Gnostic sympathy

For transparently political reasons, Pagels, Meier, &co. find gnostic literature useful. Postmodern critical methodology encourages the conclusion that the Great Church omitted gnostic literature from its account of Jesus as a result of a patriarchal tendenz.  This leaves aside any conclusions about what Jesus might actually have taught, and whose tradition is closer. Such “essentialist” considerations are fruitless, since all we can know is what various groups found congenial for their own reasons.

Many find it congenial to entertain the idea that there is a certain pattern: a sapiential teacher delivers wisdom; his/her disciples eventually and inevitably get it wrong in the transmission, somewhere down the line, and correction is needed. This is the Protestant paradigm. In the name of the original purity of teaching, the tradition must be revised. The pattern resembles the gnostic creation myths: the Demiurge (or his mother, Sophia) got it wrong and the result is the flawed world as we know it. Likewise, genuine wisdom is garbled in human institutions. Periodic revision/purification is necessary. This seems also to be the Muslim paradigm. Moses and Jesus were genuine Messengers, but their followers got it wrong.

Underlying this view is the fundamental presupposition that the human predicament is ignorance. Creation is the work of a half-wit and we are stuck in the darkness of his imperfect product. We are saved by learning the Truth. The world is not to be saved, but individual spirits, imprisoned in ignorance, are to be set free by the infusion of Wisdom. Unfortunately, just as the Demiurge wrought a defective cosmos, so saving wisdom is garbled in the transmission, so it has to be sent repeatedly. Nobody wants this to happen, but we don’t know any better. The problem is located not in our will but in our intellect. Our problem is not sin, but ignorance.

Therefore, the Cross is useless, except insofar as it may be a teaching aid. The Death and Resurrection of Christ make no change in the cosmos. In fact, for some gnostics – as for the Qur’an – Jesus Christ was not even crucified: another died in His place. Pagels attests to her own aversion for the Cross. The modern scholars of gnostic texts – especially the popularizing ones – are frank enemies of the notion that salvation is through the Cross. On the contrary,  salvation is through the teaching of wisdom.