Beware of Gnostics Bearing Gifts

The Sirens of Gnosticism
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Because a barrage of popular publications have highlighted a few Gnostic ideas which sound compatible with New Thought Christianity, the idea has somehow circulated that Unity is a modern version of Gnosticism. After you have encountered the actual content of Gnostic belief systems, you will probably want to re-think those claims.

There were many types of Gnostics, apparently non-Christian Gnostics included pagans and even Jews. Their basic point was that salvation (variously defined) is only available through secret knowledge (gnosis), which not everybody will receive. Gnosticism was a flagrantly elitist, highly dualistic worldview which saw the physical universe as evil. Only things of the mind and spirit were good and potentially holy. In fact, Gnostics believed this world was so evil that the Supreme God could not have created it; some even said the earth was created by Satan, or some other lesser god, while God wasn't looking.
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Women Must Become Men
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Oh…and women are evil, too. Especially evil, because their seductive wiles draw men's contemplation from the higher things of spirit. The much-touted, Gnostic Gospel of Thomas concludes with these words, from saying # 114:
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Simon Peter said to them, “Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life.”
Jesus said, “Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.”
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(Don't get mad at me--I didn't write that!)
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St. Valentine, He's Not...
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Valentinus of Rome (second century C.E.), arguably the best-known Gnostic teacher of antiquity, developed a form of Gnostic Christianity to a high level of complexity. Valentinius was born in Egypt and educated at Alexandria. He later established a Christian school at Rome, where according to Tertullian he had been on the short list for Bishop of Rome, today called Pope. He was probably influenced by Middle Platonism, which taught that God was transcendent being itself. While that premise does sound like New Thought, the problems come quickly when Valentinus begins unpacking his whole Cosmology.
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Thirty Gods...You're Kidding, Right?
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According to Valentinius, the Supreme God for its own reasons began creating spiritual beings, called Aeons (gods?) These represented various divine powers: Mind, Truth, Logos, etc. Taken together, these thirty Aeons constitute the pleroma or fullness. Last one, Sophia—wisdom—decided to create her own creature, Hokmah, but it was not perfect as she. Sophia and Hokmah together created the Demiurge, who was incompetent and ignorant. The Demiurge created material world, and the humans who live here.
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Are you following this? 1) The physical Universe is so crass and evil that the Supreme God could not have created it. 2) He created thirty gods (Aeons), who were also too holy to have created the Cosmos. 3) The last goddess, Sophia, created her own clone god called Hokmah, who was also somewhat sacred and therefore could not have created the material world. 4) But when Sophia and Hokmah create a being below this last level--the Demiurge, who is also equated with the God of the Old Testament--it is this bumbling fool who finally drags spiritual power down low enough to make the world and all that dwells herein.
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It gets worse...
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The two semi-competent spiritual beings, Sophia and Hokmah, were able to undo only some of the damage by implanting the divine spark in a few humans. These were the Elect, who could be awakened to their true nature by knowledge (gnosis). But before you start hopping up and down, pointing to this as a New Thought concept, listen to the fine print: Only a very few people have this divine nature. Most humans are walking meat, nothing more.
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Here's the Gnostic breakdown of humanity:
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1. No soul – majority of human race is animal; perishes at death.
2. Soul – ensouled humans with opportunity for acceptable afterlife.
3. Divine spark – the few Elect who can re-unite with God in glorious eternity.
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It is this third concept which some New Thought teachers admire. However the original Gnostic teaching was limited re-union with the Divine by the select few who qualify. Frankly, the idea of Gnostic “election” was dualistic, elitist, and mean-spirited.

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Need to take a deep breath?
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The good news in this mess is that no matter how alien these ideas sound today, in the second and third centuries all the above were considered Christian! This demonstrates the fantastic diversity of early Christianity; the fact that one party won the argument and became the universal (i.e., catholic) church viewpoint does not negate the fact that many, many options were on the table, even patently absurd ones like Valentinian Gnosticism, which was wildly popular for a long time. Early Christianity was an evolutionary jungle where new ideas tried to find ecological niches until a stable pattern developed. Given a few shifts in circumstances, a very different ‘orthodoxy’ could have emerged.
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Startling Diversity
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This startling diversity among early Christians is quite new to the modern reader, because the faction which Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina calls the proto-orthodox group—i.e., the minority viewpoint which finally became traditional Christianity—re-wrote Church history in its favor once they gained the majority. The proto-orthodox so successfully shaped the historical record that today people assume proto-orthodoxy has always been the majority view. Their version of heilsgeschicte (sacred history) sees an invariable, divinely ordained, straight-line progression from Jesus, to the early church, to the established religion of the high middle ages, and down through the coridors of time until today.
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Of course, historians know this direct-line, single-faith theory is completely bogus. Christianity has been highly diverse from its beginnings, even on things as basic as how many gods there are. Some Christians believed in one god, other Christians insisted there are two, three, thirty, or even 365 gods. And they all taught this as Christian doctrine.
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We stand in unbroken line with our ancestors, but so do almost all other Christian groups. Diversity rules in the corridors of time.
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Still, the next time someone says with alleged historical authority that Unity or other New Thought groups are the spiritual descendants of Gnosticism, you might want to offer a second opinion...

Wintry Relapses Never Prevent Summer

Double Crossed by Missouri Weather
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Yesterday I decided that summer was nearly here--it was in the 80's the day before--so it was time for one of my beloved Hawaiian shirts. Every Thursday the dress code is casual at Unity Village, and although I usually wear a jacket and tie even on dress down day, I abandoned the professional garb for a luau look.

Except Thursday wasn't summer weather here but a breezy day in the 50's. I shivered all day. A wiser soul might have gone back home and put on a flannel lumberjack shirt, but I thought I could decree warm weather and it would be so. Some of the biblical Jesuses could have done it; John's Jesus is so supernatural He could have warmed the hemisphere with a stray thought. So, why not me?

Except shivering in short sleeves is a poor time to affect climate change by positive thinking, my friends of the Cause-and-Effect school of metaphysics notwithstanding. If I changed the weather, it would have affected everyone, and that just would not be fair. In the original Oh, God movie with George Burns and John Denver, the anthropomorphic God-character demonstrates His power over nature by causing a rainstorm, but only inside John Denver's car. Why should He ruin everybody's day, God asks. Maybe that's why all these countervailing human thoughts have so little effect on moving mountains. I mean, if you had the power to pluck that mountain up and cast it into the sea at will, what happens when your neighbor comes home and wants his mountain back? I mean, can we be tossing mountains to and fro like ping-pong balls and still expect the mail to arrive on time? I'm happy enough to find a well-tossed salad at a church potluck. Mountains need to stay where they are.

And winter. Friend, I have done winter. I grew up in the Northeast, lived five years in Germany, three in Colorado, and three in Alaska. I've been out of doors as a chaplain with the Infantry in the arctic, sleeping on the ground at 65 degrees below zero F. I've zoomed along the Rockies in an open jeep in a snowstorm. I've walked guard duty in Central Europe at sub-zero temperatures. I have done winter.

But Missouri wasn't through chilling for this season. A petty 55 degrees with with a wind? Hardly a polar blast. What was wrong with me--a little tingle at the elbows and I'm whining for Acapulco. And then I realized: It was not getting what I wanted that caused me this discomfort, not the colder weather itself. I wanted winter to be over. Every fall I love to watch the leaves turn colors, enjoy the cooler air and anticipate snowstorms with glee. But I thought that was over now...it's beach umbrellas on the back deck and flip-flops and Bermudas. No, it's not. Not yet. Everything happens in its time. Life has cycles. Sometimes you're the salmon; sometimes you're the bear. Sometimes the path gets blocked and willpower alone will not clear it because that is not the way you need to go and the Universe know it and you don't. Yet.

I don't want any more winter, yet. I'll be ready in November. Now, I want warm, warmer, warmest! And it will come. Wintry relapses in life never prevent summer, only delay it. In the fullness of time, all things work together for the good.

I'll try to remember that next time I'm shivering in a luau shirt.

Fundamental Transition

Jerry Fallwell died Tuesday. He was a stalwart advocate of conservative Christianity, the foe of liberalism, opponent of gay rights, and proponent of what has become known in American politics as the Christian Right. He was a worthy adversary, a faithful family man, and one whose passing perhaps marks the end of an era in American culture. Americans have always liked their religion and politics held at arms length from each other. Oh, sure, every patriotic speech must invoke God, and the American civil religion is a theistic cult of patriotism and heroes, but brand name religion--Baptist, Catholic, Unitarian--has always sounded, well, too commercial for public consumption. Let our public figures mouth platitudes about God & country, but they'd better stay far away from sacraments, papal infallibility, and speaking in tongues. Jerry Fallwell tried to maintain this illusion of separation between church and state while exerting the maximum influenced upon conservative public officials to enact legislation in support of the agenda of the Religious Right.

When Fallwell came to Alaska in the early 1980's he caused such a stir that I felt the effects as an Army chaplain assigned to duty in that state. His virulent anti-feminist, anti-gay program was so hostile and unChristian that I had to speak a word in public to present an alternative viewpoint. That prophetic utterance cost me dearly, as I was beaten up severely on my next Officer Efficiency Rating and as a consequence was never promoted again for the balance of my military career. Instead of retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel or Colonel, which would have been a reasonable career progression, I remained a captain until my early retirement in 1988.

Even though he indirectly ruined my career as a military chaplain, I harbor no ill will toward Jerry Fallwell on his death. He was doing what he believed was right. I see him surrounded by God's peaceful light, moving from fear and hostility toward redemptive love.

What this man's passing confirms for me is that Unity and the New Thought churches need to step into the public view and let their light shine forth. There are better models of Christian love than the divisive hostility of Jerry Fallwell, and I am fairly certain that he knows this now and will expand his consciousness in ways unimaginable to limited humans.

Meanwhile, this is a good time to remind ourselves that God works through all sort of people, and there are many ways of understanding the Truth....

RevTW Shepherd