Gnosticism is hardly unique among ancestors of orthodox Christianity in having been turned out of the family of Christ's "true" followers. And yet, like the orthodoxy that succeeded the first sects and ultimately branched into what we know today as mainstream Christianity, Gnosticism looked to Jesus, Paul, and the Bible as sources of understanding about the nature of man, God, Christ, and salvation. How, then, did orthodoxy come to reject a stream of religious thought that flows from the same well as Catholicism and Protestantism?

Because few nowadays are familiar with even the basic tenets of Gnosticism, misunderstanding attaches freely to the faith. But in the earliest centuries of Christianity it was sectarian animosity rather than ignorance that drove popular misconception, as numerous propagandistic screeds written to discredit the Gnostics and other early Christian groups came to be regarded as truth. Penned by the early Church Fathers-the men who first codified orthodoxy-books like Irenaeus' five-volume Against Heresies characterized Gnosticism as the refuge of perverts; of insane, depraved, life-hating freaks who held orgies, practiced promiscuity and homosexuality, aborted and devoured fetuses, and refused to bear children. By discrediting the morals of Gnostics, early theologians convinced their followers that the Gnostics' teachings were absurd and misguided.1

The portrait of Gnostics as dangerous counter-Christians, a portrait painted by power and enshrined as truth, held for sixteen hundred years, until 1945, when an archaeological find known as the Nag Hammadi Library was uncovered in Upper Egypt, near the town of Naj 'Hammádě at the Jabal al-Tárif, a mountain honeycombed with more than 150 caves. This remarkable collection of fourth-century Coptic texts, thought to have been copied from material that may date back to as early as the second half of the first century 2, cast new light upon long-obscured Christian history: a history that revealed no suggestion that Gnostics hated life or favored any of the repulsive behaviors attributed to them, but rather that they advocated individualism in pursuit of their primary goal, the search for enlightenment. What the Nag Hammadi texts also disclosed is that from the very beginning of Christianity, there existed an alternative theology, a competing-and compelling-interpretation of scripture which, had it not been actively suppressed, might have undermined the entire fabric of the early Church.

Part One: The Emanant Spark

I.
In order to discover why Gnosticism was considered a threat to incipient orthodoxy, it is necessary to understand what the earliest Christians believed. First, a little definition is in order. I use the term Gnostic here to denote not only those groups in the second and third century who called themselves Gnostics, but also to include the oldest Christian sects from 30 to 120 C.E., such as the Simonians, Ophites, Naassenes, Cerinthians, and others. These very early Christians shared a rich, diverse set of doctrines that stand in stark opposition to the doctrines we now know as orthodox Christianity. The early sectarians tended to disagree on many things, but they generally did agree on such central matters as the existence of reincarnation and of a class of evil powers called "archons," the meaning of the resurrection, the process of salvation, the doctrine of "emanations," and the nature of humanity.

For years, well-known religious historians like Elaine Pagels and Paul Johnson have written candidly about the diversity of early Christianity. Indeed, study of the earliest Christian sects and communities, of the Nag Hammadi texts, and of records of later, nominally Gnostic groups quickly shatters any myth that there was a single "original" Christianity somewhat in the image of modern fundamentalism, where all held to the four Gospels, the concept of Jesus as God, His death for our sins, the resurrection of the body at the Last Day, and so on. Instead, we see a theology centered around two ideas: that a "divine spark" inheres in humanity, and that the process of salvation represents a universal principle that Jesus demonstrated for humanity so that people could follow his example. We learn that the basic dogmas that most modern orthodox Christians assume were there from the beginning-the resurrection, Jesus as God, original sin-were not always there, and in fact, were constructed by several early Church Fathers long after the death of Jesus.

The notion of original sin, especially, departs from Gnosticism in its assumption that there could be something wrong or ungodly about any kind of knowledge. The Gnostics held just the opposite view. For example, in the Book of Thomas the Contender, one of the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi and thought to have been written in the second century, the Saviour tells his disciple Thomas, "He who has not known himself has known nothing, but he who has known himself has at the same time already achieved knowledge about the depth of all." In other words, when you become one with ("know") the God within, you will have become one with all that is. The following Gnostic story based on the Gnostic Hymn of the Pearl, also found at Nag Hammadi, expands on this principle and illustrates several other core beliefs:

"Imagine you are a prince. One day your parents, the King and Queen,
send you on a mission to Egypt. You must find a pearl guarded by a
hungry dragon.

You take off your royal robe and leave the kingdom of your parents.
You journey into Egypt, putting on dirty clothing and disguising
yourself as an Egyptian.

Somehow the Egyptians discover that you are a foreigner. They give
you food that makes you forget your royal birth and makes you believe
that you are one of them. You sink into a deep sleep.

Your parents see your plight and send you a letter that tells you to
awaken. It reminds you of your quest to recover the pearl. You
remember who you are, a child of kings. You quickly subdue the
dragon, recover the pearl and depart, leaving the dirty clothing behind.

When you return to your native land, you see your royal robe, which
reminds you of the splendor you lived in before. The garment speaks to
you, telling you that it belongs to the one who is stronger than all
human beings. You put on your royal robe once more and return to your
father's palace." 3

The King and Queen symbolize the Creator and a feminine being the Gnostics called the holy mother Sophia (Wisdom). Their kingdom is a realm of light, a place totally outside matter as we know it. It is spoken of as the "pleroma," or "fullness." Your royal robe represents your true Self, your divine image. The dirty clothing represents your earthly body, which you donned when you entered Egypt, the material world.

When you descended into mortality, you left behind your divine image and became an incomplete person. You "fell asleep" when you forgot your true origin. The message sent by your parents represents the Saviour. He will awaken you and remind you what you must do: recover the pearl (the fallen aspects of your soul), find your way back to the realm of light, and clothe yourself once more in your royal robe; in other words, reintegrate with your divine image. By recovering your soul and reintegrating with the divine, you will have achieved gnosis (knowledge), which is salvation. For the Gnostics, achieving gnosis meant to know oneself as God. But "to know" meant not merely to understand one's divine origin, but to achieve the classic goal of the mystic: union with God.

Putting on the royal garment and recovering the pearl were just some of the images Gnostics used to describe achieving gnosis. They also believed God to be a transcendent and infinite, perfect, ultimate, unfathomable, invisible Spirit; and that each person is composed of three parts: a seed, or spark, of the Divine; a body; and a soul. The divine spark-the God within-acts something like a pilot light, sustaining the divine potential of the soul and body until the soul is ready to be or ignited, or awakened to gnosis. The awakened soul pursues union with the God within, and this union is salvation.

II.

The first obvious and profound difference between the ancient Gnostic belief system reflected in the story of the Pearl, and the orthodox beliefs of most other Christians, is the proposition that our souls are of divine origin and existed in a divine state before they "fell" to earth. The idea that our souls are intrinsically divine stands in sharp contrast to orthodox dogmas constructed later, which stressed Jesus's exclusive divinity. As orthodoxy evolved in the first five centuries after Jesus died, St. Augustine's severe, unmerciful doctrine of original sin was adopted by official Christendom. The doctrine of original sin held that, because Adam and Eve partook of forbidden knowledge in the Garden of Eden, we are all intrinsically sinners and therefore cannot look on Jesus simply as an exemplar, as the earliest Christian communities did, but must rely instead on his exclusive divinity-and that of the Church-for our access to salvation. Gradually, the notion of man's original divine origin was all but stamped out, surviving only among a few sects and teachers throughout the succeeding centuries.4

The Gnostic idea underpinning human divinity, one that most of the earliest Christian communities espoused but that was denounced near the end of the second century by the first Church Father, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon was called the doctrine of emanations. Briefly, the doctrine of emanations says there exists a spiritual universe upon which the physical universe is patterned, a universe that is the realm of innumerable divine "emanations," all of which have free will. These emanations were not created by God, but rather, were parts of God, certain of which He chose to become human souls. Because souls once found their abode in the heavenly state, on earth they retain a portion of their divinity.

Almost all of the earliest Christian sects and communities believed in the doctrine of emanations from one eternal Source-the idea that all individuals have their origin in the eternal, and all partake, in their inmost being, in the eternal. According to St. Paul, human beings are composed of a Spirit, soul, and body. Gnostics believe that the destiny of man is to return to the spiritual realms (eternal life) by a process termed "the resurrection," which was demonstrated by Jesus. Because they believe in the preexistence of souls in a spiritual state-souls that were a part of God and subsequently fell into matter and became clothed with bodies-Gnostics hold that men retain a divine spark within. It is this spark itself, this infinite power within human beings, that is the means of salvation. It is the universal root, which exists as a potential in everyone.

III.

How did Irenaeus's particular interpretation of Christianity differ from other views? The ancient Christian understanding of man's relationship to divinity was that man originated in Spirit and remained connected to it, however tenously. Sectarian Christians taught that periodic saviors of the world, from Krishna to Christ, were able to rekindle the divine spark in those in whom it had gone out. But in Irenaeus's doctrine, man was created by God as a physical being, not a spiritual one. Man, therefore, has no intrinsic connection to God, no divine spark through which God can communicate. Man is distinct from God.

Rejecting the part of original Christian thought that held that the soul is spiritual and immortal-an idea that some later Church Fathers like Clement of Alexandria and Origen came back to-the early Fathers developed the concept of creatio ex nihilo, or creation out of nothing.5 Man could not be on a par with God, they reasoned, therefore his soul could not be part of God. It could not have been created out of God's essence. God must have created souls along with bodies and the rest of the material universe out of nothing at all. As Tertullian described it, God "fashioned this whole fabric with all its equipment of elements, bodies, spirits... out of nothing, to the glory of His majesty." 6The soul, thus constituted, has no part of God inside itself.

That doctrine persists to this day. As the New Catholic Encyclopedia explains it,

" Between Creator and creature there is the most profound distinction possible. God is not part of the world. He is not just the peak of reality. Between God and the world there is an abyss...
To be created is to be not of itself, but from another. It is to be non-self-sufficient. This means that deep within itself [the soul] is in a condition of radical need, of total dependence.... It means to accept the fact that the world has no reality except what the Creator thinks and wills."7 (Emphasis added.)

In other words, there is not, as the Platonists believed, a great chain of being linking the creation to the Creator and enabling the creation to return to the Creator. There is no divine spark inside each heart. Instead, there is an abyss between Creator and creation.

Irenaeus, in his theology, overturned the ancient doctrine of emanations which lay at the root not only of early Christianity, but of Platonism, Apocalyptic Judaism, Zoroastrianism, esoteric Buddhism, and Kabbalism. In so doing he not only reinterpreted the relationship of human beings to God as one of greater separateness, he also effected an historic separation of his doctrines from Gnostic Christianity and every other religion premised on the belief in emanations. In denying that God individualizes or fragments Himself in, and as, his creation, Irenaeus was denying that the one God, whether manifest as Father, Son, or Holy Spirit, differentiates Himself in the creation and in man, ad infinitum, and still remains One.

This newer vision of our relationship to God is not a hopeful one. It tells us that we humans are crouched in misery at the edge of the great abyss. We peer down into nothingness and strain to see the opposite side, where God and his Son reign eternally. Stretching across the chasm is a single arch: the Church, its approach securely gated, the keys to heaven accessible only through its official doctrine. And yet, Clement of Alexandria, a contemporary of Irenaeus, had dignified man with the description, "A noble hymn of God is man, immortal, founded upon righteousness, the oracles of truth engraved upon him."8 When Irenaeus said that man was created out of nothing, how far he digressed from Christianity's sources!

Link to PART II of The Wheel Broken at the Cistern

ENDNOTES

1. The chief attacks on the Gnostics were authored by Church Fathers Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Epiphanius. But their work is seriously flawed and must be seen for what it is: religious polemic rather than history. Irenaeus, known as the First Church father, devoted five volumes to a work, Adversus Haereses, which purported to expose the Gnostics. Scholars have criticized this work for its lack of objectivity and muddled thinking.

2. See Elaine Pagels' comments

Excerpts:
"About the dating of the manuscripts themselves there is little debate. Examination of the datable papyrus used to thicken the leather bindings, and of the Coptic script, place them c. A.D. 350-400. But scholars sharply disagree about the dating of the original texts. Some of them can hardly be later than c. A.D. 120-150, since Irenaeus, the orthodox Bishop of Lyons, writing c. 180, declares that heretics "boast that they possess more gospels than there really are," and complains that in his time such writings already have won wide circulation--from Gaul through Rome, Greece, and Asia Minor."

"Quispel and his collaborators, who first published the Gospel of Thomas, suggested the date of c. A.D. 140 for the original. Some reasoned that since these gospels were heretical, they must have been written later than the gospels of the New Testament, which are dated c. 60-ll0. But recently Professor Helmut Koester of Harvard University has suggested that the collection of sayings in the Gospel of Thomas, although compiled c. 140, may include some traditions even older than the gospels of the New Testament, "possibly as early as the second half of the first century" (50-100)--as early as, or earlier, than Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John."

3. Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, pgs. 371-375

4. The Cathars and certain prominent Christian mystics in and outside the Catholic Church preserved some of this aspect of Gnostic teachings. They include St. Francis of Assisi, St. Bonaventure, Meister Eckart, Jacob Boehme, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Catherine of Genoa, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, and others. All of them taught the intrinsic divinity of man and demonstrated the path to Absolute Oneness with God through initiatic degrees. Some modern Christian denominations have beliefs apparently quite distant from the basic tenets of St. Augustine's doctrine of Original Sin. For example, see #2 in both the official Church of Latter Day Saints Articles of faith website, and the official website of the Unity Church.

5. See, for example, Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 2, Chapter 10

6. Tertullian, Apology 17, quoted in The Mask of Jove: A History of Greaeco-Roman Civilization from the Death of Alexander to the Death of Constantine, Stringfellow Barr, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippencourt Co., 1966, p. 469. See also: This links to the entire text of Tertullian's Apology.

7. The New Catholic Encyclopedia, "Creation"

8. Exhortation to the Greeks 10, quoted in Robert Payne, The Fathers of the Eastern Church, p. 30

Link to PART II of The Wheel Broken at the Cistern