What Gnosticism is, and what it is not
Gnosticism has become a wax nose and a straw man for modern Christians, who are actually unsure of what it is. Anything different from their viewpoint seems Gnostic, any heresy at all must be Gnosticism. This leads people, who may actually be influenced by gnostic thinking, to hurl the charge at others who have nothing to do with the heresy. A couple points:
1. Gnosticism is a philosophy, not a theology. Theology is what we can gather about God, drawn out of His revealed word in the Bible. Philosophy is what we can gather from the general revelation of Creation, and from the light of reason. Philosophy often influences how we read the Bible, whether we intend to or not; some philosophies bill themselves exactly in that way, as lenses through which to see the Bible. Gnosticism is not something you can draw out of the Bible, but one would have to interpret the Bible through Gnosticism in order to make sense of it.
2. The philosophy of Gnosticism is deeply anti-Biblical. Gnosticism is polytheistic, believing that one Godhead birthed lesser deities, among which is Sophia, also called wisdom, and the Demiurge, which is the creator of the world. Gnosticism is dualistic, believing that the world is being contested between good and evil, between the spiritual and the material. The created world is corrupt and evil, and mortal man must detach himself from this world if he can hope to be saved.
This is directly opposed to Biblical Christianity, which holds that God is one, and that one is a Trinity of three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, who are distinct but equal in substance and glory, so that it is heresy to say that there are three Gods, and equally heretical to say that the three persons are all the same. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and there was never a time in which Son and Spirit did not exist. The Bible holds that the persons of the Trinity worked together to create the world, and that when God created the world, He called it “good.” Biblical Christianity believes in the Incarnation, when the “Word became flesh,” that the divine nature was united with the human nature in the person of Jesus Christ. We believe that Jesus was crucified, dead, buried, descended to the dead and rose again, ascended to heaven, and sits at the right hand of God in the body in which he was resurrected. We believe in the resurrection of the dead, in which we shall see God in our own flesh, and that the current created order will be destroyed and replaced by a New Heaven and New Earth. All of which is impossible, even unthinkable in a Gnostic, dualistic system of thought.
3. Although Gnosticism is recognized as an heresy, it still influences Christianity. No orthodox Christian can claim to be a Gnostic. Paul and Jude preached against them. Jesus warned the seven churches of Asia against the Nicolaitans. Irenaeus battled them. The Gnostic gospels were excluded from the canon. Yet Gnostic groups have risen up both within and without the church in the past 2000 years. Manichaeism, Mandaeanism, which still survives, Catharism, and even Islam are all Gnostic in their thinking, according to the categories discussed in the second point above. These are easy to see, and Gnosticism flares up in several cults founded in the last 200 years; the polytheism of the Mormons, the dualism of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the spirituality and anti-materialism of Christian Science.
Now I do not want to hurl the name of Gnosticism against everyone or to turn it into a straw man, but there are ways in which Gnosticism still affects our thinking in the church in very subtle, devious ways. Notions that physical things are somehow corrupt, that one should starve or expose oneself in order to get closer to God, that one should refuse medicine for illness, that pain is illusory. Anyone dabbling in numerology in the Bible should be careful not to look for gnosis between the lines. In many ways, Dispensationalism echoes Marcion, a 2nd Century gnostic, with the distinction of a “good” New Testament God and a “bad” Old Testament God. Dispensational Premillennialists often have the notion that Jesus failed to bring about his kingdom, that the Second Coming is God’s backup plan, that the end of all things will be when God takes us all to heaven, and that we should not involve ourselves in earthly affairs.
I have seen bits of Gnosticism in myself, after having read the dialogues of Plato and thinking that they were perfectly compatible with the Bible. I began to doubt the resurrection of the body, and I didn’t clearly understand the Incarnation or the humanity of Jesus Christ as I should have. I had the idea that at the end of all things, our spirits would be freed from our bodies and we would be united with God, almost like Buddhism. Thankfully I have corrected these notions, but I continue to weigh my beliefs against God’s word.
4. The world is real. We have to fight heresies on either side, the hyper-spiritualism of Gnosticism, and the hyper-materialism of Atheism. Let’s remind ourselves that while the spiritual world is very real, the material world is also real; water, air, earth, wood, glass, paper, metal. The emotions and the sensations you perceive are real. Joy is real and happiness is real. Sickness is real and death is real. God understands when we are happy, healthy, well-fed, and comfortable, and He understands when we are tired, sleepy, hungry, or sick. These things aren’t illusions. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart. Psalm 104:14-15. We don’t enjoy these things in spite of God, we enjoy them because God has provided them for us. Grounding ourselves in the reality of the created order I think is the best antidote against Gnosticism.