SOMETHING ABOUT GNOSTICISM
February 26th, 2010This Sunday, the pastor begins a Lenten preaching series on the great heresies of the faith – those mistaken beliefs that threatened the integrity – and even the existence of the Early Church and that continue to cause havoc in churches today. This morning’s message is“Knowledge Puffs Up” and it will examine the heresy of gnosticism – and how that heresy gets lived out in today’s church
Gnosticism is not the name of any specific religion. Rather, it is a category of a wide range of religious beliefs and practices that emerged during the Church’s first two hundred years. It is the earliest and the dangerous of all the heresies. You see Paul responding to gnosticism’s presence in his letters to the churches in Corinth, Colossae, and Ephesus.
Gnosticism played upon certain recognizable unattractive aspects of human nature. Among these are our world weariness and our insistence that the world in which we live is broken beyond repair; our need to always be in the know; our belief that we can secure salvation by having all the answers; our infatuation with secret societies or elite groups; and our tendencies to have a do-our-own thing ethic.
Gnosticism took many forms; but the theology- and the ethics that resulted from it – was always the same. Gnostics hated the created world and had no use for the God who created it. Gnostics saw human beings as unfortunate refugees stranded on earth, with only secret knowledge as the means to escape earth and find personal salvation. Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis, meaning “to know.”
Because Gnostics saw the world as a temporary way-station, they were either self-denying ascetics who abstained entirely from many foods and from sexual relations –or they were self-indulgent libertines who ate what they wanted and engaged in anonymous sexual relations.
The most dangerous forms of gnosticism were those that used parts of Scripture and that placed Jesus somewhere in their story, for this was especially attractive to early Christians. Valentinianism was one form of gnosticism that incorporated Jesus into its overall theology. In this form, there are several Christ figures, including one simply called “the only begotten,” another called “the Cross,” and yet another called, “the perfect fruit of the heavens.”
Gnosticism is the source of far too may other heresies to mention, including “docetism” which believed that Jesus wasn’t truly human – that he just seemed to be. The heroes of the Early Church worked hard to protect the Church from the temptations of gnosticism. From time to time, that work, sadly, still needs to be done today. For more information about Gnosticism, please feel free to call or email the pastor
