The Gnostic New Age

“The Gnostic Gospels” is a book by prominent scholar Elaine Pagels about the ancient Christian “heresy” known as Gnosticism. The book is based on scholarly research, but written in a relatively popularized style. I know it's used as an introductory college textbook to the material. Note that Pagels writes from a sympathetic, “pro-Gnostic” perspective, and is extremely critical of the orthodox or proto-orthodox Church.

For millennia, the Gnostics were mostly known through polemics written by their orthodox opponents. This changed when a sensational manuscript find was made in a cave outside Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. The Nag Hammadi Library, as the manuscript collection is usually called, contains long lost Gnostic scriptures, including the famous “Gospel of Thomas”. The manuscripts show that Gnosticism as such must have been older than Christianity, since some of the preserved texts are Jewish or “pagan” in orientation. Nobody knows exactly how Gnosticism first emerged or when it became entangled with Christian ideas, and Pagels says relatively little about this in her book. The texts further show that the Christian Gnostics really were fundamentally different from orthodox Christianity. Pagels has a tendency to paint Gnosticism as a kind of ancient “New Age”, which may or may not be anachronistic, but it's a fact that the Gnostics did have traits more reminiscent of Eastern religions: secret teachings, mantras, meditation exercises, “God within” and an emphasis on mystical insight (gnosis) rather than sin and redemption in Christ crucified.

The Gnostics weren't strictly homogenous, and Pagels does her best to distinguish the various factions within the milieu. The followers of Valentinus were the “moderates” and belonged to the official Church, while simultaneously having their own separate gatherings. More “radical” groups rejected the emerging Church en toto. All Gnostics had theological ideas which must seem downright baffling to main-line Christians, including the notion that the material world is evil and created by an inferior god known as the Demiurge. The Demiurge is often identified with both Jahve and Satan, while the snake in Eden is identified with Jesus Christ, who represents the true god, often depicted as androgynous or female! The Gnostics treated the Gospel stories very freely, emphasized their spiritual message over the literal meaning, and frequently wrote their own “gospels”. It's not entirely clear whether the Gnostics even regarded Jesus as a real historical person – their mythos was more important than the literal truth of the Biblical Gospels.

Pagels main point in the book, however, is not to analyze the weird Gnostic theology (which may be allegorical anyway), but to put both orthodox and Gnostic traditions in a social and political context. To put it very simply, the orthodox won the day since the Church combined a centralized authority structure with a broad popular appeal. The authoritarian structure helped the Church survive the Roman persecutions, while the popular appeal included community solidarity, an emphasis on ethics rather than mysticism, and the belief in the physical resurrection of the body. The male dominance within the Church appealed to strata in Roman society skeptical of women's emancipation. Pagels believes that the Church appealed both to the underclass and middle class of the Roman Empire, while the Gnostics appealed mostly to more privileged groups, often a kind of “bohemians”! The Gnostic groups, somewhat paradoxically, were “anti-authoritarian” and elitist at the same time. They often lacked a clear authority structure, while simultaneously being elitist due to their emphasis on mysticism, secret knowledge and hard-to-get theology or allegory. Some believed in predestination (their own predestination, of course). Their morality was more lax, since spiritual ignorance rather than “sin” was seen as the central problem. Women played prominent roles in some Gnostic groups, which apparently rubbed many people (or men!) the wrong way.

While Pagels book is well-argued, I nevertheless have some objections to it. It's frankly hard to believe that a movement based on the idea of esoteric knowledge can be completely “anti-authoritarian”. Another problem is that Pagels paints a picture of “real” Christianity being diverse until about AD 200, when a new orthodoxy redefines the meaning of “Christian” and goes on excluding the Gnostics. This, however, is simply not true. Orthodox or proto-orthodox Christianity existed already around AD 100. The Johannine corpus contains explicit or implicit attacks on Gnostics, and so do the Pastorals (attributed to Paul but probably written later). Likewise, Ignatius sharply attacks the Docetists (a Gnostic current). There simply was no period during which Gnostics were considered “legitimate” by their proto-orthodox opponents. Pagels should know this, and I think she does know it, but I think she wants to paint an inclusive picture of the early Christian Church as a hint about what should be done today.

That being said, I nevertheless believe that “The Gnostic Gospels” is a good introduction to the subject at hand, and I therefore give it four stars.