Residual Gnosticism
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:1-4.
Gnosticism was an early Christian heresy, but there are residual echoes of their beliefs both in secular postmodernism and even Christianity today. While one can over-generalize about the Gnostics, to understand their basic beliefs, it is important to see their place historically in the early Christian church. Most Gnostics were Greek converts, who yet retained underlying concepts from Greek paganism and attempted to incorporate these ideas into Christianity.
The Gnostics merged aspects of Platonism into their version of Christianity. Here, it is best to reference Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, found in Plato’s Republic (Book VII). There, a man is chained within a cave, where he can only see shadows on the wall before him. Unbeknownst to him, there are people behind him who, by firelight, cast shadows on the wall. For the chained man, these shadows are his reality; he sees the shadows as real, unaware of the figures behind him. A modern telling of the Allegory of the Cave is depicted in the movie, The Matrix. There, the protagonist, Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, lives in a shadow world of non-reality. He, and all of humanity, are unaware of the real world, seeing only the shadows. By taking the red pill, he is able to see reality and exit the cave.
For the Gnostics, truth resided outside of ourselves; outside of our bodies. To know truth, we should escape this world (our cave), for in this world we only see shadows. The Gnostics considered everything worldly, and everything about us that is worldly, to be bad. Our bodies were bad. This earth was bad. To know truth and therefore to know Christ, we should disembody ourselves, so to speak, and wholly reject our physical selves. For the Gnostics, all things material, of the body, and of this world were sinful, to be denied and rejected.
Secular postmodernism, which itself has become a modern religion, is, in many ways, a new rendition of heretical Gnosticism. To know truth, you must disembody yourself, so to speak, for truth lies neither in the world nor objective reality. Your body is a shadow, obscuring your “real” self. The “truth” lies in the “Sacred Self,” and to know that “Sacred Self,” you should deny the objective aspects of this world to reveal the real “you.” Therefore, a biological male can declare his body is merely a shadow of the “real” self, which, actually is a woman. You can also see this in the elevation of subjective experience over objective reality. Secular postmodernism elevates so-called “lived experience” over any objective truth, for objective truth, according to this philosophy, merely consists of shadows. Therefore, all “lived experience” must be affirmed, despite objective truth to the contrary.
While the obvious falsities of this belief can be seen in secular postmodernism, it is important to recognize that Christianity itself has retained elements of Gnosticism. In the Middle Ages, it was common for Catholic monks to cloister themselves in monasteries, attempting to escape the world. To know “truth” was to deny all aspects of the body and the physical world. From the Christian perspective, one can see the temptation to seek refuge from the world, for isn’t this world, in fact, sinful? Aren’t we sinful by our very nature? Aren’t the desires of the flesh sinful? While these statements contain elements of truth, they only tell part of the story. By focusing exclusively on these aspects, we miss God’s plan for this world and the restoration of His Kingdom.
We have all heard Christians utter statements like, “I am ready to leave this world and get to Heaven.” To that, I say, “Amen; me too.” However, to avoid the Gnosticism in that statement, we must also remember God’s plan for this world; for His Kingdom in this world; for His plan on the earth. God placed man in the Garden, which was a real place on the earth, and there He communed with man. God was present with man in the Garden. That is God’s plan for this world: to be present with us and restore His Kingdom in this world. Recall Jesus’s first words in the Book of Mark: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand…” (Mark 1:15). Christ’s entry into this world began the restoration of the Garden; something remarkably profound changed in this world when Christ appeared.
This is an important orientation for Christians to retain: As much as Jesus was trying to tell us how to get to Heaven, He was also telling us how to bring Heaven to earth. Jesus was attempting to bridge the gap between Heaven and earth, between God and man, so that we could, again, as God intended, be present with the Father. In the full restoration of the Kingdom, we will be given new bodies (1 Cor. 35-59; 2 Cor. 5:1-5). There will be a new Heaven and a new earth: the earth that God intended; the earth God created; a real world and a real objective place. That process has already begun. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Though by no means complete, the change has commenced. We don’t live in shadows, with the denial of reality as our only escape. We can see glimpses of Heaven now, and can await the full restoration of God’s Kingdom, where we will commune with the Father.
In Christ,
Mort Taylor