And Now for Some Real Heretics, Part 3

Continued from Part 2:

Since Gnosticism and early Christianity can be excessively complex a re-cap and a map would be helpful at this point.

Standard, or Orthodox, Christianity, developed in opposition to Gnostic Christianity. Most of orthodox Christianity’s earliest texts were written for just that purpose. Orthodox Christians held that the story of Jesus really took place, that he was crucified and resurrected as the Christ, that the Yahweh was the same as “the Father” referred to by Jesus and, therefore, the Jewish scriptures were still useful in that they prefigured and prophesied the life of Jesus. Some consider them to have been “moderates” between Gnostics on one side and Jewish followers of Jesus on the other. All this took place mostly post-70 AD after the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome which ended the temple-centered Jewish system. Some have even suggested that Christianity and Judaism (that is, the post-temple, rabbinic Judaism we know now) both developed at the same time as two separate strands differentiating themselves against each other. Gnostic traditions already preexisted this period in Judaism itself.

Gnostic Christians, as we have seen, associated the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh with the Demiurge. Here is what the Catholic Encyclopedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04707b.htm) says about the Demiurge:

The word means literally a public worker, demioergós, demiourgós, and was originally used to designate any craftsman plying his craft or trade for the use of the public. Soon, however, technítes and other words began to be used to designate the common artisan while demiurge was set aside for the Great Artificer or Fabricator, the Architect of the universe. At first the words toû kósmou were added to distinguish the great Workman from others, but gradually demiourgós became the technical term for the Maker of heaven and earth. In this sense it is used frequently by Plato in his "Timæus". Although often loosely employed by the Fathers and others to indicate the Creator, the word never strictly meant "one who produces out of nothing" (for this the Greeks used ktístes), but only "one who fashions, shapes, and models". A creator in the sense of Christian theology has no place in heathen philosophy, which always presupposes the existence of matter. Moreover, according to Greek philosophy the world-maker is not necessarily identical with God, as first and supreme source of all things; he may be distinct from and inferior to the supreme spirit, though he may also be the practical expression of the reason of God, the Logos as operative in the harmony of the universe. In this sense, i.e. that of a world-maker distinct from the Supreme God, Demiurge became a common term in Gnosticism. The Gnostics, however, were not satisfied merely to emphasize the distinction between the Supreme God, or God the Father, and the Demiurge, but in many of their systems they conceived the relation of the Demiurge to the Supreme God as one of actual antagonism, and the Demiurge became the personification of the power of evil, the Satan of Gnosticism, with whom the faithful had to wage war to the end that they might be pleasing to the Good God. The Gnostic Demiurge then assumes a surprising likeness to Ahriman, the evil counter-creator of Ormuzd in Mazdean philosophy. The character of the Gnostic Demiurge became still more complicated when in some systems he was identified with Jehovah, the God of the Jews or of the Old Testament, and was brought in opposition to Christ of the New
Testament, the Only-Begotten Son of the Supreme and Good God. The purpose of Christ's coming as Saviour and Redeemer was to rescue us from the power of the Demiurge, the lord of the world of this darkness, and bring us to the light of the Good God, His Father in heaven.

The Catholic Encyclopedia then goes on to describe Valentinian and Marcionite Gnosticism. First Valentinus:

… According to Valentinus the Demiurge was the offspring of a union of Achamoth (he káta sophía or lower wisdom) with matter. And as Achamoth herself was only the daughter of Sophía the last of the thirty Æons, the Demiurge was distant by many emanations from the Propatôr, or Supreme God. The Demiurge in creating this world out of Chaos was unconsciously influenced for good by Jesus Soter; and the universe, to the surprise even of its Maker, became almost perfect. The Demiurge regretted even its slight imperfection, and as he thought himself the Supreme God, he attempted to remedy this by sending a Messias. To this Messias, however, was actually united Jesus the Saviour, Who redeemed men. These are either hulikoí, or pneumatikoí. The first, or carnal men, will return to the grossness of matter and finally be consumed by fire; the second, or psychic men, together with the Demiurge as their master, will enter a middle state, neither heaven (pleroma) nor hell (hyle); the purely spiritual men will be completely freed from the influence of the Demiurge and together with the Saviour and Achamoth, his spouse, will enter the pleroma divested of body (húle) and soul (psuché). In this most common form of Gnosticism the Demiurge had an inferior though not intrinsically evil function in the universe as the head of the psychic world.

Now Marcion:

According to Marcion, the Demiurge was to be sharply distinguished from the Good God; the former was díkaios, severely just, the latter agathós, or loving-kind; the former was the God of the Jews, the latter the true God of the Christians. Christ, though in reality the Son of the Good God, pretended to be the Messias of the Demiurge, the better to spread the truth concerning His heavenly Father. The true believer in Christ entered into God's kingdom, the unbeliever remained forever the slave of the Demiurge. To this form of Gnosticism, the Demiurge has assumed already a more evil aspect.

To this they add a third variety, one more radical that the Encyclopedia labels “weird:”

According to the Naassenes the God of the Jews is not merely díkaios, but he is the great tyrant Jaldabaoth, or Son of Chaos. He is Demiurge and maker of man, but as a ray of light from above enters the body of man and gives him a soul; Jaldabaoth is filled with envy; he tries to limit man's knowledge by forbidding him the fruit of knowledge in paradise. The Demiurge, fearing lest Jesus, whom he had intended as his Messias, should spread the knowledge of the Supreme God, had him crucified by the Jews. At the consummation of all things all light will return to the pleroma; but Jaldabaoth, the Demiurge, with the material world, will be cast into the lower depths. Some of the Ophites or Naassenes venerated all persons reprobated in the Old Testament, such as Cain, or the people of Sodom, as valiant resisters of the Demiurge. In these weird systems the idea of the world-maker was degraded to the uttermost.

Three forms of Christian Gnosticism can be identified in the second century. The accomodating Valentinians, accomodating because they instructed their pneumatic followers to participate in the same rituals as the psychic, “Pistic,” or faith-based Christians, which actually frustrated the orthodox theologians even more, seeing them as deceitful. Second the Marcionites, large in number and perhaps dominant in many areas, and third and most radical, the Naasenes.

We find many references in Gnostic literature to “secret teachings” of Jesus of Paul, but nothing we have seen so far has been kept secret by anyone except Gnosticism’s Literalist opponents. Was there anything else? There are a couple of avenues we can pursue to answer that question. One might lie in the division of people into hylics, psychics and pneumatics. The other might be this: can Gnosis or Gnostic salvation be as easy as it seems? To identify with the One? Or is it more difficult than it seems? If so, why?

To be continued.