gnosticism: the first heresy

Sacraments, Part 1.5

Feb 07, 2023

We've begun a series on the Sacraments, but we're taking a slight detour this week to look at an ancient heresy that is still a danger today. Why, you may ask? Because, as we will see by the end, our participation in the Sacraments helps us to combat this false doctrine.

I remember going through a period as a teenager exploring my faith where I decided not to raise my hands during worship. In retrospect, I just wasn't comfortable doing it, but my justification to myself was that my physical posture doesn't really matter; what matters is the posture of my heart. There was some truth in this: raising my hands without posturing my heart would be meaningless; thus, my heart is what really matters. And we can certainly worship without raising our hands. But there is also something about our physical posture that can help us direct our hearts toward God.

But I denied this connection between the physical and the spiritual back then. By not raising my hands, I argued silently, I was rejecting the physical and therefore becoming more spiritual.

In fact, I was embracing perhaps the oldest heresy in Christian history: Gnosticism.1

basic beliefs of Gnosticism

There are a number of central and related beliefs that were held by ancient Gnostics, but it should be noted that not all Gnostics believed all of these ideas. There were many variations of Gnosticism, some more extreme than others, but they seem to all have held some combination of these beliefs. As we go through each one, I'll point out the similarities to Christianity, so that you can see how this pre-Christian belief easily fit with some people's understanding of the new faith. Then, we'll talk about why, in reality, it doesn't fit at all.

secret knowledge

The foundational belief of Gnosticism, both pre-Christian and Christian varieties, was a belief that the Gnostics held a secret knowledge that most people couldn't understand. In fact, the word "Gnostic" comes from the Greek word gnosis, meaning "knowledge." Only the elite of the faith have access to this knowledge, and even if you try to offer it to someone who is outside of that rarefied category, they have no hope of understanding.

Christianity may seem similar, in that Jesus came to bring us a New Covenant, which included new knowledge and understanding of what God was doing in our world and would culminate in the Kingdom of Heaven. And as Jesus implied, not everyone had "ears to hear."

material vs. spiritual

This secret knowledge revolves around an understanding that the material world is purely evil, corrupt, and doomed to destruction. This evil material world is contrasted with the good and holy spiritual realm. The ultimate goal of humanity is to escape the physical and enter the spiritual realm, where we will be united with God. The enjoyment of physical pleasures, from food to the marital relationship, are evil and only serve to separate us from God. One variant of Gnosticism was Docetism, which was the belief that Jesus did not actually have a physical body, but only appeared to.

In Christianity, the Bible has a lot to say about the evils of the flesh, and of this world. For example, Paul tells his followers in Galatians 5 to "walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh," and he says the desires of the Spirit and of the flesh are opposed to each other. He finishes by saying that "those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."2

good god vs. evil god

The good, spiritual realm was, of course, created by a good God, but if the material world is inherently evil, it couldn't have been created by the same God. Many Gnostics therefore believed that the material world was created by an evil god, completely separate from the good God. Some believed that this evil god was on an equal level with the good God, while others saw him as a lesser god or angel, created by the good God, who became evil.

Christianity, of course, teaches that the Devil was once a good angel, created by God, who then became corrupted. It was he that led humanity to the Fall, which resulted in the corrupted world.

Old Testament vs. New Testament

If someone believes, then, that an evil god created the world, then it's not a stretch to see that evil god as the god of the Old Testament. Gnostics came to believe that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament were, in fact, the two different gods, evil vs. good. Jesus came not to fulfill the Law of the Old Testament, but to abolish it as inherently evil. Some Gnostic groups even rejected the idea that Jesus' life fulfilled Old Testament prophecy.

How is this similar to Christianity? Well, let's face it: we've all found ourselves a little uncomfortable with how certain passages in the Old Testament portray God. I'll just leave it there for now.

so, are Christianity and Gnosticism compatible?

We can see, then, how people could easily have been deceived into believing that Christianity and Gnosticism were compatible, especially in the early years of the church, when believers were still figuring out all the implications and doctrines of what Jesus and his apostles had taught and were still teaching. But the earliest church leaders, even going back to the apostles themselves, spoke against this heresy. Some scholars have argued that as early as Paul's letters, the church was already combating Gnosticism.

For instance, some claim that Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians calls out Gnostics, or at least proto-Gnostics,3 In chapter 8, Paul begins by admitting that Christians "possess knowledge [gnosis]," but quickly pointed out that "this 'knowledge' puffs up, but love builds up." He goes on to quote some of the church members who claimed that there was nothing wrong with eating meat sacrificed to false gods, because those gods didn't exist. Paul counters that, while this belief may be true, love is more important than knowledge, and therefore, we should be willing to set our knowledge aside to prevent our brothers and sisters who feel that eating sacrificed meat is sinful, from stumbling.

the foundation of Christianity

The greatest incompatibility between these two beliefs is that Gnosticism must reject the foundational idea of Christianity: the incarnation. If the physical world is evil, then there is no way that the good God entered into it, taking on evil human flesh. As we already mentioned, some Gnostics denied the literal incarnation, but this belief must deny so much of Christ's life and ministry: his birth, miracles such as the feeding of the 5,000 and every healing he performed (if the body is evil, healing it isn't good!). And, of course, the physical resurrection, after which he told Thomas to touch his wounds,4 is mere myth, according to Gnosticism.

Most of us are familiar with how John begins his Gospel: "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."5 But I have found equally beautiful the way he begins his first letter:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
I John 1:1-3

John saw that his whole purpose, as someone who had "touched with [his] hands" the Word made flesh, was to make the Gospel known to as many as he could, so that they may have fellowship with the church. The Gospel was never a secret knowledge, and the physical world is not inherently evil!

what does this have to do with the sacraments?

One of the defining characteristics of the sacraments is that they are outward, physical actions. Let's take Holy Communion as an example. We'll be looking at Communion in depth soon, but most of us will know that this is a physical act, involving one of the most pleasurable6 things we do: eat! And traditional churches still use actual wine! With alcohol! This is an act of defiance of any false doctrine that would label physical pleasure as inherently evil. We also remember that Jesus calls the bread his flesh and the wine his blood, making Communion an affirmation of the literal incarnation of Christ.

Both Communion and Baptism engage our physical senses: tastes, smells, the feeling of the water covering you, washing you. And even those among us that do not view marriage as a sacrament will certainly agree that when two "become one flesh"7 it is not evil, but good! God created a good world, and his ultimate purpose is to redeem it and renew it, not in some ethereal, spiritual version, but in the renewed physical state it was meant to be.

As we look at the sacraments in the next few posts, keep in mind that our participation in these rites are not merely what we do as Christians, but profound proclamations of who we are and what we believe.

Continue reading our series on the sacraments: Holy Communion, Part 1.