' Later the Savior again says: "'A little longer. 0 cross, and t hat which is lacking is perfecte.d, and that which is diminished is full.;\ little longer, 0 cross, and that which fell arises. A little longer, 0 cross, and all t he pleromn is perfected.'' \1\fith these words, a shameful Roman instrument of torture is transformed into an instrument of salvation a.nd restoration. T he Savior eage.rly embraces the cross as the means to achieve the perfection and salvation of the world. Finally, Jesus gives the disciples a promise: "I will take you to heaven with me, and te.ach you."ln this gospel, the theology of the resurrection involved transport to heaven, no t the establishment of a 1nissionary o n earth. Not much more can be said about the Gorpel ofthe Saviot: It is a treasure t hat has yet to come fully to light, but itdramati7..cs how much of early Christianity has bcc.n lost-and how nmch o f what has been recove-red can still d isappear.
6 FEELI NG THE B u RN : AscETI C CHRISTIANITY AND THE QuEsT FOR BoDILY PuR I TY
Once whm a truly God-loving mmh pr(l(fi(td interior pt'll)'tr as he
uYJiked in the dmrt, tu-o angtls appum d aud W
- N i l.Ul> O t' .SI N:\10 7'£Nn>O,VJ>P.Ai'£ H., NO. 112
If while you rm praying agaimt 0111e thought, you suddenly obserw that it hm dissi'paff.d quickJ..v aud without effort, stud)' it to :mdmtand wh)• this has happened so/hat you nre no/ eutrapped by it ttnd, byfooling your-
it/f. JOU bttflmt )'OilY tr..UIIfrnitor. -Nil.VS Of' S I N,<\1,
1'£XTSONI'RA~'£R,
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Fantasize with me a mome nt. Imagine that an ancicm C hristian ascetic climbs down from his piUar in the desert and gets
fast-forwarded to a typical American shopping mall. You know the type: lots of clothing s tores and restaurants, a gym or phys-
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ical fitness center of some sort, and shops specializing in beauty producrs and weig ht loss. The usual. Most early Christians, although they would have been shocked by the profligate displays of luxurious commercial products, would imme.diatdy understand where they were. i\ftcr all, the mall is just a larger and mo re modern version of the agora, the ancient marketplace. The ancie.nt ascetics, however, would especially be drawn to the gym, and to the beauty and weight loss cli nics. Here they would sec modern people doing almost exactly the same things as they did, but fo r radically diffcre.n t reasons. 1Vlodern people go to gyms in order to recast their body into something tight, supple., fit, and healthy. The well-toned body cries out beauty) hard work) self- respect) and the joy of recasting fiabby and ho mely fiesh into something the culture regards as beautiful and youthful. The dieters
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people seck today. If modern people pamper their flesh, the Christian ascetics punished it, restricting t hc.ir bathing to a bare minimum and rubbing ashes nor only o n their bodies but
imo thc.ir food.
If modern ascetics hope that th eir dforts will be re warded v.•ith more and better sc.x and higher social stams--carnal goals all-the a ncients worked their bodies to make th em godly. The
ends clitTcr starkly; the. means arc strikingly similar. T his section introduces two varieties of asceticism that wc.rc
commo n in ancient Christianity. Neither of them was c.vcr declared to be heretical, and t hough rare, vc.rsions of them still survive today. The established church didn't have to stamp
these movements our, they simply lost their po pularity.
WHO WERE T HE "CONT INENT S
11
(AKA ENC RAT I TES)?
T h e modern ''just say no" movcmc.nts have a n a nciem equivalent. The ''continents,. o r the ''self-con tro lled" (in Greek
enkrateia, hence ''Encratites") would have agreed with their modern counterparts about sex and alcohol. Some things arc so dangerous that they should be avoided altogether. In addition to being considered immoral, p re marital sex may lead to un ''-'ante.d preg nancies and contribute to t he spread o f sc.xually transmitted d iseases. Likewise, drinking or ta.lcing drugs can lead to death by overdose or othc.r mishaps. N c.i ther o f these consequences pleases pa rents o r society. The Encratites fd t the same way. Sex and alcohol involved mc:.n a nd '"'omen i n sociaJ and cultural circumstances that disn·actcd them from God, so they renounced them altogether.
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T heir religious d iscipline revolved around celibacy, the rejection o f marriage., and the regulation of food) especially wine. The so-called "f., mily values" celebrated by many C hristians today were. not so obvious to some earlier Christians. These self-controlled and continent C hristians thoroug hly rejected socla1 and political marriages o f t he sort that lead to families in favo r of ''spiritual marriages,.. which had no SC.\.'Ual componc.nt at all. IVIen and women) even some who were marrie.d and had raised f.:1milies prior to thelr conversion to Christianity, renounced t heir sexual rd ationships in o rder to live ''as angels,'' neither male nor female, in spiritual relationships. These spiritually married p«>ple devoted themselves to the production of spiritual children: rhe virtues, acts of mercy, unceasi ng prayc.r) and the work of the church. T hey would set up a household just like other households, but their houses were dedicate.d to the development o f their spirirual lives. Obviously sometimes these '"spiritual marriages,. fell in to carnalicy. Many bishops derided these. rdationships as far too dangerous fo r t he common pc.rson and encouraged pe.oplc either to marry and engage in licit sexual relationships o r to ente.r the monastic communities t hat had begun to blossom at chat same period. The spiritual marriages occurred primarily in urban contexts, while mo nastc.r ies g rew up in mostly rural o r isolated environments. VVe will learn more about monastic Christianity in the nc.xt chapter.
A D IF fER ENT K IN D OF ROMANC E NOV E L
1\'Iost of what we know about t he. Encratltcs comes fro m a fascinating body of literature: the early C h ristian novds. Ye.s, I
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said novels. These novds, usually categorized undc.r the rubric of the "apocryphal acts of the apostles," relate stories about d1e missionary work that th e apostles u ndertook afte r the rc-surn:.c-
tion of Jesus. They arc replete with miraculous events. T he apostles raise the d ead, heal the sick, convc.rt the recalcitrant. T h e powc.r of God is so great that even fresh converts can accomplish t he same miraculous dcc.ds.
The Best-Known ''Chri stia n Novels" The Acts of Paul and Theda The Acts of Andrew
The Acts of John
The Acts of Peter The Acts of Thomas
The Acts of Peter and lhe Twelve Apostles The Acts of Perer and Poul The Acts of Andrew and Matthew
The Acts of Perer and Andrew The Acts of Paul and Andrew
The Acts of Philip
T h e apostles and their converts pcrformc.d these mlraclcs to show t hat th eir God was supe rior to all othe r gods. In the Arts
ifJobn, for example, John went to d1e famous sanctuary of d1e Roman goddess Artemis at Ephesus (in modern T urkey) a nd by prayer smashed all the idols and holy places to prove to d1e people who wc.rc watching t hat his God was stronger a nd better than theirs. Of course, t hey were all cotwc.rtcd.
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But the apostles' contests with the Rornan gods were about mo re than brute force. The Christian God demanded that all social relationships and all familial relationships be redefinc.d. Now t hat the ir bodies were temples o f the H oly Spirit, the
newly baptized were expected to remain pure, unmarried, chaste, and undefiled. The wiU to persevere. as a virg in showed forth the majesty of their God as much as any act of healing or de-
struction. T hat message o f chastity and virginity surprised people then as much as it docs now. Listen to Paul's reworking of the bc.atirudcs in the Arts ofPaul and Theda (2:5) : Blessed arc the pure in heart; they shall sc.c God. Blessed arc they that ke.cp their bodies from sex; they will be a temple of God.
Blessed arc the continents; God will speak to them. Blessed arc the world-rcnounccrs; they please God.
Blessed arc those who have wives as if they were singic; they will inherit God . .. .
Blessed arc the ones who have kept their baptism purci they will certainly rest with the Father and the Son... . Blessed arc the virginal bodies; they really please God
and will forfeit the reward of their self-controL Upon hearing this n1essage the sainted Thecla, a very popular female apostle o f the early church, vowed that she would ne.vc.r marry and became a Christian instead. Rejecting hc.r arranged marriage with Thamyris, she set off to become an itinerant
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missionary like Paul, preach ing fideury to Christ through virginity alone. Fo r the Encratites th e purity of t heir bodies, their u ndefiled state, formc.d the basis of t hc.ir power. The c haste could keep t hc.ir rninds o n God without th e rustraction of raising children, or keeping a househ old, or catc.ring to a spouse. Real pov.•cr consisted in purging the body of its carnal desires i n order to become a habitarion for G od alone. Power an d c hastity went hand in hand. W omc.n in particular play an important role. in t hese stories. W ives who have rcjc.ctcd thc.ir husbands fo rm communities
v.•hcrc they can dedicate themselves to prayer. Renouncing social status an d wealth , th ey exchange \\'oddly fo r spiritual power. T he underpinni ng to t his rcvc.rsaJ rested in th e. contrast bcf\A•ccn pe rmanent a nd imperma nent things. The riches o f the Roman nobility-gold, fi ne clothing, large households filled with slaves a nd cJjcnr servants- were things that would evc.n tually corrode and d ie. The thi ngs of t he Spirit of G od, however, were eternal. Husban ds and households d ie, but Jesus will always live, so these WOI'n c.n took o n Jesus as their eternal, spiritual spouse. In the following exerpt from t he Aa1 of T!Jomas (section 123), Mygdonia, who has rejected her fiance now that she has be.c.n converted to a life of continc.ncc., explains th e theology of her marriage to Jesus. I begin with the conversation that leads imo th e theology:
Coming d ose [ 0 her, Charisius emrc~uod her again, saying: "Please ~stcn to me and I will grieve no longer. Do
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you rcmembc.r the day that you .first saw me? TeU me truthfuUy, was 1 not more beautiful to you than Jesus is to vou now?"
'
Mygdonia answered, "That was then, this is now. That
was a beginning, but this time is an ending. That time was passing, but this time is eternal. That pleasure was transient, but this pleasure lasts forever. That time [was marked by the passing) of day and night, but this time (consists of) day without night. You saw the earthly marriage that passed away, but this marriage L'\Sts forever. T hat scx'Ual relationship was tUll of corruptjon, but this intim acy is fuU of etc m al life. 'TI1osc bridal anendants arc lllCt'C pa.ssing human
men and women>but these [with Je-
sus) wlU remain with me forever. That bridal chamber would be disassembled, but this bridal chamber lasts forever. You spread that bed with blankets, but this one is spread with faith and love. You arc a bridegroom ·who wiU die and dissolve, but Jesus, the true bridegroom, will live immortally forever. Your bridal gifts consist of money and clothes that age, bur this bridal gift [of Jesus) consists of ~\~ng words
that will never pass away.,.
\~'ithdrawal from society o pe ned th e possibility o f doing
something really nc.w, really different. But the way of life that these C hr is tian novds celebrated was just as alte rnative for
n1any C hristians as it \'VaS for the Roma ns. Not every C hris tian considered virginity to be the normative state. after baptism; not all Christians c.xpc.cted t heir religious leaders to perform miracles. The Eneratite way of life seemed ext reme; it was held
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in suspicion as vaguely heretical o r dualistic. T he Romans sim-
ply th ought it weird and strange. Some C hristians, I a m sure., ag reed with them. T he o ne way that these novels might be. genuinely heretical is in how they image Jesus. Very o ften the women of these Acts would look at t he a postle and see Jesus h imself sitting tl1ere. To t hose who needed to sec a n o ld man, Jesus presented hirnsclf as an old ma n; to th ose who needed a young boy, Jesus a ppcarc.d
as a young boy; to those who needed to sec an angelic being, Jesus would appear as a bright ange l. Later on the. b ishops would fi nd such a polymorphous Christology to be dangerous, but a t the time that these novels were written such fluidity of idc.ntity made fo r in teresting plot rwists. T hese novels were the most popular fo rm of early Christian literature. They formed gcnc.rations o f early C h ristian women and c hildren, introducing them to new ways of llving. The.ir early n:.aders may have also read them as libc.rating fantasies. While they remained locked beh ind the social require me nts of households both C hristian and Roman, these novels gave t hem a g limpse of a complcrely different way of life.
WHAT W A S S OL IT ARY MONASTICJSM?
T here is a circus sideshow aspect to many o f the early C hristian ascetic 1novements-and not just lxcause sotne of the n"! were. deeply strange and bizarre. The circus, after all, calls day-to-day life imo question) offering in its place a vision of an alternative world, fiiled with u nfamiliar anim als a nd unexpected events.
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People walk on wires that arc suspended high above the ground, happy- and sad-looking clowns perfo rm both to emertain and to teach lessons about life. So it ·was fo r some o f the solitary mo nks and ascetics of the early church. They lived on the very edge o f society, if not completely outside of it, commenting on the world as they saw it from their unique perspective. T wo kinds of monasticism emerged in the early church: ce.nobitic and eremiticaL The cenobitic monks formed small com munities; the. ere.miticaJ monks lived independently but were gathered very loosely around a charismatic teacher. T he en: mi tical mo nks tc.ndcd to be the most outrageous and theatrical monks of t he early church. Both kinds of monasticism have survived i nto the rnodem day, but the eremi tical is much rarer than it was. Eremites were women and me.n who withdrew from aU social rd ationships, including the church, in order to spe.n d all their time alone wit h God. St. An t hony, the famous Egyptian hermit, set the course: at first he withdrew to t he. cemetery outside his small Egyptian village; then he went farther i.mo the desert; and fi nally he walled himself into a building in the deep inner desert so that he could be completely alone. A nt hony withdrew in o rder to contend with detnons, his intc.rior thoug hts made physically manifes t in his contest with evil fo rces. Actually he wasn't all that alone. His followe rs gat hered about a day's walk away so they could p rovide fo r him. Sometimes the.y gathered together o n a Sarurday evening fo r prayc.r and convc.rsation, maybe even a liturgy or two. But this was not ah vays the case. Hermi ts were rcduses; they did not want the company of any o ther monk, nor of any church o fficiaL Mostly
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The Eight Monastic Deadly Sins
These sins were considered "deadly" because they thwarted the spiritual impulse and caused a kind of deadening of the soul. Usually we hear about seven deadly sins, but the hermit monk< of Egypt, Syria, fra nce, and Italy actually had e.ight deadly sins against which they fought. The eighth, called acedia in Greek, was so hard to translate that it was simply easier to leave it out. But here are the eight and their significance: Gluttony. Since monks fast so much, the desire tor food can really be d ebilitat ing. Too much
food~r
comfort
of any sort-hinders an ascetic's progress. Lust. living alone, con.stanlty attending to one's fantasies, an ascetic can easity succumb to lust. lust can impel the ascetic to k>ave t he monastery or hermil'age al together, or. just as bad, to indulge in masturbation. Impurity as an act
and lust .u a desire bolh caused serious problems and t he ascetic needed to light both assiduously. Greed. This i s the materi al side of lust. when the a.scetic is overwhelmed by intense desires for such c reature comforts as a soft bed, or books, or a better place lo live. These desires for things try to fill a voi d Lhal only prayer and medi tation shoul d fill. Things get in the way o f the one truth, which ~ that God should be the ascetic's only true possenioll-e'Verything el se has no signifi cance. Sadness. An ascetic could easily become melancholy living alone, l osl in his or her own thoughts, lhling a subsi stence existence far away from f riends, family, and oth-
ers. The ascetic has to light the tendency toward sad· ness by envisioning the company of ascetic saints, an· gels, and even God himself. Anger. Spending so much time by
themselw~,
ascetics
can begin to persew.rate about all the people and events that did them harm. Sin<e they have no means of reconciliation, they can easily become mired in anger and frustration. Anger prevents the ascetic trom making progress toward holiness of life. Acedia is a name for the tediousness of religious striv·
ing. It is also called the noonday sin, because when the sun is high in the sky the heat can make the hermit feel the tedium of praying and fasting all the more acutety. Time often seems to stand still for the ascetic-prayer becomes frustrating, habitual patterns become more stubborn, spiritual progress feels illusory. Su
the ascetic fills up the self with a sense o4 acad s to boasting a bout it, or
thinking that holiness has already been achieved. This is a wry dangerous spiritual state that can lead the ascetic to fall into deeper sin. Pride takes the glory away from God and attributes it to the self.
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t hey stayc.d alone in order to pray to G od and to do battle wit h God's e nemies who lodged thc.tnsdvc.s within thc.m . The fo llowing selectio ns from the Sayings ofthe Desert Mm-
ters arc in tended to stardc, confront, e ngage., fascinate, and oth erwise d isturb normal patterns of thi nking. They reveal the uncompromising in tegrity of t he hermit's way of life.
Father Joseph went to '1sit Father Lot. Joseph said to him:
"Holy Father, as much as I am able I perform my ascc.tical dmics: I pmy a }jrdc; I f.1st a linlc; I pray and meditate in silence as much as I can; and I cleanse my thoughts according to my ability. What more do I need to do?" Lot got up and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became ten candles aflame, and he said to Joseph.¥[{
you really Vl'allt to, you can become entirely fire." The holy mother Syndccica said, "When the unrighteous tum ro God they first struggle and experience difficult work; afterward they arc filled with unspeakable happi-
ness. 1t is just Like a person who is kindling a fit·c. First they have smoke that pains their eyes and they cry~ but afterward, they get what they want. So it is with us hermits. It is wrincn, 'Our God is a consuming titt'
(Dc.urcronomy 4:24) and that requires that we kindle the djvinc tire within us with hard work and tears." A famous hermit came to talk to Father Pastor abom
lofty things. Bur Pastor turned his head away from the hermit, and the hermit left him greatly saddened. Pastor's student asked him why he did not want to talk with such
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a famous person who had a great re-putation in his own country. Pastor replied that his visitor came to talk about lofty things, but that he was just an earthly being. Pastor said, "If he had asked me about the tcmptacions of the sou1, I could have given him some ad\~cc; but I am stupid when it comes to lofty things.yo The famous hermit overheard this and was deeply moved to learn from the old man, so he said to Pastor: "Holy Father, what can I do? The temptations of my soul rule my litC." Then they conversed for a very long time, and the. famous hermit then said, "This is rcaUy love's way." A younger brother asked an older hermit, saying, "1 don't know what to do. I do not seem to act like a monk. 1cat, drink, and sleep without discipline. I have terribly wicked thoughts. I'm rcaUy troubled and cannot seem to concentrate, moving from one task and one thought to another." The older hermit said, ~stay in your hermir's cell and do not be troubled about how lirdc you do. For doing link
is equal to the great value of what Father Anthony did on the holy mountain. By staying put in your cell, sitting in the Name of God, guarding your thoughts carefully, you will find the same joy that Anthony found."
WHO \"-'E RE THE BOSKo t ?
T he boskoi were t he cattle ascetics. No, they did no t cat beef. T he word boskoi n1eans ""grazc.rs." True. to the.ir name, they acted like cattle., crawling naked o n their hands and knees and
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eating g rass as lf they were a ni rnals. Sound s trange? VVcU, it
v.'as, but there \vas a method to their seeming madness. The g razers understood that t he.world had gone far astray from that
which God had intended when he created it. The garden of Eden had bec.n a natural world in which all the parts cohered. Humans had not bee n a t the. center of this primal paradise.~ in
fact, God created man exactly as he had made all the o ther animals. But when Adam sinned, the wo rld changed. The only way to undo t he work o f Adam was to return to the world as
it
v.'as be fo re his fall. So back to the a nimal state., back to being
g razers. The br11koi's g razing restored the world to its pristine
punry.
WHO WE.RR TH E STYLITES?
T he. Stylites wc.rc the high-wire. acts of t he a ncien t ascetic cir-
cus. These. holy men climbed onto high pillars (stylos means "pillar" in Greek) and lived on them for years at a time. The pillars were topped with a small platform that provided just enough space to s tand and pray, and maybe to squat for a while to rest. Some tlmes t he pillar was big enoug h to hold a tiny house th at protc.c tc.d its residen t saint from rhe blistering heat of the summer and the we t and cold of the winter, bur no t aU of the m used t hose houses.
The Stylites, too, had a reason fo r what they did. Perched upon th c.ir pillars, t hese sain ts saw thc.msclves as s us pe nded
halfway between heaven and earth. l11cy had ascended to a place that was separate from th e world and above it, if not as high as heaven. Since they literally saw the world from a loftier
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vantage, they brought a divine pe rspective to hum an affairs. Rulers and commo n people alike came to them to seck counsel, for hc1p in reco nciling with their enemies, and fo r prayers fo r healing and fOrgiveness. The pillar saints provided access to the heavenly graces; they modeled what life would look like for the a ngels and those perfect few who could sustain their ascetic etlOrts. It was far from an easy life, but th ey embraced its harshness as an opportunity to do pe.n ance on behalf of the. sinful world and its people. One monk, Symcon the Stylitc, stood fo r so long that his kg became gangre.nous. His response was to write. a hymn in praise o f th is noble limb, which had expended itself in the service o f the man of God.
WHO WERE THE " FOOLS POR CHR I ST" ?
On tht next day. which was a Sunday, he took nuts, and mtrriug the church at the hrgiuning tfthe liturgy, hr thrrw tlu uuts and put out the candles. When thq hurried to run aftrr him, he uvnt up to the pulpit, and ftom thm he pelted the womw with nuts. With great trouh/e, thty chased after him, and while he was going out, he o"rturtud the pastry theft, who nearly heat him to d.ath. Seeing himself crushed by the blows, he said to himself. 'Poor Symeon, ifthings lilu this kerp happening,.)~" uw't liw a 'i.!Jt.ek in these peopleS handJ. h
-LEO:O:TIUS Ot' NEA I'Ol.IS, 'I'NI': /. I F£ OP &YMF.O!\' Til/:;' FOOt!
•Derek KruC'gC'r, S)wte~n /h;· Hcl)' Ff.}()l· UomjuJ's Lif<' am{ tlx Lou Antiqu~ Ci~)' (BC'rkdcy: Uni\'C'rsiry ofC:tliforni:l Prtss, 1996), p. 151.
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At the other end of the spectrum were the fools for Christ. Like circus d owns, th ese monks d id crazy things that no one. would expect from a rnonk o r an ascetic. They took Paul's injunction that he was a fool (1 Corinth ians 4:10) literally a nd imitated his foolishness as a sign of g race. They openly dis-
dained the rites and ceremonies conductc.d by the privileged clergy. They would often live among the most unclean of the city-prostitutes, theater performers, and those living on the ancient strcc.ts. They ate large quantities of bea ns and expressed t hc.ir fla rulcncc. in public an d in church buildings. They ate garbage a nd t hey seldom bath ed. They often defecated and urinated in public. Their point, as they understood it, was a simple one. The ways and wisdom of God look foolish to humans (1 Corinth ians 1:21), so in order to understand God, humans must become foo ls. One cann ot both know God and act nonnally. T hat is impossible. i"\Jthough t hese itinerant fools do not appear very ofte.n in t he modern pc.riod, they have been known t hroughout t he history of C hristianity. T hey tend to etne rge whene.ver t he church becomes too rich and powc.rful or when th e C h ristians identify too strongly wit h social and political powe.r. The mode.rn R ussian HWy of a Pilgrim, immortalized in the novel Framl)' a11d
Zooey, is the most popular example.
WHO \1\'E RE THE- VAG R ANT MONKS ?
T hese mo nks ernb raccd a life. of poverty with intense. fasting and perman ent homeless ness. T hey wandered from city to city
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through out t he C hristian Roman Empire, gathering around the martyrs' sh rines and begging fo r money and food-not fo r themselves, but for the poor, who were energized by their charismatic presence. T hey, too, had a theological poin t to make. These vag rant monks lite rally represented Christ to the community. They imitated C h rist's poverl)'t h is wandering \\-ay o f life, his devotion to t he poor, and his association with sinnc.rs and outcasts. They were very holy. T hey were also very popular. A nd that was the prob lem. They posed a serious danger to the church hierarchy and to th e governments th at they implicitly challenged; eventually th ey inspired leg islation requiring all monks to be connected with a community. All of th ese solitary ascetics d isplayed a radical reliance upon God alone and made no secret of their rabid hatred fo r a social, political, and even ecclesiastical world that paid more attention to p roperty and p ropriety than to God . Their outrageous and provocative be havior challenged t he rest of society and the church to acknowledge the dash between a stable social ordc.r and the Kingdom of God.
7 HoLY RoL L ERS A N D S A cRED T E RRORI STS
The lang ith them and liht them, •.JJill ditfortht
All religions have their "holy rollers," thosc fuithful whose enthusiasm pushes them to the edge of proprlcty and even to the edge of society. Often these charismatic enthusiasts anract
"Sebastian Brock n.nd Susan Ashbrook Han·ey: Hcl)' Jflomm ifilx Syrian Oriml (BerkdC')·: Uni\·ersity of Californi:l Press, 1987), p. 109.
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large crowds of people who secrn somehow dissatisfied, or n1aybc even bored~ with the steady and rational religion of the majority. Ancient religion was no exception. TI1e. priests of Cybdc, the mothc.r goddess of the ancient Ncar East, worked themselves lmo ecstatic transports in which they'd castrate themselves. Some ancient Christians also bordered o n the crazc.d. Imagine walking into a Christian assembly in Corinth. Paul dcscrtbcs how people would cat and drink and even get drunk (1 Corinthians 11 :21-22)! The participants spoke in strange languages, prophecy abounded; the scene was so chaotic that Paul had to intc.rvenc, insisting that they take turns praying and singi ng. Tltis epitomizes e.nthusiastic, charismatic Christianity, a traditio n that still lives o n today, as a visit to any Pentecostal church in your neighborhood will confirm.
WHO WERE THE ]\'I ONTANIST S?
\Valking imo a Ivlomanist church would have been like. \·valking into a contemporary Pentecostal church-except it would have been filled with radical, leftist feminists. People all around you would look like they were in a trance, their f.'tccs tilted back, pointing toward heaven, thc.ir eyes focused o n anothc.r world. You would fCel the emotion in the air. \'Voman after woman, then man after man, would channel words from God, while the others listc.nc.d attentively. "l am your God and I am with you. Turn to me o nly!'' A woman presiding at the worship service might proclaim: ''1 am d riven away as a \,.•olf from sheep. I am not a wolf. I am word and spirit
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and power."' The sermon, preach ed by a woman, would castigate the church for its refusal to bc.nd to the. sp irit, fo r its captivation by social norms, fo r its discrimination against the ,,.,otncn a nd the p rophets o f God . C harismat ic chaos a nd women's liberation mcldc.d togcthc.r. T hat is t he spirit of l\tlontantsm. 1vlontanus, the male fou nder o f this C hristian movement, began to prophesy in Phrygia, in Asia Minor (mod ern Turkey)
sometime around 170
C.E.
Reaching back into the Pauline
Epistles, cspcciaJly t he letters to the C orinth ians, Montanus called fo rt h a vision o f a church ren ewed-filled with the Holy Spirit o f God, alive wit h trcsh p rophecy, a nd eagerly await ing t he immin ent n:.t urn o f C hrist. ~1lontanus was a new Paul. H is prophecy, like Paul's ministry, gat hered the elect in to a spiritfilled commu nion of people. preparing for t he eagerly awaited and d readed Day of the Lord, when Jesus would re turn to establish the Kingdom of G od on earth. But Montanus's expectations were read t hrough Jesus' promise in t he Gospel o f John to send a Paradetc (John 14:15-17), a H oly Spirit that acts as an advocate., comfortc.r, and divine intercessor: ·'If you love me, p reserve my laws, and I ,,..]_11 ask the Fathc.r and he will g ive. you an other Parac1c.te t hat will be with you u mil the end of time. [It is) the Spirit of truth, which chis world is not capable o f receiving because it nelther sees it nor knows it; but you know it because it dwells in you and will live in you." T wo wome.n prophets joined :rvl oncanus in creating and supporting th is early C hristian renewal movement: Prisca a nd IV1aximilla. It was Ma.ximilla who prophesied:
~I
am driven
away as a wolf from s heep. I a m not a wolf. I am word and spirit
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and power." TI1e two prophetesses channeled the divine voice through their bodies, which were. purified by rigorous fasting and prayer. The ancient world outside Christianity knew and valued women prophets. T11e oracle of the god Apollo at bo th Delphi and Didyma had had women prophets, and thc.re were many o ther shrines whe.re oracles could be consulte.d and whc.rc women mediated the message. We seem to find the same dynamic in the Pauline letters. Some women could pray and speak in a prophetic voice in the worship service (1 Corinthians 11:5). And certainly Paul docs not prohibit women from receiving the. gift of prophecy (1 Corind1ians 12:4-11}. The ancient wor1d was mo re interested and concerned about the purity and moral stature of the person than about gender when it came to speaking a word from God to the people. T11csc Montanist women stood in a long line of wmne.n prophets. It is not easy to describe the .IVIontanists. They were apocalyptic h«ause they awaited the cataclysmic return of Christ to the New Jerusalem, which they c.xpc:ctcd to occur at Pcpuza in Phrygia (modern Turkey}. They were ecstatic because they sought to displace the.msdves and their own consciousness in o rdc.r to be. filled with divine utterance. They were prophetic because they pronounced sc.vc.re judgments o n the current world and its mores. And they wc.re ascetic because they demanded a high level of bodily purity, which they achieved by fasting and sexual abstinence, before they could be. worthy to have the. divine indwelling. The IVIontanists had everything a religious rigorist could possibly V\"ant. The 1\llont:anists understood their new prophecy as a renc.wal movement for an increasingly decadent church, which
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had assim ilatc.d itself to the social and political customs of the day. T heir prophecy soug ht to bridge the o ld world o f charis-
matic prophecy and the new world that would come wit h the Second C oming of C hrist. Their bod ies, filled with the Spirit of God and speaking God's voice, literally created the bridge.
W HAT D ID T HE MOKTA N I STS B ELIE VE?
tv1ost o f t he eviden ce comes from t heir cncmic.s, bm we can make some educated guesses. Their e nemies concc.d cd that the tv1ontanists did not stray from the dominant churd"'•s teachings about basic doctrin es, nor did they vary from its sacramen tal
.
and hierarchical svstcm. Thcv were not heretics in t hat sense. ' W hat disturbed the church fathc.rs was th c.Lr c.xcepcional rigor and enthusiasm. Following Pauline teaching in I Corinthians 7:1-16, the tv1ontanists considered virginity to be the only bodily state t hat could be. consecrated fully to God. Those who were already married could remain married, as Paul had suggested~ but wid owed, separated, o r d ivorced people were fo rbidden ro rcman·y. T h e solitary state, unpolluted by sexual intercourse., provided t he ideal home for the d ivine Spirit. As mentioned c.ar licr, the
tv1ontanists also fasted intensely. Following Pauline practices, the Montanists ordain ed \II,'Omc.n to holy orders as deacons, presbyters (priests), and bishops. l f you believe most of the lcadc.rs o f major Christian denominations today, you would th i nk that wome n's lcadc.rship in the church is something new. Nothing could be further from the n·ut h. Just a quick glance at Paul's greetings to people in Rome
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(Romans 16) shows that Phoebe was a deacon, Prisca and M ary coworkcrst Junia an apostk, and T ryphena a worker for the Lord, not to mention Julia and Olympas, who were good friends. To Paul's witness can be added the dogged witness of l\'lary Magdalene to the resurrection of Jesus in all the canonical gospels, as well as the ministry of other women who followed Jesus fi·om the beginni ng (Mark 15:40-41). Women not only played an ltnportam role in extending the church to their households, but also provided vital and sig nificant leadership to the church throughout the early period. The Montanists carried on dtis tradition. The Momanists' rigorous f.1.ith did not admit of any compromises. If a member of thc.ir church succumbed to Roman pressure to acknowlc.dge their gods and make sacrifices, they would not be permitted to rejoin the church. T11cy wc.re prUne targets for mart)-Tdom and persecution by the Romans and they welcomed their fate. The early church had often stipulated that prophets should never re.quest nloney o r suppo rt. The fvlontanists' opponents accused them of violating this rule-of coUe.cting funds, making provisions fo r receiving gifts, and even of paying their clergy and prophets salaries. A pparently this was true. By the time of Montanismt Jesus' injunctions to poverty had long since. been reinterpreted to allow the dominant church to accumulate wealth and property. The fvlontan.ists, who maintai ned the clerical hierarchy of the dominant church, also followed its ge.neral ad ministrative practices. T heir fervency fo r reform did not cxrc.n d to their church's structure. Finally, rl1e Montanists believed in prophecy. Prophecy in the early church did not mc.an predicting fu ture events- that ls
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a decidedly modern view. A ncient prophets spoke on behalf of th e deity, delivering messages from G od to the people. Prophecy revealed God's will and God's direction fo r those v.•ho would listen. Somccimcs the prophet's revelations can·ic.d a threat of action should tl1e people not follow G od's will, and in t his way t he prophet predicted the future. But mostly tl1e prophets simply delivered God's message. More than anything dsc, this was the cause. o f their argurnc:.nt wit h the dominant church . The I\1o ntanisrs believed th at t hc.ir minds and bodies were. filled with the d ivine presence. when they prophesied. The Montanists did no t c.xpc.r icncc t hcm sdvcs as mcs.scngcrs or speake rs on be half o f God as the orthodox theologians argued. bm as human a nd bodily vessels t hrough which G od chan neled his voice and spoke directly to t he people. ''1 an"! the Father. the \ •\ford, and the Paraclctc.,.. Didymus t he Blind quoted a Montanist proclaiming (On the
Trinity 3:41). Epiphanius, in Medidne Chest Agaimt All Heresies, quotc.d n,.•o more Montanist prophecies: ''1 am t he Lord, t he Omnlpo tcm God, who has descended into a huma n'' and
'1, the Lord 1 have. come- not a n angd, not even an ambassador" (XLVIII .l }. O bviously the leadership of the church could not have people claiming to channel the divine voice d irectly. They insisted t hat true prophets had a vision of God and t he.n rd ated it, o r heard God speak and t hen repo rted his words to others. For t he o rthodox church, the human pc.rson could never fully represent the d ivine. And so t he Montan ists eventually were excommunicated. T h e lVIontanist rigor and purity attracted not o nly common people, but also intellectuals and t heologians. T he famous North
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African Latin theologian Te.rtullian (160-225) converted to the moveme.nt and wrote energetically from a Montanist perspective. The Nlontanist churches survived wdl into the seventh century C. E.
WHO WERE THE DONAT I STS AND THE C IRC UM CELLJONS?
Violence and rerrorisn1 abounded in the ancient world. The Roman lc.aders used crucifixion as an instrument of social and political conn·ol~ Roman citizens were fascinated by the bloody spectacle provided by their circuses, where various political and social enemies were pitted against each other as gladiato rs or fought to preserve themselves against the attack of wild animals. And not all the. violence. was inflicted by the Romans. Some of their subjects gave as good as they got. T he parallels bct\vcen ancient and modern religious terrorism arc sobering. The Circumcdlions of the Donacist movement, whom we. will next study) bear a disturbing resemblance to today's Islamic "'living bombs/' people. who destroy themselves ln order to perpetrate violence againsr their religious enemies. T hen as now, martyrdom) violence, and religious enthusiasm create a deadly mi.x. But before we get to the Donatists and the Circumccllions) we ne.cd to start with the G reat Persecution by the. Roman emperor Diocletian (who reigned from 284 to 305 C. E.). Dioclctian g rieved rhc increasing negkct of traditional Roman religion) particularly in the provinces. His solution was twofold: to legislate adherence to n·aditional Roman religious practices,
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and to punish and destroy the people and th eir institutions who most opposed it, namely t he Christians. O n February 24, 303, D iod etian promulgated his first edict
against the Christians. The practice of C hristianity was outlawed: church buildings were o rdered to be destroyed, a nd sac-red books confiscated and burned. A year latc.r D ioc1ctian
added the stipulation that C hristians had
to
offer incense to
t he Roman gods or lose their lives. This persecution created t hree categories of Christians. The marcyrs refused ro cotnply with the imperial edicts and were. killed. T he confesso rs also refused to comply with t he imperial edicts and were condemned to death, but fo r whatcvc.r reason
thc.ir scmcnccs were never carried out. Christians regarded t hese first two categories as venerable and h oly-they ,,.,ere u nderstood to have a special anoint ing of t he H o ly Spirit, a special charisn1, th at bestowed upon t he m c.xn·aord.inary spiritual rights a nd privileges. T hey were pennittc.d to fo rg ive sins and celebrate the sacraments with out ordi nation in the prisons where they were held. The third category was the traditores~ those who handed over the scriptures to be burned , o r gave the names o f o ther C hristians to the Roma n officials, o r cooperated in any 'vay with the Roman pe rsecution. Needless to say, t hey wc.re despised. Traditores literaUy means "the o nes who handed over~'; t he term became svnonvmous with "traitor."'
- -
Mttr t he. G reat Persecution subsided in 305 with Diocletian's death, a majority of bishops concluded that it was necessary to reconcile with these traito rs in ordc.r to restore t he church and begin its reconstruction . T hese. bishops maintain ed that tradi-
tores could repc.n t of t hc.ir sinful action and~ after a suitable pe-
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riod of penance, participate in church life again without shame o r guilt. The. Donatists ,,.,ere of a very ditlCrc.nt o pinion. I n 311 Caecilian was consecrated Catholic bishop of Carthage in North Africa. One of his consecrators, however, had been a tradito1: To many in North Africa, this invalidated his o rdination. In 313 Donatus (d . 355) was consecrated as a rival bishop to Caecilian. The Donatist movement cakes its name from him. The Donatists believed that the church exists only for those who have kept themselves faid>ful to God. Their church was a communion of the holy and saved, not a hospital for sinners. If the Catholic Church was willing to reconcile. with traito rs, the Donatists would not. Those who had renounced the.ir faith by collaborating with the persecutors of the Christians had permanently put them selves beyond the pale. The Donatists wc.m one step furthc.r, however. T hey argued that so long as the Catholic Church allowed reconciled clergy to function as religious leaders, none of their sacraments would be valid. Not only did the Donatists hold the Catholic clergy liable for their own actions, they held them liable for those who had consecrated them. Poor Cae.cilian was not himself a sinner. He had never handed over the scriprurcs o r betrayed anyone to the autho rities. But one of the bishops who consecrated him had, so fo r the Donatists Caccilian too bore the stain of his consecrator's sin. The Donatists had no room for gray, o nly black and white.. So long as the Catholic Church included lra-
ditores, no matter how penitent they wc.rc, then the Catholic Church was invalid. Any baptism performed by any priest or bishop who was not a Donatist had to be renewed and revalidated by the rituals of the Donatist priests and bishops.
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St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 c.E.) on the Donatists
It is not often that we can hear from both sides, but the following passage captures the heat of the argument between the Donatists and Rome. The quotation is from one of Augustine's
three books answering The letters of Petilian, the Donatist (Book 11, 32, 72-73). (Petilian was the Donatist bishop of Cirta in North Africa.) Petilian had written:
Even t hough there is only one bap tism, it is consecrated in t hree grades. John baptized wilhout naming the Trinity, as he himself says, ,., baptize you wit h water for re-
pentance; but the one that comes a fter me is m ightier
than I am. I am not worthy to tie his shoes. But he .....,;n baptize you wHh t he Holy Spirit and with lire,. (Matthew 3:11). Christ bestowed the Holy Spirit, as written in the Bibie, "'He breathed upon them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit'" Qohn 20:22). Then the Comforter himself came do\vn upon the disciples as a
fir~
burning in
tongues of !lames. ... But you, persecutor, do no t have the repenting water, because you have the pO"Wer not of John who was murdered, but the power of the murderer Herod. That is why you. t raitor, do not have the Holy Spirit of Christ. beuu.se Christ d id not hand over others to die, b ut he himself wM handed over. For you traitors the fire burning your spirit i.s the fire of a hell full of lifethat fire which consuming wit h hungry tongues of flames wi ll be capable ot burning your limbs eternally w ithout consuming them.
Augustine responded: You slander libelously and do not argue truthlulty. Why do you not slop simply making assertions and not prov· ing them .. . . I tell you that your Cin:umcellions are burning, not with tongues of flame but \\lith headlong flames.. •• If you wish, we should agree that you should not accuse us with the d eeds ol wicked peopte whom you assume represent us, and t hat we should likewise re· strain ourselves from similar accusations ot your people.
U we agree to this, you understand that you have no ac· cusation against the seed o f Abraham, the foundEr of all the earthly nations. But I can accuse you of t his: Why have you so improperly separated yoursetves from the seed ol Abraham, the founder of all the earthly nations? You cannot defend yoursetves against this accusa· tion .•• . You do not enter into communion with all the earthly natiom, the holy seed of Abraham, and that is a
wry serious crime not only for some oi you, but for all or you.
T he Donatist church was a closed system; they called it a "scalc.d fountain" o r an "enclosed garden." Not only did they c.'\dude the Roman church-they refused to recognize the authority of the Ro man c.mpcror and his armies. Constantine intc.rvcncd in the Donatist disputes a number of times, sometimes tavoring the Donatists, sometimes Rome, bm in the end he. threw his military might behind the Catholics. The. following lener from the emperor, calling for a mee.ting to resolve the
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Donatist dispute with Caccilian, is preserved in Euscbius's Church History 10:5.18- 20. I have significantly modernized d1e language.: (From] Constantine the Emperor to Miltiadcs, the Romans' bishop, and to :f\1ark: Since, thanks to Anulinus, the most glorious proconsul of Africa, I have received a goodly number of approprimc documents thm suggest that Caccllian, the bishop of the C arthagitUan city, is
charged by many of his Afr ican colleagues and called to accountability by them; and since I think this is a very serious matter because the Divine Providence has put me dcvotc.dly in chal'gc of these provinces with so many people so that these many people should not be found acting in the worst possible manner, by splintering one. group against another, including bishops opposing one another; I have decided that Cac-eilian and [ Cfl bishops who wam to call him to account, together widl ten supporting bishops of his own choice, should sail to Rome so that he can have a he-aring in your pttscnce with Retjcius, l\1atc:rnus, and Ivlarinus as well, your colleagues ' "''hom I've. ordered to come to Rome quickly tOr this hearing. Your job is to de.tcrmine. what seems best to sacred law.
T he Donatists spawned a terrorist organization called the Circumcdlions. Their name probably dc.rivcd from the f:1ct that they roved the countryside and the cities attacking rhe.ir opponents. T he group consisted mostly of poor peasants, small farmc.rs, slaves, and others who felt oppressed by the elite of both d1e. church and the state. They probably spoke the. local
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Punic language and knew nothing of cl1c Latin language. of their rulers. Declaring war against all enemies of the true church. these roving bands used clubs, which they called '1srncl" (for whatever reason) to beat their opponents-Catholic landowners and clergy, debt and ta.'< coUectors, and anyone. dse. who represente.d wealth and privilege. Their slogan \<\'aS "Praise God,'' a phrase that must have inspired fear and trembling in the Catholic faithful. The Circumccllions avidly embraced martyrdom. When they weren't attacking their corcligionists, they sought out and atte.nded pagan rites in ordc.r to renounce them, hoping to provoke the Romans to n1ake them martyrs. ~-\~though the Donatists officially rejected many of their activities, the Circumcellions pc.rsisted as a strong military force in support of the Do natist clergy and church-indeed, the Circumcellions kept the Donatist revc.rence for martyrdom alive. I began this section by comparing the Donatists and Circumcdlions with the fundamentalist Islamic clerics and martyr cells of today. That comparison certainly stands up, and Christians would do weU to rememlx.r it before pointing the.ir condemning fingers at all of Islam. But another parallel between the Donatists and the modem churches should be noticed as well. Almost without exception, modern Christian denominations have f.
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church as the preserve o f the saved alone lost out. The Catholic Church of the period wo n by offering reconciliation-by welcoming back into irs fold those whom it and o thers considered sinful, and by arguing that the sacr.uncnts remain valid c.vcn if the clergy who are performing t hem arc sinful.
The rigorist Donatisrs and the Circumccllions prc.scrvc.d thcmsdvcs for many years, surviving long into the seventh century. Both their vigorous dedication to purity and the negative cx:unplc of t heir rejection o f compromise would have a lasting in fluence on the C hurch.
8 CHALLENGES TO CHR I ST I AN ITY FROM THE RoMAN VVoRLD
But ifthere is ignorance, and learning does nqt exist in the so11/ o/a pason, thm the inmrahle passitJm ptn£st in tht soul. And additional tvi! tfAIIfS the passicm in tMform ofnn iJI(urab!e sort. And th~ JQre romtout!y gnaws nllht saul, and through it the soul produces «lOTIIIS frrnn tht roil and stinks. But God is not the fause ifthese things, sincr he sen/ knowledge and ltarning Jo human btings.
lt has been argued that Christianity succeeded in the ancic:.nt world because the local Roman religions were bo ring and unin teresting. Not so! Religions of every sort thrived in the ancient period. Not o nly did they thrive, but they competed with o ne another fo r adherents. The religious environment was literally a marketplace. Picture your neighborhood supermarket. Very likely it's part of a complex that also includes a pharmacy, a bank, a video store, an electronics oudet, and a music depo t. ChiJdrcn stand at the door selling things to raise. 1no nc.y fo r their schools; per' With minor modific:ation,s by 11.uthor.
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haps someone is handing out lca.fkts fo r a cause. The Roman and Greek marketplace, the ago ra, functio ned in exactly t he same way, except that philosophers and relig ious adherents ,,.,ouJd also set up stalls. So the. an cient pe rson would bank, shop, and hear abour diffe rent religious and philosophical traditions all in the same place, a t the same time., week after wc.c.k. T he. competition was fierce. The rdigious sellers had to make sure that t heir packages were targeted at the right clicntdc and that their presentation was succinc t and compelling c.nough to catch poten tial adhc.rcnts. Paul's speech on the Areopagus {Acts 17:22-24) shows how he engaged in precisely that kind of competition with the Ro mans and t heir gods. Paul, standing in the middle of the Areopagus, said, "Athenian mc.n, I perceive (hat you arc religious in every way, for when as I walked along obsetving your objects of worship. 1 fOund also an altar upon which had been inscribed TO AN UNKNOWN coo. So the one you worship as.
unknown, I announce to you [openly). The God who fabricated the world and everything in it, who is Lord of heaven and earth, docs not dwell in temples made by
hand. T his chapte r presents t he three sn·ongcst competitors to the early Christian me.ssage. Two of these religions, Manicheanism and H e rmeticism, eventually faded away, though traces of them can be found in survjving religious and c~'iotcric tradi-
tions. The third, Neoplatonic philosophy, was so powerful that Christian bishops appropriated many of its philosophical
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premises and n1ade them the basis for o rthodox Christian doctnnc.
W H O WE R E THE MAN JCH E AKS?
Nowadays, the v~·ord "Manichcan" is mostly used as a pejorative fo r somc.o nc. who understands morality as a strict dualism of good and evil. That popular definition hardly docs justice to the subdety and beauty of the ancient Manichean religion. I will begin my introduction to it with another analogy. We have all known people who will buy o nly foods that arc fully certified as o rganic. Some of these people arc so zealous that they continually remind the rest of us about the evils of chemical fc.r tilizc.rs, pesticides, genetic altc.rations, and cvc.rything else that is nonorganic. If you listen dosd y to the most rigid of these "organicophilcs" (as I will call them), you would think that your lctntce is d ripping with carcinogenic chemicals. that your apples might infc.ct you with pes-ticides, that your n1ilk has been injected with dangerous bacterja-that anything that you might want to cat should be considered toxic unless it is thoroughly o rganic. Now these o rganicophilcs may have a poi nt-most of the time 1 trust their judgment. But from their perspective the world .Ugns itself into just two camps: d1e destructive camp of chemically enhanced food item s, and the healthful camp of organically grown and produced food items. And never shall the two meet. That is how the IVIanichcans undc.rstood their world. Yes, it was a world that was starkly divided between the light and the dark, the good and the evil, the right and the wrong. but it was
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not a wo rld of ill will, for it provided the. l'vlanichcan with an
opportunity to choose the right, ro sdcct the good, and to embrace th e light. It was an unruly and dangerous wor1d, but the
Manichcans knew how to save it. 1vlani, the founder o f the sc.ct, 'h
(and died in 276). Persia stood at the crossroads of East and West o n what wa.s called the "'silk road,.. the ancien t trading route fro tn C h ina ro the. M cditc.rrancan basin . Thc.rc was also a brisk trade in n:ligion . Pe rsia was t he horne of the ancic.nt rdigion called Zoroastrianism, anorhc.r strictly dualistic religion founded by Zoroaster
(ca. 630-550 B.C. E.) . Though Mani was reared in the Zoroastrian context, he also had early encoun ters with Christianity and Buddhism, as well as all the othc.r religions whose. me mbers traveled and traded along the ancient silk road. Mani was a visionary. In his youth he had a vision o f his heavenly rwin, a divine aspect of himself from which he was sep arated but v.•ith whom he. still comnm nicatcd. This vision impelled hirn to join a sect called th e Elkasitcs, who combined Christian a nd Jewish teachings and focused on rites of cleans-
ing and transfo rmation t hrough baptism. Mani hoped that the E lkasitcs \,.'ould help him reunite. with his heavenly twin and become whole. But ?v1ani's days among the Elkasitc:s were. numbered. Soon he rc.ccivc.d another revelation and began to preach about it.
After the Elkasites expelled him in 240 he undertook a mission to India. Upon his return in 242, he used his family connc.ctions to gain access to the Persian court and convcnc.d many of its members.
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WHAT D ID THE MAN I CHEANS BE LI EVE?
l'vl ani understood h imsclfro be a n "apostle of light," the latest in a long lin e o f significant revealcrs of the true way: Jesus, Paul, the Chriscian a postles, Buddha, and the prophets oflsraeL 1\llani hi mself was the final aposde, the one in who m the entire revelation culminated, the divine Paracletc that Jesus had promised (John 14:15-17), who would lead all people to an understanding o f the ttuth. A nd what was that truth? At t he dawn of creation, t he cosmos had consisted of t\VO mutually c.xclusivc but harmoniously complementary worlds: the world of light and t he world of darkness. TI1esc wo rlds coc.xistcd without conffict until the devil decided to invade the world oflight so that he could take control o f it. The cosmology a nd the myth get complicated, but what results is simp1c. T he material world came into being as a devourer of the light-a place where it's held cap tive. T h e goal o f human existence-and t he. salvation o f all created beingsis
to
return t he. light to its proper realm . Here is a verse from a
l'vl anichean hymn about the captive light:
Look! T he great saving kingdom stands above, ready to tueive those who have knowledge so that the.y may eventually find peace there. [An evil principle) runs brutishly
from place ro place, giving no peace whatsoever to the upper and lower limbs of Light. She captures and binds the Lighr in [five) huge bodies: earth, warcr, fire, plants,
and animals. She molds it into different forms; she makes ir into many figures; she binds it in prison so that it cannot rise up [ 0 the height. She encloses it in a net; she. piles
ir high; she guards it.
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T his idea would resonate. in medieval Jewish Kabbalah more than a thousand years later, as the impc.rativc to ''raise the sparks." H ow did one. know that this process was occurring? In two
ways. F irst, the wa.xing and waning of the moon. This resulted frOI'n the n1onthly accumulation a nd eventual release of the lig ht particles into the heavens. If a Manichean watched the cycles of the moon, he would sec the result o f redemption happening on the earth . Second, the stars themselves pointed the way. T h e Milky vVay was t he road d1e light rakes when it travels fro m the moon back to its source. Now ,,.,c have the picrurc of how it all fit together. But how was this a religion? The t heology and t he practice of Manichcan ism revolved about assisting in t he release. o f the lig ht particles from their n1atc rial prison. 1\llanichcans achieved t his by processing food. (Now you u nderstand why I t hought of the analogy of the organic food fanatics.) The c.n tirc. physical universe contained dements oflight, but some foods held it in particularly h igh concentrations: especially melons, bread, and water. By eating these foods and digesting the m, Manichcans released light particles from the ir bodies. 1vlanichean religion was ascetic in t hat it controlled and n"!anipulatcd the body in o rder to achie.v e a religious goal, me release of light. Fruit a nd vegetable plants responded most fully to the light> so the M anicheans were strict vegetarians. T h e killing o f ani mals, tOr food o r any o ther reason, was strictly forbidden, as violence was u nderstood t o pc.rpe tuate t he realm of darkn ess and eviL Since the fleshly p leasures of sexual intercourse a nd the production o f children furthered the forces of
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darkness, the M anicheans were. vigorous advocates o f sexual abstinence, too. Some. lVl aniche.ans also seem to have believed in a fo rm of reincarnatio n. Lesser members of t he ordc.rcaJled "hearers'' or "auditors"'- hopcd to be remrncd to life as vegetables o r fruits so they could be eaten and digested and thus aid in the. return o f light to its proper realm. The M anichcan church (and it was called a "church") was dedicated to this process. The 1\ll anicheans differe ntiated between two primary classes of people: the elect and the heare rs. T he !Vl anichean elect functioned as lig ht-releasing machines. Forbidden to own p roperty or to suppo rt themselves, the elect were itinerant teachers (they also p roduced daborate copies of sacred manuscripts). They fasted nearly a hu ndred days a year, and did no o the.r work bm attend to th e rc:lease of light. The heare.rs, on the othe.r hand, we.re the workers in the orga nization. Their job was to support a nd provide fo r t he dect. ln return, the elect fo rgave th em fo r thc.ir sins-sins they incurred, of course, by picking fruits and p reparing vegetables for the dect to cat. The rvranichcans demanded that the heare rs. also called the catcchume.ns (or "those who we re being in structed"), live a highly moral and uprig ht life. While the elect dealt with the heavenly realm, t he hearc.rs lived in the. wo rkaday world, where their morality alone distinguished them fro m those. outside the c hurch. H e re is an c...xccrpt from a hymn fo r a hearer's funeral:
I, a divine form, have. bc.cn placed in this world, bereft of my heavenly clothing. I saw the redeemer. He spoke to me gently and lovingly. In my constant subjugation, hope
t'erurned to me. The wonder enlightened me. l\·ly mind
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was li!Jcd with joy.
My life has ended so quieldyl Liber-
ate me from the terrible affliction today in my dying!
Come., rc.dcc.mcri come saving God, Lord 1\·1ani. \Vc arc praising you . .. . Gracious God, remember me, an auditor, a trusting soul, your bdovcd child, an obedient fol-
lower. Gracious God, remember me, for my thoughts focus on the last
day. Come, God, look at me. Be my
helper at the time of my death. TI1e Manichcans prayed lo ur times a day. T hey practiced
some son of baptism for entry into the church and hdd a form of fulfillment of thc.ir duties in a sacred meal, although scam infOrmation about these sacraments has survived. TI1c !v1anichcan liturgical books-prayers, psalms, homilies, and lectures-were some of the most beautiful manuscripts in the. ancient world. Reading was an arduous task in antiquity. In the first place., books were read aloud, requiring a reader to put on a pcrformanl'c. In addition, they were written in continuous script, without any breaks bet\vcen t he words. Since each lin e had enough room for only a certain number of letters, they s imply spilled over from one line to the next, whcchc.r a word was completed or not. Here is an example of continuous script: rcadingwasanarduoustaskinantiquiryinthcfi rstplacebookswcrercadaloudrequlringarca Imagine trying to read hundreds of pages of this and you get the. idea . By making the experience o f reading o ne of chc.i r manuscripts aesthctil'ally pleasing as wc.U as im d lecruaUy s tim-
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u1ating, the Manicheans appealed to the inteliecntals in a community. While arduously trying to make. sense of the letters on the page., the :rvlanicheans gave the reader something else to po nder: beautiful iUustrations, vivid colors, rich ornamentation in gold. Reading a 1\llanichean book gave pleasure to all the senses. The Nlanichcans considered themselves authentic Christians but obviously the orthodox Christians did not reciprocate. Nonetheless, they established churches and monasteries in North Mrica, northern Italy, France., and the Balkans, throughout Egypt, Syria, and Persia, and as far cast as Tibet and C hina. Chinese Manichean texts, found in Chang'an, the capital of the Tang dynasty, were produced between the tenth and the twelfth centuries C.£., attesting to the longevity and popularity of this religion. T he 1\llanicheans' love of beauty, visua1 and verbal alike, attracted many people to their way of life. Their ability to gather disparate pc.o plc into cate.g orics not of race or culture, but of those who bear the lig ht, allowed them to be.come a unifying fo rce in an increasingly diverse wor1d.
WHO WERE TH E H ER METJC IS TS?
A good frie nd o nce urged me to read a cun·e.n t book o n plasma physics and chaos theory by a well-known scientist. The first few chapters weren't easy, but ] made the. effort and was able to understand the.m. Bur as I got deeper inro the. book and the theories be.came ever more complc.x and interrdate.d, I found myself facing a wall of words that held virtually no meaning for
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me. Evenmally I did finish, I certai nly picked up a great deal of informacion along the way (although I hope I'm nc.vc.r evaluated on what I rl1ink I may have learned!), but I know I hardly even scratched the book's surface. Scientific knowledge constitutes a whole othc.r world for v.•hich a person needs initiation and training to c.vc.n begin to understand th e basic concepts. It functio ns like an esoteric system, dosc.d to those who have not been admitted to its greater mysteries. That hc1plcss sense of standing before a vast univc.rsc, needing guidance., direction, a nd ini tiation, is precisely t he experience that the. H c rmct icists addressed. The H c.nnc ricists helped people break throug h the barrier of their limi te d
knowledge, c.xpcricncc the wide complexity of the universe,. and contemplate the mysteries o f life with confidence and grace. H e nnes Trismegistus, literally H e rmes the ''three times greatest," is the Greek name for the Egyptian god Thorl1, rl1e origin and protector of knowledge i n t he Egyptian pantheon. T h e mc.n who o rgan i7.cd then"'sdvcs around the revelations of H e rmes Trismegistus valued the in teUectua1 life and the procc.ss o f guiding youngc.r men in their intcllc.crual dc.vc:loprnc.nt. I say ''men,'' because no evidence exists that the cult of He rmes T rismegistus include.d women. They were the best spirirual d irectors in the ancient world. T h e Hc.rme ticists u nderstood how to trai n people to know, to understand, and to grow i n their spiritual and inte.Ucctual life, and to achic.ve incredible depths of meditation and prayer. That was no smaU o rder. All of their writings engaged the reader immediately. H e re. is a paraphrase of t he introduction to the Hermc.tic treatise 11
Poimatulres, which means The Shepherd":
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I was hanging around once, and it occurred to me to think about life and 1tried to think about the great issuc.s ofliving. But my body kept me back. It seemed to lull me to sleep, to weigh me down, when suddc.nly a huge being appeared to me and said, "So what is it that you want to hear and sec? \~hat do you \vant to Jearn and to know?" So I asked him, "'\Vho arc you?"And he answered, "'l am the Shephord, the ruling mind. I know what you seck, and ] am always with you.!" So ] said to him, <~J am des-
perately eager to learn about existence and to know god."
The Shepherd gives the young man a vision and then c.xplains, through dialogue, t he meaning of the ultimate questions of the young man's life. i>Jl of the H cnnetic literature had th is quality of restless intellectual seeking-it joined theological a nd
philosophical speculations with science, astrology, anthropology, and every other kind of knowledge. Hermeticists were eager to c.xplore it all.The following Herme tic prayer of thanks-
gtvmg provides an c1oqucnt illustration of their thirst for gnosu:
U1- thank you! Ewry mind and h<art lijts up to you, 0 Name that.-annot be troubled, dignified with th< name 'God' andglori.fod 'rson and '""Y thing your pattrnal kindnm and ajjeai., and krve. You btJtow also e-vtry suwt and clear tea(hing, giving us mind, spmh, andknowledge: mind toundmtand;oou; sf>'.rh to explain ;-ou; knowledge to lmo.o you. Having hem illnn:ined by your lmrr~ledge, we rejoiu. H~ rtjoia a!Jo btcauu )'011 ha,ve rt-iJta!ed ;-ourself to us. We rejoice because f'Vm while still emhoditd, you
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divini:wlus thr.ugh your knowledge. For those who ha•• as<mded to you there is only rme thing WtJrthy of thanks: our knowledge ojy011. 1# kn(liu)'{JU, <mhenllight. We know yon, lift rf lift. H'c kn(liU )~II. Wf/11/h birthing evrry trtature. 1~ know ;~u. U'{Jmb pregnant with the Father~ reality. So we 'U.'{Jnhip your goodness, eternal durntio11 rfthe Father who gmerates. I# ask only one thing: preserve us in this kiw<»ledge. H'c ask for onlj• one se.wrif) let us not s/umhlt in this,.~ oflift. 1.'
-TJ!I·: 0/SCOU/Uf: ON TJU: J;JCIJ1'11 AND .VJ.... TI/0
TI1is knowledge had a theological purpose-it was intended to save people. Knowledge brought the initiate-s into deeper and deeper contemplation. Knowledge enabled the Henncticists not sim ply to know God, but to experience God directly. TI1c d dcr mc.rnbcrs of the Hermetic cult helped the younger onc-.s to move forward not o nly in t heir minds, but in thc.ir spirits and bodies as well.
TI1e Nag Hammadi treatise The DiJCourse 011 the Eighth and Ninth provides precious insights imo the process of spjrirua) direction. \~fc. do not often have access to such information frmn the ancient world, so th.is is qWte unusual. F irst the ini tiate was told to remember all the. steps of learning he had bcc.n taught, and to recall all the knowledge he had found in the books he had been told to read. Since this instruction and reading connected the initiate to the o ther seekers in his spjrirual comnmnity, he was instructed to bring the spiritual brothc.rhood to rnind as well. T he spiritual guide connc.ctcd the ini tiate to the source of all wisdom. He was the well, the spring, the
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source of that experience. TtUs preparato ry step concluded with prayer. The second step began wit h a b rief liturgy of embrace that empowcrc.d t he guide to lead th e initiate. The guide said, "'Let us embrace affectionately, my son.'' The embrace transformed the guide, who announced, "'] am mind and I see th e othc.r mind that moves th e soul,. and ..You give me power! I sec myself! ] want to speak... Thc guide now had taken on the persona o f 1-Ic.r mcs Trismegisnts. This se.cond step ended w ith a silent hymn. TI1e guide told the initiate, ""Sing, for I am IVl ind." The initiate responded: '"'I nam e you fa ther, t he Ae!J"II of the Aeom. the great d ivine spirit. A nd by a spirit he g ives rain upon everyone. \ Vhat do you say to me, 0 my fat he r H em1es?,. The complete ide-n tifica tion of the guide with Hermes allowed t he initiate to experience the god d irectly and immediately in his interaction with his guide. In t he third step th e initiate received a vision of t he c.nd of the heavenly spheres, whc.re he would pass from t he material world completely into the spiritual: "I sec t he eighth with the souls t hat arc in it and t he angds making hymns to the ninth
and its powc.rs. A nd I sec him wh o has the power of them all, who creates those who arc in the spirit.'' This vision completed the initiation, and e nded with this amazing hymn:
I will sing the praise that is in my mind, as I pray to the c:nd of the univc.rsc, and to the beginning of the beginning, the humru1's quest, the immortal discovery, the begetter of light and truth, the.sower of the discourse, the love of immortal life. No hidden discourse wiUbe. able to
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speak concerning you>Lord. Therefore my mind desires to make hymns to you dai1y.1 am the organ ofyour splrir~ the mind is your plectrum; and your counsel plucks me. I sec mysdf. I have received power from you, for your love has touched us. T he. expe rience was almost complete. The in itiate had become. an adept, a master, now capable of guidin g othc.rs in the search for knowledge and chc. experience of chc divine. Thc.rc was one last ste p, howcvc.r : th e. writing of a book. The
guide instructed the newly initiated: ''0 my son. write this book in hieroglyphic c haracters fo r t he Diospolis temple.'' The process ended with the continuation of knowledge and learn -
ing, in books that articulated the engagement with God and thus helped othc.rs to fi nd che way.
T HE L EGAC Y OF TH E HERM ET I C I STS
TI1c H c rmcticists' ability to create intense and loving conununitics of spiritually alive.. intd lcctually expansive) and socially responsible seekers posed a serious challenge to C hristian ity. T here v~ras no room here fo r blind f.'lith or mindless trust, such as the Christian bishops demanded from their fai thful. Soon some. C hristia n c hurches would require their baptizands to undergo a similar init iat ion of reading and smdy, so that by the time o f t heir baptism they would be completely nansfo rmedan idea taken almost d irecdy from thc.ir H en netici,st rivals. In 1462 C{)simo de' Medici commissioned 1'v1arcilio Ficino, th e fiunous Italian scholar and a uthority on ancient languages,
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to translate into Latin the: Greek text of the: Hermetic treatises, which he had just secured from the. Byz.:
WHAT I S N EOPLATON J SM?
Wisdom leads the sou/to/he pla
Entering the world of t he Ncoplatonists is like walking into the main reading roo m of the Library o f Congress. lrs spectacular ceilings and beautiful adornmen ts awe you: its propo rtions make you fed small and importan t all at o nce. Evc.r ything has its place. Every boo k is in o rder, \Yaiting for you to call it fo rth from the library stacks. Evc.ry person stands ready to take your direction. The lighting is perfect; spacious reading tables and comfortable chairs await you. The whole room fcc.ls as though
it is waiting for you to begin your study. This is how the Nco-
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platonists c.xpcricnccd the divine cosnlos- as well o rdered, perfectly balanced, eager and ready for the seeker to engage mind and soul in its smdy. The Neoplatonist school of philosophy began with tl1e philosopher Plotinus (205-270 c. e.). Plotinus and his successors founded their sysrcn1 o n the. philosophy of the Acadc.tny, the Platonist sch ool that continued to fu nction in Ath c.ns from
the time of Plato (427-347 B.C. E.) unril Justinian closed it in 529 C.E. Porphyry (232-305 c. E.) was Plotinus's srudent and an editor of his philosophical writing; he also wrote a biography, Lift a11d Works, which provides fasci nating insights into Plotinus's life and characte r. H c.rc arc a fc.w exemplary passages:
\¥hen. it came to his writing, he could not bc.a t to revise his prose twi~. He could also not bear to read through
things twice because his eyesight was too poor tOr reading. So he wrote, not with a lovely handwriting and barely separating the syllables or ancnding to proper
spelling. (When he wrote] he was all mind. This amazed us. He would work things through in his mind until they were complete. So he would complete the [Opie for analysis completely in his mind ti-om start to finish, the.n he would write it down. And when he wrote, he creatc.d it such that it seemed he ·was transcribing something that was completely formulated in his mind as though he were copying it from a book. Even whc.n someone interrupted tUrn to have a conversation, he continued his own thought processes in his mind so that at one and the same time. he conve-rsed and worked our a philosophical problem without any inrcrruption in either process. Whc.n his com·cr-
CHAllENGES
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sation partner left . .. he simply picked up where he. was writing as though he were not interrupted a t aU. So he could anend to himself and to others at d1e same time. And he never broke his conce.ntration except to sleep, which he warded off with eating only a tittle food (he never ate bread!) and his continual nuning of his ctlOn toward things of the mind. VVomen also became his devoted sntdcnts. Gemina, in whose house he lived, and her daughter Gcmina, named for her mother, and Amphicka ... all devoted themselves to philosophy. Ivlany noble men and women, knowing that they were going to die soon, brought their male and female chil dren, to give them to him with all their earthly belongings as to a kind of holy and devour keeper. So his house was always fiUcd with childr<:n . ... Yet so long as he was awake, he never disturbed the intensiry of his thinking. This evc.n while he \\t'aS overseeing the life and concc.ms of so many in his household. He was always gracious and recepcive to anyone who sought him out. Having lived in Rome tOr tv.·enty-six years, often mediating between disputants, he never nude a political enemy. He was a superior judge of character. Once sorneone stole an expensive necklace from Chione~ who lived out her noble widowhood living togcthe.r with he.r chil.dren in his household. So he gathered all the household into one place, and looking at all of the-m announced, "This is the thief.» pointing to a particular person. That person de.nicd
1 29
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it, cvc.n though he was whipped scvcrdy. Later, however, he confessed and returned the nccklacr. C hristian thc.ologians would adapt Ncoplato nic th oug ht as th ey developed t he major doctrines of the c hurch: t he th eology of the. incarnation, the way in which Jesus displayed both humanity and divini ty in one person; t he doctrine of th e T rinity, th e relationship of the th ree persons (Father, Son, and H oly S pirit) and their common divine substance; and the central role.
of contemplation both to theology and to t he practice of C hris-
tian religion. But in 361, when Julian (332-363 C. E.), th e half brother of C onstan tine, bc.c amc emperor, Ncoplatonism lxcanlc n1orc than an in fluence on C hristian ity-it th reatened to supplant it altogether. Although he was raised as a Christian, Julian renou nced his Christianity and attempted co reinstate Roman philosophical religion an d sacrifice as t he imperial religion. Christians called him the "apostate." A prolific writer, Julian studied philosophy at the Academy in Athens i n 355. He composed hymns in honor of th e gods and a nother hymn in honor of the mother o f the gods, and he. wrote books attacking Christianjry. H e re. is some o f the ad\•icc he gave co his Ro n)an priesthood-advice that is generally imitative o f the Christia n priesthood of his day: \ •Vc really should share our money with everyone, and
even more generously with the helpless and povct'tystrickcn in order to make up their need. It might sound
somewhat strange to sa}~ I also think it would be-really a
C H AllE N G ES
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fine and pious act to share our clothes and food with evlJ people, because we give not to a particular characteristic but to the basic humanity of the pc:rson. I even think prisoners deserve the same sort of consideration because this kind of philanthropy enhances justice. . . .
I propose that cvc:ryonc base their manner of life on the ethical virtues and performances such as veneration for the gods, benefaction tO\~t'ard other people, personal continence. Then let cvc:ryone perfOrm many pious deeds, specifically by attempting always to consider the gods in a pious way, and by honoring the sancntaries and images of the gods with great respect and adoration, and by worshipping the gods as though they were standing right before you. T he •philosophical religion" that Julian imposed o n the empire
was Neoplatonism. Julian considered it a perfect substitute. for Christianity, and he syste.matically dismantkd the impc.rial privilege C hristians had enjoyed since Constantine. His d l"orts came to an end when he was killed on the battlefield in Persia in 363.
WHAT O l D T HE NEO PLATON J ST S BEL IE V E ?
The Neoplatonists asked a very simpk and yet compelling
question: How can all be.ings come fro m one common source when they differ so much from each other? T hey asked this question of the one and the many, the commo n and the diverse.
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And rhcy gave a compc.Uing a nswer in th e form of a cosmic story. TI1c Ncoplatonists imagined a prUn al u nity that was the origin of all bc.ings. This vvas t he One, an unknowable source of all goodness, beauty, existence, and life. From the supc.rabun dancc of its goodness and goodwill, the One overflowed a nd descended to establish t he next spiritual level o f existe nce, the
!Vow, which 1ncans intelligence and intu itive knowledge. T h e !Vow, im itat ing and follov.•ing t he way established by the One-. also ovc.rBowcd from the abundance of its in tellect to create the next lower spiritual lcvd of t he. universe, the SouL The Soul V1'aS
th e cosmjc mind of t he universe. 1t constinttcd the. ideal
form of aU crc.atc.d things- i n a way, it was the spiritual DNA of the created universe. Just as the One. and the Nous had, the Soul also overflowed with its own goodn ess and rat ionality, and t he. created u niverse e me rged. The U niverse, o r Nature, consisted of all existent be ingsstarting fro m the most e thereal and spiritual, the astrological spheres of the universe., down to t he most physical, things su ch as rocks a nd d irt. The Universe itself, in t his way, imitated d1e action of the One., t he JVous. and th e Soul to spill ovc.r in to creation . As the down'Arard flow of creation moved a\'-'
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had its own proper existence a nd being . Diversity and unity cohered . The Neoplaronic syste m also cohered by participation. As it em an ated from th e O ne, each lower level continued to have its root in t he One and to participate in the life and being o f the One. T he flow held all t hings in a common unity, while the levds a t which various bei ngs existed differentiated t hem. H u mans participated in t he One by following upward the path o f the emanation to become ever high c.r a nd more spirintal beings- u p throug h th e Soul, th rough t he Now, a nd ultim ately to the One. And t he same. held true in re.vcrse. The One descended to hurnans throug h the Noi/J, the Soul, and th e spiritual clements of the created universe. This great chai n o f being was a dynamic process of emanation and rentrn. Life. ftov.•ed dowm,.'
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body, a gradual withd rawal from the concc.rns of bodily living until the mind was filled only with spirirual and inrcllccrual
concerns. Leaving the bodily behi nd, the mind started its asccm-first in contemplation o f the. spirirual universe, t hen to Soul, thc.n Now, cvcnrually to a mental union with t he O ne, a kind of ecstatic and mystical union of the mi nd with the One. Later, Byzan tine and medieval C hristians adopted this contemplative practice without much alteration. I t would become. t he bedrock o f C hristian mystical and spiritual transformation.
THE LEGACY OF NEOPLATON I SM
Part of the reason that Ncoplatonism 'A"'J.S so congenial ro earlyand later-Christians was that Ncoplatonists also valued rcvclacion as the b asis of their understanding and knowledge. The Ncoplato nists soug ht t hc.sc revelations in philosophical t<"Xts and oracles, and in n·eatiscs on magic and alchemy (the "'scie nce'' of turning base. physical cleme nts into gold) and used them to suppleme.nt their system. Christian revelations largely rc-.sided in the. holy scriptures of the O ld a nd NewTcstaments. T hese could be read as oracular texts that revealed the uni ty o f aU things in the One True God. TI1e story of Genesis 1 and 2, about the creation of t he world, for example, could be elucidated as a story of the emanation of the d ivine love overflowing in to the created universe. Thc.re is no inconsistc.ncy here. C hristianity became in the end a th eological child of Neoplatonism-most o f the early theologians who framed th e doctrinal basis for orthodox C hr istian ity, esp c-
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cially reg ardi ng the incarnation, t he Trinit)~ and the contemplative life, were influenced by this philosophy. T he Cappadocian f.1the.rs were three early C hristian t heologians from the province of Cappadocia (in modern Turkey): Basil ofCacsarca (330-379), G regory of Nyssa (330- 395), and G regory ofNanzianzus (330-390). T hey developed theological explanations o f the C hristian Trin.iry, the. relationshi p of the Fat her to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, and the two narures o f Christ (both human and divine). Basil and Gregory o fN anzianzus both srudie.d at the Academy in Athens. Their articulation of the way the hurnan and divine natures of Christ coexisted in o ne person, and of the. manner in which the emanation of Son from Father, and Spirit fro m Father, could take place befo re the creatio n of t he world, is thoroug hly informed by Neoplatonic philosophy. VVc. bc.gan this boo k with an accoum o f t he Nicene Council, where, among other t hi ngs, the bishops debated the Arian heresy, v.•hich stated t hat Jesus can-1e imo being in time as the first dement in t he creation o f the world. If this sounds p hilosophical, it is. The o rthodox o f Nicaea affirmed that t he Son was generated within t he d ivine person before the creation, while the Arians seem to have t houg ht "there was a time when the Son was not," that is, that the Son was part of t he Fat her's creative proccss. TI1c word used by t he orthodox bishops to d escribe Jesus' status vis- 3.-vis the Father \\'aS homoousios, "being o f the. same essence," as opposed to homoiousios, ''being o f similar essence.'' T he distinction may be a subtle. o ne., but to the Neoplatonically trained bisho ps it was imme.nsely important. T he fi rst, "bc.i ng o f the same. essence,'' idc.n tificd the Son with
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the primo rdial divine essence that created all bc.lngs. TI1c sc.cond, "being o f similar cssc.ncc,.. created a kind o f gulf between the primordial divine essence a nd the Son, leaving room fo r the notion that the Son was a lesser bc.ing. It is virtually impossible to understand the Niccnc Creed without firs t understanding the philosophy of late antiquity. T hey arc completely fused and interrelated.
A PPENDI X 1
1'h~foii'Xuing is tlx jidl text o[Cic•nmui lltt.'r to Theodore
From among the letters o f Clement [of Alexnndria] o f the Stroma tcis lfiune].
To l'lleodore: You did well to curb the shameful teachings of the. C~lrpocratians . For theS<.' a.rc the ones proph esied to be the "roaming stars," who roam
nway from the laws (of God] into an unbounded abyss of fleshly and bodily sins. l-O r, since they are p uffed up in knowle-dge, as they say, ..o f
the d eep things of Satnn," they fo rget that they throw themselves into the "nether darknccSs"' of false d octrine. And since they boast that they art'
frc:e [of restntintsj, they havc become slaves of abject d esires. One
must oppose such as these lhen:tics] in every way and at all times. For even if they wne to say something true, the lovc.r of truth ought not to 3t,'TC.'C'
with them even then. For not aU true things a.rc truth. Neither
should one prefer the truth that appears [ to bej true according to human opinions o ver the true truth according to the faith. Now concerning the things they chatter about the di\; nd y inspired
1!8
APPENDIX
1
gospc:.l of Mark, some are compk tdy false: and o thers are not transmitted truly even iflthe writing] contains some true lstatemcnts]. The tn1e things lxing blended with the cou nterfeit v.-iU be d ebased such that, as is d ear in the saying, "'sah becomes insipid."' .Mark, then 1 wrote up the Lo rd•s acts 11.cco rding to Pete-r's teaching in Ro me. He did not make known aU [his actsj, nor did he thro w o ut hints about sccret Lones]. He rather chose what he considered most
usefu l for the faith o f the catechumens. But when Peter was martyred, Mark came to Alexandria carrying away both h is own and Peter's notes so as to preserve them. From among these notes he transferred to his
first book the things appropriate to l thosc who wish to make] progress conce.rning knowledge (gliosis). He composed a more spiritual gospel for the usc o f th ose who were [advancing toward] perfection. Jn no way did he let out the things shameful to say; nor d id he write down the mystical teaching o f the Lord. Rather, to the acts alre"Jdy written headd ed other [ acts], and besides he-brought fo rth cer tain sayings [of the Lordj, whose interpretation he believed will initiate the hearers into the innermost sanctuary o f the seven-veiled truth. In this way he prepared lthc book] neither lxgrudg inbriY nor unguardedly, in my opinion. And when he died he left the same writing to the ch urch in Alexandria where it is to this time carefully guarded, bc:ing read only to those who are being initiated into the ST'=atcr mysteries. Since the polluted d emons always contrive destruction for the human race, Carpocrates, taught by them and employing [their] deceptive arts, so enslaved a presbyter o f the church o f Alexandria that he procured from him a copy o f the mystical gospd. He explained it according to his blasphemous and Aeshly opinio n, and even more he polluted the p ure and holy words by mixing them with h is most shameful lies. 'Jlte d octrine o f Garpocrates is drawn from this mixture. One must never yield to them, as 1 said earlier. One must not con-
APPEN O ill.
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T
cede th at the gospel is A•1ark's when they b ring forth th eir falsifi cations, but o ne m ust deny it with an oath, beca use one must not speak C\'e.ry truth to everyone. 'l1tis is why the \>Visdo m of God announced thro ug h Solomon: "An swer the fool with his fooJjshncss," [therebyj teaching that the: light of the truth should be h idden fro m the inteUc:ctuaUy b lind . l W isdom] also says, "It shall be taken away from the one who has,"' and "Let the fool walk in darkness.,. Hut we: are ..c h ildren of light" who have: been c:nlig htenocl by "the d ayspring from o n h ig h" of the spirit of the Lord. And it says, "\>Vhere the: S pirit o f the Lord is, there i-s freedom," for "aU things are pure to the pure. "' So, J will not he.sitatc to answe-r your que;Stions by exposing the falsifications by [quoting] the words of the gospel. For insta nce, after '"And they we re o n the road going up to Jerusale m," a nd what foll ows un til ..After th ree d ays he will arise," here lthe mystical gospd j brings forth [ and I quote it] word for word:
And th-ey carne to Bethany nnd thcrt' \V
\ 'V3S
heard from within the tomb. Jesus ap-
proached Md roiJed away the stone &om the door of the tomb. lmmediatdy he entered where the young boy was, he stretch ed out his hand and raised him [from the-dead], holding on to his hand. And the young boy, looking upon him 1 lo,ttd him , and he began to entn:':lt him that he might be with him. And exiting t~
tomb, they came to the house of th e young boy, for he \ 'V3S
w.:althy. After six days, Jesus ordered him. \ Vhen it
vr.tS
e\'ening, the young boy comes to him wearing a linen doth over
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his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus f2ug ht him the ffi}'lite ry of the Kingdom of God. From then-:
arising. he went to the-other side of the Jordan.
And after thc:S<' words fo llow [these wo rds j: ..And James and John attende.d h im" an d aU the- l rest o f] the section. But th e phrase "naked man with naked m:m'" about which yo u wrote-is not found. And after lthe words] "And he: come's into Jericho," follows lin the mystical gospd j only ( the words]: ..And the sister o r the: young boy whom Jesus loved and his mother and Salome were there, and Jesus did not receive them." And the: many other things about which you wro te' seem also to be fillsitications. Now the true explanation even according to the true p hilo sophy ... lthc text b reaks otf here j.
A PPENDI X 2
Tfl£ B / 81. / C,/ L C. / NON
One o f M arcion's lasting effects on the o rthodox churc h was to spur the
d evdo pment of a biblical canon, an o fficial listing of the authorized and apprm•ed te.xts induded in the New Testament. However, the canon rc:mnincd Ru id fo r some time-although a consensus began to be
fonned d uring thc S<"cond cenh1r y C.E., it wasn't until the CountcrRcfonnation o f the si...x tcenth century that the cano n was fi:xed once and for a U. C ompare some of the foUowing lists of canonical books.
Ma.rcion's canon of the New T estament is as follows:
The Gospel of Luke Galatians 1 Corinthians 2 Corin thians Ro mans 1 Thessalo nians 2 Thessalonians E phesian s (caUed LatJdia am by r..hrc.ion) C o lossians
14 2
APPENDIX
2
Philc:mon
Philippians lrenac:us o f Lyon, the f.'lmous hc:.resy h unter, included only the follow-
ing sho rt list o f books in his version of the New Testament, but note that he indudcd the Shtphad ofHamas, a second-century treatise that pres.ents \'arious visions, and omitted many more fum iliar texts: Gospd s: .Matthew, Ma rk, Luke, an d John
Acts Pauline Epistle's: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippia ns, 1 and 211tcssalonians, 1 and 2 'T im-othy, T itus
1 Peter 1 Jo hn Revelation
Tlu Sh.'f'ht·nl ofHennas In the second cent\1ry Clement o f AJexandr·ia add ed these now unfamiliar texts to his c~mon: The Didruht ("''-rhe Teaching of the 1\vdvc Apostles") Tlu Aporal)'pu of Pd~r
Th,· Shrplxrd ofHcnuas Tht Epi1tl~ ofBarnabas 1 C/mu:nt T ht Priachiug of PeNr Th,· Traditio11 of!11tltthias
Tht Go.tpd ofth~ H,•bnws Th,· Gospd oflht> Egyptians
·rhe Dit/(lthc was a manual of liturgical, moral, and ethical practices. The E'pistl~ ofBanmbtu was a polemic against Jewish practices: C/cmmt
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2
a Jc:tte r written to the P:luline conh'Tt'gation
tn
Corinth by the
b ishop o f Ro me in the late first century. 1'/x Prcarhing ofP.•urwas written in the ear ly second century c. E.; it is a pseude pigrnphical ( i.e., purportedly written in the voice of a biblical character) letter of the apostle Peter. Thr Trnditicn ofNfallhias has been attested to o nly by Clement; only fragments remain o f the gospels of the H ebn:ws and Egyptians. E useb ius {26~340 C. E.), the first histo rian o f the Christia n churc h, listC'd the books of the New 1 htament under four headings: a uthorized , disputed, spurious, an d heretical texts. Authorized: Gospels: J\htthew, .Mark, Luke, and John Acts Pauline E.pistks: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 and 2 1'hc.ssalonians,
1 an d 21imothy, litus, Philemon, Hebrews !John
1 Pder
D isputed: .fame.s J ud e 2 Peter 2 and 3 John
Spurious:
Thr Arts ofPaul The Slxphrrd ofHt>rmas Thr Aptxa~rpu of Prt~r The Epistle ofBamahas Thr Gospd ofthe Hehrrws
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11te Didacho• (""fhe Teaching of the 1\vdve Apostles") Revelation
H e-retical:
10.· Gosptl ofPder TIN Gospd ofThoma.s 10.· Gosptl ofJ\1atthias
ofAndr.-··w The A cts ofj ohn Th~ Acts
T he Cadc·x Sinialiau (fourth century C. E.), one of the earliest published complete Bibles, included both the Old and New Testaments and was authorfze.d by the: empero r Constantine. In addition to the. canonical texts below, it included these two (both o f which were considered spurious by Euscbius): 17N Episllt ofBarnabas
Tht• Sht•piNrll ofHermas 'llte current canon o f the New T estament includes the foUowing: Gospds: .Matthew
Mark Luke
John Acts o f the Apostles
Pauline Letters (Authentic):
1 and 2 11tessalonians 1 an d 2 Corinthians Philemon
AP P E N Oill.
G alatians Philippians Ro mans
Early Pauline School: C olossians Ephe.sians H ebrews
Pastoml Epilitks:
1 and 2 ~rimothy Titus
Catholic Epistle-s:
1 and 2 Peter Jame.s 1, 2, and 3 Le-tters of John
Jude Revelatio n
2
14 5
G L O SS AR Y
Aeon: A d ivine being, emanating from God, that became a concrete, cosmic ele.ment in the cre-ated universe. arrhon (Greek for "rulc:r"): One of the. divine le-aders o f the Aeons that
inhabited the physical and planetary un iverst'. Arianism: 'The- heresy that maintained that Jesus was
p;lft
o f the cre-
ated un iverse (its slo~rnn was "theft'. \~r,J,S a time when he was not"). It was propagated by Arius (ca . 250-336 C.E.), a presbyter of the church in Alexandria, Eorypt, and condemn ed by the first ecumenical cou ncil at Nicaea in 324 C. E. hoskoi (Greek for"grau.rs" or"-s he-phccr ds"): Ascetics in Syria and Asia
Minor who roomed the countryside nakod, cn.ting like animals on aU four limbs, in o rder to reestablish on earth the Edenic par.1disc. Carpocrntians: A Gnostic sect founded by Ca.rpocr.1tccS thnt ~dvocate.d experiencing everything possible in human life, including illicit se:xuality, and tha t revised the: spiritual edition of the:. Gospel of Mark to ~dvance their own particu lar theolo~;y. cate chc:.sis: A course o f study for those preparing for baptism. catechumc:.n : A person enroUc:d in c~te.chc: ticaJ instruction for baptism.
cenobitic (from the Greek word for common life): 1'he kind o f
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monastic life in which the. monks live together in h ouseholds, sharing the responsibility for the- maintenance o f their daily ne-eds and the common life of commun al prayer. Circumccllion.s: A Nor th African gro-up o f radical separatist Christians affiliated with the Donatists who te-rrorized their religious o pponents.
Clement ofAlexandria: A famous teacher at the- first majo r Christian institution of higher learnjng in Alexandria (ca. t5o-215), who preserved many fragments o f otherwise un known gospels. demiurgc: The cn:ato r of the physical u niverse, so named by Plato nists, Gnostics, and other p hilosophical and religious mo\'cmc:nts in antiquity.
Donatist: A heretical m ovement in North Afr ica that advocated a
strictJy pun: stnte fo r Christians and their cle'b')'; they were cond emned by the emperor Co nstantine. emanation: A concept in Neoplatonic an d Gnostic thoug h t that d escribed the- manner in which one IC'\'cl of existence 0\-t:.rflowed into the succeeding lower and more physical leve-ls of creation, extending d ownward from the most spiritual to the most physical. Encratite (from the Greek word for "contine-n ce" or "-s df-control"):
A movement of ~scetic Christians \.,_·h o n:j ected sexuality and marriat,rc in favor o f a purdy continent ~nd single lifestyle. eremite (&om the Greek word for "desert"): An ascetic monk who
livc:s alone ~nd in isolation (as though in the desert) under the b'\"neral supervision of a charismatic spiritual guide-. Euscbius of CaC".sarea: The first church historian (b. ca. 260; d. before 341); he.wrote during the reign of the first C hristian empcror, Constantine) and preserved many of the carlicst d ocumcnts illustrative of early Christian communities.
CLOS SAR'f
149
exegesis: Interpretatio n of a passage o f scripture, usually accomp lish ed th rough carefu l a nd rigorous textual an d theoJ~ri cal analysis. g nosis: Knowledge o r unde rstanding, which fonned the o pposite pole to fuith in th e early church an d c ha.rncterized the ofte n-secret knowledge o f the Gn ostics. G nost ic: One- seeking o r using secret knowled~ in o rd e r to achieve salvation . G nosticism: A nineteenth-century term used to d esig nate the- associatio ns, bd iC'fs, and practices o f v:trious G nostic groups. he resiologist: A pe-rson who stud ies he-resies, e--specially d octrines an d p rnctices that appear to t.-onflict with orthodox theology o r to challenge dom ina nt Christian thought. he.rc:sy: A belief conside.red at odd s with the prevailing orth odox theo-logical pe.rspective, wh ich o fte n in the ear ly church was declared heretical by a council of b ish ops. homoiousios (from the G reek m eaning "of similar substance"): The
d octrine: of the A rian s, who maintained that Jesus was th e firstborn of th e J."athn in primo rdial time an d th erefore was c hronologically subsequent to th e Father, makin g him only similar to the Father. homoousios (from the Greek meaning "of the same substance:"): The
d octrine: of the relationship o f Jesus to G od the Father that m ain tains that they were of th e same d ivine subsmnce so that Jesus was co nsjdered fu JJy divine: when he took o n the flesh of human ide-n tity.
h)'lit (from the Greek word m eaning "material matte r"): In G nosticism the kind of person who was me rd y material and incapab le o f u nde rstand ing anyth ing spiritual, in contrast to psych ics n.nd p neumatics. l rcnaeus of Lyon: An early b ishop o f Lyon (ca. 130-202) wh-o wrote a co mpe-nd ium of he resies.
ISO
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Mani: A prop het who founded a rC"ligion intend ed to libcr:tte the light particles from their bondage in physicaJ mattcr. Manichcanism: A religious m ovement founded by Mani consisting of both leaders and followers, whose duty it was to rde-asc: the particles of light from their bondage in physical matter.
Marcion: An early in tdlectua1 reformer of the Christian church (ca. 85-160 C.t:..), who dearly differentiated betwecm the God of theOld Testament, whom he bd ieved to be vc:ngdi1l and inconsistent, and the God o f Je.sus Christ, whom he bd ie\'ed was loving and con-
sistent.
Mont'.lnus: The- founder of a prop hetic and apocalyptic movement, which had women prophets (Maxim ilia and Prisca) '3.nd awaited the
end of time in Pc:pu:.:a (modern Turkey). He. began preaching arou nd 1 70 c.E.; h is b irth and d eath dates are not known. Nag Hammadi: A city in Upper Eorypt and the site o f an early Christian monastery, where the Coptic Gnostic texts, such as the Gospd
oJTixtmas and the Gospd ~Philip, were found. Neoplatonism: A philosop hical movement popular in antiquity th:lt accounted for the created universe th rough emanation and that provide.d C hristian theologians with a system to explain Christian d octrines.
Nous (Greek for"mind"'): 1lte highest part of the human person-the other parts arc the soul {ps).._h<) and the body {soma)-whic.:h connects the person with God; a kind ofintuiti\•e knowledbrt:. Parndctt! {Gree-k for "comforter"): A name for the Christian Holy
Spirit, \\'h ich was believed to be .sent by Jesus in the end-time to comfort an d lead the church.
p!aoma (Greek for ''fullne-~o;s"): In G nosticism the divine fullness in which God dwdls toge-ther with all the: o ther divine emanations.
pneumatic {Greek for "spiritual"): In Gnosticism, a tenn d esig nating
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the status of the Gnostic ~s a spiritual person capable o f extraordin~ry
spiritual perception and power in contradistinction to the psy-
ch ics and the hyJics.
psychic (Greek for "soulful"): I n Gnosticism, a term designating the status of the person who knew o f spiritual realitie-S bu t was unable: to pursue them o r to perceive their depth, in contrast to hylics an d
pneumatics. Sethians: Gnostics who believed that they were the seed of Seth, the spiritu~l son of Adam, who was to redeem Goers people: and ~u cre-
ation. sotcriology: A system of salvation, often based on the understanding of a S)X'cific salvation fie,tU.re such as Jesus or Seth. S tylite-s : Monks who S)X'nt the-ir time atop a piU~r in order to be suspend od between hea\·cn and earth
~nd
so that they could mediate
bc:t\veen the things of God and the people on earth. Valentinians: Adhcn:nts of a Gnostic movement foun ded by Valentin us (ca. l OQ-175 C.E.), o riented to ward plumbing the depths of C hristian theo logy and scripture and committed to re-m aining within the mainstream Christian church.
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T he spectacle of car1y Christian diversity has never cc.ascd to amaze me, even though 1 have spent most of my life studying
it. Its breadth and variety arc astonishi ng : Syrian monks living on top of pillars, Encratitcs rejecting marriage to keep their bodies pure, ~~lanichcans using t heir bodily functions to release the Light, Gnostics and H c nnct icists p lotting out the astrological as a guide to salvation, proto-feminist prophets proclaiming a new age. An astonishing array o f C hristianitics, all o f them vanished. The srudy of vanished C h ristianities should spur our thinking about rdigion toda)~ which is no less d iverse t han it was in the an cient world. The great world religions compe te and conflict with each other; Christianit)ls many denominations arc continually arguing about who possesses ''the truth." We even have revivals of those a ncicm c hmches-Gnostics, followers of the Gospel of Thomas, New Age spiriruality. Diversity, and the violence it seems to bring in its wake, marks our world as much as it did the ancients'. But docs it have. to be so? D ocs anyone possess rl1e fuU truth? Can anyone speak God's mind definitively?
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I hope you find these questions as fascinating as I do and that reading this book has spurred your curiosity about the strange. and wonderful bc~efs of early Christianity. If you're interested in exploring furthc.r~ here are some resources that will help to guide you on your way. G E N ERAL R E FER ENC E
It i.s casie.r now than in the past to get many of the tc.x-rs that I refer to in this boo k by simply searching the \ Ncb. For copyright reasons the translations found on the \Vcb arc ofte.n vc.ry old-fashioned, often dating fro m the ni neteenth century. But they arc there. I suggest htt p://e.arlychristianwritings.com as a good place to begin e.xploring. For New Test:at11ent literature'"' h ttp://ntgatcway.com provides access to a wide assortment of texts, translations, and commentaries. The Catbo!h Etuyrkpedia {both in print and o~ne) provides brief and trust\vorthy articles on the various subjects covered in this book. The. Oxford Dirtiottaty ifthe Christiatt Churth (second edition) is a concise, all-purpose reference guide with excellent bibliographies and suggestions fo r further reading. E A RL Y C HRIST I AN LITE RATU RE-COLLECT IONS OF T EXTS
For a convenient collection of all the gospd matc.rials (including Mark, Matthew, Luke, Joh n, Mary, and Thomas) checkout
The Complete Gospels, edited by Robert M iller. !Vliller uses the Scholars Version, a comc.mpora.ry and very accessible translation of the texts. Fo r the ancient Christian novds, and much more New Testament apocryphal lite.raturc, the best collection remai ns .New
Testamwl Apcrr)'pha, edited by W ilhelm Schneemdcher (rc-
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vised c.dition in nvo volumes, VVestminstcrtJohn Knox Press, 1992) . The first volume covers the gospels; the se.cond covers writings attributed to the apostles. The translators have provided comprehensive. imroductions to each of the. texts. For a collection of texts fro m across the spectrum of rdigious expression from the second t hrough the sc.vc.nth ccnruries, sec my own Religions ofLate Anti-quity in Pradire. Here you'll find IVIanichean, Gnostic, Neoplatonist, and Christian texts from Syria, Egypt, Ro me, ~-\sia 1vlinor, and Grec.ce, as well as ancient Pc.rsia (modern Iraq and Iran). The translators have written accessible introductions to t he texts and offer cxccile.nt suggestions for furthc.r reading. T H E H I STORICAL JE SUS
T he Jesus Seminar has produced controversial and challenging re-search about Jesus and his 1nission. I recommc.n d the works of three members of the Seminar in particular. John Dominic Crossan's ]ems: A Re<.'Ciutiotlar;• Biography presents Jesus as a poor, itinerant revolutionary, while Nlarcus Borg's J\1/uting Je-
sw Again for the First Time provides fres h new insights into the historical Jeous and his significance for today. Stephen J. Patterson's The God ofJesus commends the work of the Jesus Seminar to clergy who arc eager to integrate its insights into their parish life. IVIuch of t he n:search into t he historical Jesus depends upon a close examination of the sayings that can be attributed to him with t he highest degree of confidence. A critical edition of Q, the sayings collection used by Matthew and Mark in the composition of their gospels, has just been published by James M. Robinson, Paul Hoffmann, and Jo hn S. Kloppcnborg (The Say-
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iugs Gospel Q it1 Greek aud Euglish, Fortress Press, 2002). !VIy own The J'tlt'i.O Q: TramlntWn and Commenttlr)' provides fres h translations and lnterpretations. The. Gospel ofThomm is a rich resource for srudying Jesus; sec my Gospel ofThomas. OV ERVI EWS OF REL IG IOUS THOUGHT AND PRACT JCE
Of course, no one could cake up these subjc.cts without mentioning the popular books that have stirred up such interest in t hese vanished C h ristianities. Elaine Pagels's The Gnostit
Gospels put Gnostic Christianity on the public agenda, while Ban Ehrman's Lost Christim1iti~s has fanned the fiamc.s of interest in t hese fasci nating expressions of Christian life and identity. Pagels's Beyoud Belief continues the tradition of exploring alternative Christianitics fo r the. gene raJ re.adc.r. For readers who arc willing to tackle less accessible, more academic te.xts, Margaret R. Miles's Word Made Flesh studies theological texts in the context of bo th art and music. Peter Brown's The World ofLate Antiquity presents an overview of rl1e history and culture. of ancient Christianity i n its Roman context. Bo th of rl1csc superb books arc filled with valuable info rmation and resources for further sntdy. RECOMMENDED READ I NGS
Attridbrt:-, Harold, Robe-rt Hodgson J r., ~nd Charles Hedrick (cds.), Nag Hammadi, Gn01thism, and Early Christianity (Peabody, iVlA:
Hendrickson Publishers, 1986). Bamstone, W iUis, and Man-·in Meyer (eds.), 1'Jx Gnostic Bihk Gnostic
Tt'xts of!t4ystical Wisdom ftvm tht' Amimt and Mt'di.:val Worlds ( Boston: Shambhab, 2003).
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Bauer, \!Vatter, Orthodoxy tmd HaeSJ' in Earli~st Christiani~)' (J\'lifflintown, PA: Sigler Press, 1996 r<'print). Bo rg, Marcus, The Htart of Christianity: &di.sc
cisco, 1995). Brown, PC'ter R. L., TIN Ri.se qj' IJ~·stcrn Christmdom: Triumph 1md Di-
vmiiy, .I.D. 200-1000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). - - - . 17M World of Late Antiqui~)' .I. D. 150-750 (New York: W. \'V. Norton, 1989). Crossan, J ohn Dominic,juus: A &t.YJ!utiomu)' BitJgraph)' (San Francisco: HarpcrSanFrancisco, 1995). Ehrman, Bart, Lost Christianiii(·s: Th~ Battle for St-ripture and tht .ffliths Jlf( Nr.r~r
Knew (Oxford: Oxfo rd UnivC'rsity Press, 2003).
- - - . L/Jst &riptures: Books That Did Not .~lalu It into thi' Netu 7~J Iammt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Jensen, Robin .Margaret., Fa;_.· to Fnrr: Portraits oft!x Divine in Earl)' Christianity (Minneapolis: Form:ss Pl'<'ss, 2005). Jo nas, Hans, Tho· Gnostic Rdigio11 (Bosto n: Beacon Press, 2001 reprint). King, Karen, 7/N Gospd oft\1my ofMagdaftl.' }tsus and th~ First Wqman AptJstk (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2003). - - - . What Is GnDJiidsm! (Cambridge, .MA: Harv'.trd University Press, 2003). Lampe, P<'kr, Christian.s nt Rom~ in the First 'Pwo Cauuries ( Minneapolis: Fortress Pl'<'-s s, 2003). Layton, Bentley, The Gnostic Scripturn: A N('U) Tmm!atiDn 1.oitb Annotafion.s nnd lntrodudion.s (New York: Anchor Bible, 1995).
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Meyer, .Marvin, Th,T Gospd ofThomas: TIN Hitldm Sayings o/Jnus (San Francisco: HarperSanFmncisco, 1982). - - -.
Th~
Gospels oft\tlary: The Stm~t Tradition of.114m)' 1Wngdalm~,
the Compauio11 ojjmu (San Francisco: HarperSanFrnncisco, 2004). - - -. The s~o-.~t 'J ~achings o/Jmrs: Four Guosti,· Gospds (Nev.· York: Vintage Books, 1986). 1\•liles, i\hrgare.t R ., image ru Insight: Visual Uutlerstauding in
IJ~stt'm
Christian it)' am/ Suular Cullrm· ( Bosto n: Beaco n Press, 1987). - - -. Th~ IVord t\1ad~ 1-J.·sh: A Histo1y of Christian Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). MiUe.r, Robert J. (ed .), Thi Compltte Gospds (San Francisco: H arperSanFrnncisco, 1992). Pagds, Elaine, Bc)YJIId Btli~f TIN Gos~l cfThomas (New York: Vint.g< Books, 2004).
- - -.
Th~
Gnostic GosfUIJ (New Yo rk: Ran dom House:., 2004
reprint). Patterson, Stephen J., Bqocud th~ Passion: R.·thinking the• Death and
Lift ofjesus (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2004). - - -.
Th~
God ofJmu: 11k· Hisloriraljrsus and tiN Smrrhfor !14tau-
ing (Harrisburg, PA: T rinity Press International, 1988). Rob inson, James (cd .), Th..· Nag Hammadi Library in English (San Francisco: HarperSanFmncisco , 1990). Rudolph, Ku rt, Guosis: Tix Nature and History ofGnosticism {San Francisco: HarperSanFmncisco , 1987). Valantasis, Richard, Cmturia ofHoli1ws (New York: Continuum,
2005). - - -. Th~ Gospel cjThomas {London: Routlcd~., 1997). - - -. The New
Q: 1i·anslntit.m am/ Cqmmmlm)' ( Harrisburg, PA:
1Tinity Prt'ss Jnternational, 2005).
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- - -. Rdigiom ofLou Antiquity in Pradiu ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). \>Villiams, M ichad Allen, ton
Rt~tbinking
University Press, 1999).
·onosti(ism" (Princeton: Prince-
RI CHARD VALANTASIS
is the Clifford E. Baldridge Professor of New Tes-
tament and Christian Origins at the Iliff School ofTheology in Denver, Colorado. He is the author of several books, including Spiritual Guides~( the Third Centmy, Tbe Gospel
~(Thomas,
and The New Q: A Fresh Trans-
lation and Commentary. An ordained Episcopal priest, Valantasis is well
known for his translations and analyses of the New Testament and esoteric writings. He lives in Denver, Colorado. Beliefnet is the leading multifaith spirituality and religion website. Through its newsletters and online, Beliefnet reaches four million people daily. It is the winner of numerous prestigious awards, including the Webby for Best Spirituality Site and the Online News Association's top award for ge neral excellence for independent websites. Its book Taking
Back Islam won the Wilbur Award for Best Religion Book of 2003.
