Why Gnosticism Is Irrelevant

A number of other scholars have taken a similar approach to Gnostic origins, although the overall question remains highly debated. In a very important essay, “The Origins of Gnosis and Early Christianity,” the highly respected Tübingen historian and NT scholar Martin Hengel concludes that the radically negative interpretation of the origin of the world in which the God of Israel is defamed as a cruel and foolish demiurge has its beginning among Hellenistic Jews whose national eschatological hope was shattered after the Jewish war.⁵

Gnosticism as Irrelevant to New Testament Interpretation?

If the catalyst for the development of Gnostic dualism arose within Judaism sometime after the first Jewish war (and possibly the second), this would, in fact, rule out the possibility of Gnosticism influencing the writers of the NT (or even the opponents of the Apostles) with the possible exception of the Johannine material.

I became convinced of this view when I wrote my dissertation on the background of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians about twenty years ago, later published as Ephesians: Power and Magic. It led me to look at other explanations for features within the NT environment that would have prompted Paul to emphasize the themes that he did and use the vocabulary that he did in Ephesians. Similarly, when I later wrote on Colossians, I found local folk animistic beliefs to be far more relevant for understanding the so-called “Colossian heresy” than importing Gnosticism back to the middle of the first century.⁶

In fact, it is difficult to find any place within the NT documents where the biblical writer polemicizes against a two-god dualism or against the notion that the creator god is evil. The closest we may come to Gnostic theology may be 2 John 7 where John says, “Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.” But does this necessitate a Gnostic interpretation of the background? This may be nothing more than the influence of Platonism (“middle Platonism” was on the rise at that time) on a group within the church that led to a docetic view of Christ.⁷ There is no hint in this letter of a defective view of God in his role as the creator of the heavens and the earth.

The upshot of all of this is that as we preach and teach from the NT, we need to be careful of telling our congregation or Bible study group, “the problem that the biblical writer is grappling with here is Gnosticism.” To do so tacitly legitimates the fanciful stories and interpretations popularized by authors such as Elaine Pagels and Dan Brown. Gnosticism clearly became a problem in the second century, but it may very well not have been invented yet in the first!

Clinton E. Arnold (M.Div., Talbot; Ph.D., Aberdeen) is Professor and Chair, Department of New Testament Language and Literature. Clint, his wife Barbara, and their three boys are vitally involved in their local church in Whittier.

Notes

¹ Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1951), 1.164.

² Heinrich Schlier, “kefalh,” TDNT 3.680.

³ Edwin M. Yamauchi, Pre-Christian Gnosticism. A Survey of the Proposed Evidences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973).

⁴ Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven; Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (SJLA 25; Leiden: Brill, 1979), 260-266.

⁵ Martin Hengel, “Die Ursprünge der Gnosis and das Urchristentum,” in J. Ådna, S. J. Hafemann, O. Hofius, eds. Evangelium—Schriftauslegung—Kirche, Festschrift für PeterStuhlmacher zum 65 Geburtstag (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), 190-223, esp. p. 222.

⁶ Ephesians: Power and Magic: The Concept of Power in Ephesians in Light of its Historical Setting (SNTSMS 63; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); The Colossian Syncretism: The Interface Between Christianity and Folk Belief at Colossae (WUNT 2/77; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995).

⁷ See “Syncretism” in Dictionary of the Later New Testament and its Developments (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 1149-50.