And Now for Some Real Heretics, Part 6

Continued from Part 5.

If what Mouravieff and others have said is true and there are two “races” within the human race, some who have higher centers and others who do not, what should be the relations between the two? First let’s look at how this scheme of Adamic and Pre-Adamic humanity maps onto the tripartite division of Paul and the Gnostics: hylic, psychic and pneumatic. Most likely, what Mouravieff calls Pre-Adamic humanity is the same as the hylics. Which means that Adamic humanity can be divided into psychics and pneumatics.

Given that there are different types of humanity coexisting, what should their relations be with each other? According to the moderate, Valentinian position, Paul solved the problem by speaking to both groups at once, and urging pneumatics to observe laws and customs even though they didn’t have to. Elaine Pagels, discussing how the Valentinians interpreted the Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians in The Gnostic Paul, shows the sophistication of Pauls stance.

1 Cor 1:21-24: For since, in the wisdom (sophia) of God, the cosmos did not know God through wisdom (sophia), God was pleased through the foolishness of the kerygma to save those who believe. Since the Jews ask for signs, and the Greeks seek wisdom (sophia), we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews, a scandal, to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Is the conflict between the foolish wisdom “of this age” (1:20) and the apparent “foolishness” of God’s wisdom irreconcilable? Paul answers no: since the psychic
“cosmos” proved incapable of knowing God through his wisdom (sophia), God has accommodated his revelation to the psychics’ own limited and foolish capacity—he “was pleased through the foolishness of the kerygma to save those who believed” (1:21). Because the pychics (“Jews”) seek signs, and the pneumatics (“Greeks”) seek wisdom (sophia), Paul preaches the message in the form accessible to the greatest number: “we preach Christ crucified” (1:23). Although pychics (“the Jews”) find his message a scandal, and the pneumatics (“the Greeks”) consider it foolish, Paul insists that this kerygmatic message speaks to each of them in different ways. The psychics receive it psychically as the “power of God,” and the pneumatic “Gentiles” receive it spiritually as the “wisdom of God” (1:24) (Pagels. The Gnostic Paul, pp. 55-56)

… 1 Cor 2:6-8: We do speak wisdom (sophia) among the initiates (the mature, teleioi), but not the wisdom of this age or of the archons of this age, who are passing away. But we speak the hidden wisdom (sophia) of God in a mystery, which God ordained before the aions for our glory. None of the archons of this age knew this: had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (Ibid., p. 57)

…Basilides explains Paul’s statement that “none of the archons of this age knew this” (2:8a) by saying that when the Great Archon (the demiurge) heard the mystery of the divine Mother Sophia, who had brought forth and sustained his power while he ignorantly believed he was the sole “god of the universe,” he “was filled with terror, and was silent.” Had the archons known this mystery, “they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory (2:8b) for that curcifixion revealed symbolically the fall and restoration of Sophia. (Ibid., p. 58)

The psychics can be saved by the presence in their midst of pneumatics, the “leaven” in the dough, to use the language of one of Jesus’s parables. But they must be careful, since the psychics “receive only a ‘potential for salvation.’’ (Ibid., p. 145) In a scheme very similar to that of Mouravieff, who claimed that Paul’s secret wisdom tradition was preserved and passed on in Eastern Orthodoxy, the Valentinians speak of “three distinct stages in the process of spiritual development,” with each stage represented as a “day:”

The “first day” signifies the hylic stage of immersion in materiality; the second day represents the psychic stage of conversion; the “third day, the pneumatic day,” signifies enlightenment or resurrection. For psychics, the first day denotes the past, the second the present, and the third the eschatological future. The apostle, then, here insists that the psychic must choose salvation “today,” that is, in the present cosmic age.

Nevertheless, the Valentinians explain, the message of salvation is communicated on each of these three “days” in a different way. During the past, hylic day, it “sounded” like a meaningless tone (echos); on the present psychic day, it is “heard” as a “voice” (phone); and on the future pneumatic day, it is understood as logos. (Ibid, p. 146)

In her discussion of the Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, Pagels shows the clear Gnostic orientation of Paul. In that letter, Paul disparages the very things that would become the fundamentals of Christianity:

Heb 6:1-6: Therefore let us leave behind the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to the level of maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, with teaching of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment… For it is impossible for those who have been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the holy spirit, and have tasted the goodness of God’s word and the powers of the age to come, to have fallen back to renew repentance again. They recrucify for themselves the son of God. (Ibid, p. 148)

As for the “law,” Paul makes some interesting and subtle distinctions. For the pneumatic, all things are permitted. Pneumatics should not be subject to judgement by psychics or by the laws of the demiurge. They should, however, observe them in a spirit of humility and unity of the whole community, psychic and pneumatic.

The moderate stance of the Valentinians drove the Literalists crazy. The Literalists thought that by conforming outwardly to the psychic Literalist religion the pneumatics were lying, were pretending to believe something they didn’t believe. They much preferred to attack radicals such as the Marcionites or Naasenes.

To be continued…