Why Gnosticism Is Irrelevant

“By the way, pardon me for being so direct, but I must ask you if you do believe in the resurrection?”

Yes, we all believe in the resurrection, but perhaps not the way that you do. You see, the redeemer was never incarnated. To those who met him, he appeared to be incarnate, but in appearance only. Some of us believe that he was a spirit-being throughout his three-year sojourn on earth. Others from our persuasion believe that the spirit-redeemer came on the fleshly Jesus (the son of Joseph and Mary) at the time of the baptism and then left him before his passion. Either way, he is now alive.

“I am still a bit confused. I thought the cross was central to our salvation. Are you saying that it is not?”

You are still working with the wrong notion of what the root problem of humanity really is. What we are trying to tell you is that you have a portion of the divine in you, some call it a “divine spark,” that connects you with god. But you are serving the wrong god! The law and will of the creator god (the Demiurge) should not be a matter of concern; in fact, his work of material creation was an arrogant and regrettable mistake. Of paramount importance is your connection with the ultimate god existing eternally in the kingdom of light.

“I think I have heard enough for now. Perhaps we can talk some more next week.”

With that you leave the meeting while noticing that many others were eagerly continuing the discussion. A feeling of foreboding pervades your emotions. This will be an enormous problem for the church to deal with.

A Demonization of the Jewish and Christian God

As the preceding dialogue portrays, Gnosticism represents a demonization of the God of the Bible and the postulation of another god—unknown, hidden, and ultimate. Gnosis is the revelation of this unknown god.

A crucial issue that scholars have tried to grapple with is the question of how this could have happened. A variety of answers to this question have been suggested. In the previous century, some suggested that this two-god dualism surfaced because of the influence of Hellenism on Christianity, especially Platonism. There is much merit to this suggestion, but it may not provide an adequate answer to the numerous Jewish elements in the Gnostic texts.

The “History of Religions School” claimed that the roots of Gnostic dualism can be traced to Persian religion, which had two gods (Ahiram and Ahura Mazda), and that a form of Gnosticism had emerged prior to the time of Jesus and the Apostles. This has been found to be problematic on many grounds and has largely been abandoned by scholarship today.

Careful analysis of all the Gnostic texts found at Nag Hammadi library in 1945 has revealed a very important fact that needs to be factored into any understanding of Gnostic origins: the texts are replete with OT and Jewish terms, concepts, images, and stories. This has led most scholars today to suggest that the origins of Gnosticism may lie within Judaism itself. But once again we must ask how this could possibly happen? How could a two-god theology surface within a context of rigid monotheism?

Disillusionment Following the Jewish War

When Jesus and the Apostles walked the land of Israel, apocalypticism within Judaism was prominent. Rome was in power and the Jewish people wanted nothing more than for God to intervene in human history with his Messiah and shatter the arrogance of the Gentile sinners like a potter’s jar. The Qumran community was preparing for this day. Jews everywhere longed for the arrival of the descendant of David who would come and conquer.

In the political sphere, precisely the opposite happened. The Jewish people revolted against Rome in AD 66, and by 70 the Roman armies had killed thousands of Jews, quelled the rebellion, and utterly destroyed the Jerusalem temple. In the second rebellion of AD 135, led by Simon bar Kosiba (or Bar Kochba), the Romans not only defeated him and his army, but banished all Jews from Jerusalem, renamed the city Aelia Capitolina, and built a temple to Zeus-Jupiter on the site of the Jewish Temple.

A number of years ago, a Jewish scholar from Columbia University, Alan F. Segal, wrote a very influential book, Two Powers in Heaven, that sought to explain how the profound disillusionment stemming from these two wars influenced some Jewish circles. His concern was to understand how some rabbis could claim to have experienced a mystical ascent to heaven where they glimpsed the divine throne, only to return and proclaim that they saw two gods in heaven! Segal contended that this was an attempt at theodicy (explaining the problem of evil) by these rabbis in light of God’s apparent defeat in the two wars. In other words, God was not able to intervene triumphantly because he had a powerful foe in heaven. Segal took this a step further by suggesting that this may help to explain the origins of the radical dualism that led to Gnosticism and how this could have happened within a Jewish environment.⁴