Gnosticism is widespread in the West. I would assert that any honest Westerner, who tries to evaluate the worldview with which he received from his upbringing, would have a serious encounter or life-long struggle probing into what degree Gnosticism shaped it, with the realization the Gnosticism has certainly shaped it. Gnosticism made its way into Western culture through two avenues. One avenue through the Cathars which had a role in forming Protestantism. The other through alchemists which influenced the Papal theology.
Gnosticism is a heresy for the Orthodox Christian. Gnosticism (a form of Satanism) is the same religion with which Simon Magus (Acts 8:9–24) was involved. A prominent feature is that Gnosticism always takes different forms as it passes through time and therefore is repeatedly condemned by the Church. Adherents who embrace Gnosticism say it persists because it must be an eternal truth. It is not an eternal truth and to properly understand it we must remember the Didache. There is a way of Light, from God and a way of Darkness, from the demons. Gnosticism is this way of darkness. Orthodox revelation and our neptic-hesychastic tradition is the way of light.
Gnosticism's influence on the modern mind should not be underestimated. It may surprise some the William Tyndale quoted approvingly some Bogomil texts. Tyndale is the precursor to the foundation for Scriptural translation into English, i.e. the King James Bible. Our physics rests on the foundation of Isaac Newton who is a well-practiced alchemist. Many of our Founding Fathers and the philosophers that influenced them (Montesquieu and Locke) were Freemasons (more on this below). Sigmund Freud, father of modern pyschology was also a Freemason. Spycraft (John Dee and J. Edgar Hoover) are intimately related to this esoteric culture as well.
Below is a lineage of Gnostic sects that infiltrated Christianity and how they appeared from the ancient world to today. It should also be noted that many smaller groups sometimes co-exist with these. The first lineage is the avenue Gnosticism took into the Papacy (via the Alchemists which is a specific practice inside a Gnostic framework). The second lineage is the avenue which influenced powers revolting against the Papacy via the Cathars. Christos Yannaras and James L. Kelly are indispensable scholars that provided the bulk of this historic understanding (I quote them extensively below).
The key here is that this is the continuation of a way of thinking. Gnostics are do not always try to preserve a body of believers or even preserve ancient teachings necessarily. Again, a Gnostic worldview, or a Gnostic way of understanding the physical and metaphysical universe, continues on through their persistent existence and simply influencing their surroundings without stealing believers from another religious/political body.
Gnosticism’s historical lineage via Alchemists (influencing Papists):
Augustine imported some of his Manichean and Neoplatonic thoughts such as using the Monad or divine essence as a starting point of theology instead of the incarnate Christ, not distinguishing the nous from the rational mind, and the energy of God as created intermediaries instead of uncreated power. See previous post “
On Augustine”.
Franks based their dogmatic theology on Augustine and at the Council of Frankfurt (794 A.D.). This was began the entry of Gnostic mentality (already in the thought of the Franks) as part of the dogmatic framework for the West within which the Franks philosophized their theology. Examples in this Council are the began ocular piety (rejecting 7th Ecumenical Council and taking a Gnostic approach to emblems or images, i.e. through the eyes it enters the mind) and the filioque (Understanding the Trinity from a Pythagorean or Neo-platonic Monad and as it extends itself arriving at the persons of the Trinity).
This allowed for the preconditions for Gnostic thought to flourish with the illiterate Franks as they attempted to adopt a Frankish metaphysics for their feudal politics and the Churches under their influence (see
here). Alchemy began to co-exist very closely and peaceably with the Papist Church. Frankish esoteric practices are well documented along with the fact that at the height of Papal power the alchemy was a widespread practice.
Gnosticism’s historical lineage via the Cathars (influenceing Protestants):
The Cathars were in the region of Languedoc. Here a number of Templars came to dwell. It was a religiously tolerant region and the exchange of ideas was quite common. There were even schools devoted to the Kaballah which were popular. We thus see a location with a syncretic people adhering to the ancient line of Gnostics (via the Cathars), the Knights Templar, and Jewish Kabbalah.
With the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) initiated by Pope Innocent III, Gnosticism became less geographically based and was a belief whose adherents were in a diaspora where it blended with proto-Protestant trends throughout Europe.
British Freemasonry (supported Kings), French Freemasonry (opposed Kings, included USA’s Founding Fathers), Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Puritans, Quakers, Anabaptists/Baptists, etc.
Again, this is a way of thinking (phronima) that changes its language over time. First with Plato’s Forms, then as Aeons, and as universals (due to Aristotle’s popularity in the West. Christians believe in the uncreated energy as part of God. The contrary thinking found in heresies, especially Gnosticism was that the Forms/Aeons/Ideals (Universals) are something created from God’s essence in which we can directly relate or possess. Two popular manifestations of Gnosticism are in the areas of Human Rights and the view of the flesh or the world in many areas of Western Christianity.
Concerning rights, Locke tried to link the origin of human rights to natural law. Jefferson tried to link human rights to moral law from nature. John Locke was a Freemason. The evidence the Jefferson was a Freemason is inconclusive but it is known his closest associates were Freemasons and the fraternity like Jefferson’s beliefs. These foundational thinkers that established the belief and framework that our government is based on natural law posit that our rights come from natural law or moral law. This is Gnosticism. There is no observation of the essence of a natural law, or a moral law. One may argue we see the effects, but this misses my point. This is a totally different worldview I am exposing in contrast to the Orthodox Christian (therefore Apostolic) worldview. We cannot go somewhere and interact with the natural law of liberty, for example. Natural or moral law is an ideal, a universal, that claims is part of God’s Creation, or creative workings. This is the key here, it is an ideal, a universal. This is Gnostic thinking. We should reject this as reality and find out the true Christian teaching in our relationship with others, with governments, and/or with God.
Concerning dualism, in my experience in many circles of Protestantism, one thing the congregational leaders often knew but seemed to always fail to communicate to the less-educated or ill-informed Christian is about the resurrection of the flesh. It is almost always absent from a Protestant funeral. In the minds of the less knowledgeable Christians, they understand the flesh can bring about sin and they simply see death as a release from this to go be with Christ. It is simple but flawed reasoning. My body and the world cause me to sin, When I get to heaven there will be no sin because I have no body. Therefore I am glad to lose my body and I would not want it back. This is common erroneous thinking and many know better but it is a strong strain of thought in so many Protestant groups that pastors do not address. Unfortunately, it is sometimes alluded or enforced by their music which never goes through a theological filter ("This Old House" being one that immediately comes to mind). Where did this thinking come from? It came from the abundance of material in the arts and many local community groups that were Gnostic in their worldview.
My friend Trif makes this insightful comment: “Gnosticism is a constant temptation. It seems like it’s the temptation to slide back into paganism. You could say it is ‘natural’ to believe. But I mean ‘natural’ in the sense that it is normal in the world corrupt as it is. Pagan religions all seem to view material as something that needs to be escaped. The soul is ‘imprisoned’ in the body and needs to be freed. For us though, the soul and body form a whole, and are supposed to be unified, not divided. You see this dualism of soul vs body in Hinduism, I am pretty sure. It seems to be a feature of many religions, and it is always condemned by the Orthodox. For some reason through all these centuries human beings have not outgrown this. Just goes to show progress is a myth and people of all times suffer from the same passions.”
Lastly, I will add two long quotes from two excellent books that touch on this topic. First is from Against Religion by Christos Yannaras. The second is from Anatomyzing Divinity by James L. Kelley. My friend Simeon mentions, “In ancient times these were the two forms of Gnosticism, those that thought that since the body of was an evil prison for the soul (a spark of Sophia, the fallen female goddess) and felt that they could do whatever they wanted (sin was perfectly acceptable). The other branch felt that since the body was an evil prison, they had to punish it through extreme asceticism.” This seems to be common (as he says) in the ancient world and Kelley makes this point too. However, Yannaras does not say this an implies the opposite; yet, one must realize Yannaras is taking a much larger historical perspective. From what I can tell, as time went on, the former type of Gnosticism began to vanish.
Chapter 4, Section 5 of: Against Religion
by: Christos Yannaras
Pietism
Historically we use the word pietism within the context of religious traditions to refer to organized movements, or sim ply trends, that constitute perhaps the clearest expression of humanity’s instinctive need for religion.
Pietism bypasses or relativizes “dogma” (the intellect’s claim to investigate metaphysical enigmas) with a view to attaining the chief goal of religiosity: the securing of psychological certainty with regard to individual salvation. It aims at winning salvation through emotional exaltation, mystical experiences, or objectively measurable achievements of virtue, of practical fidelity to religious precepts—through practical reverence for the sacred, which is piety.
As a phenomenon of the religious life, pietism certainly preceded the ecclesial event. In the early years of the Church’s appearance, the chief pietistic trend was that of gnosticism. Gnosticism derived its name from the fact that what it chiefly promised was unmediated knowledge (epopteia) of transcendent reality, a knowledge, however, only attainable by applying oneself as an individual to practical forms of piety.
These pietistic practices, like the theoretical teachings of the various groups or traditions that together made up gnosticism, were a typical product of religious syncretism —an amalgam of elements from the ancient Greek world, Judaism, and the religions of the Near East. With the appearance of the Christian Church, there immediately also arose (from as early as the days of the apostles themselves) “Christian” expressions of gnosticism. The most notable were the gnostic groups of Saturnilus (around AD 130) in Syria, Basilides (in the same period) in Alexandria, Valentinus (after 160) in Rome and Cyprus, Marcion (around 150) in Sinope of Pontus and in Rome (with organized groups of Marcionites spreading throughout the Middle East), and Mani (around 240), a Persian whose teaching (Manichaeism) spread with astonishing success, reaching as far as China in the East and Spain in the West.
All these trends or manifestations of gnosticism had a number of points in com m on. The most characteristic of them may be summarized as follows.
The first point was ontological dualism. This is the belief that there are two causal principles for existent things: an evil God, who is pure matter and the manipulator of matter, who is the creator of the visible world and the author of evil in the world; and a good God, who is pure spirit, without any relation at all to the creation of the material world, and who has as his work the liberation of humanity from the bonds of matter, that is, of evil.
The second point was docetism. This is the belief that the good God sent his son, Jesus Christ, into the world with an apparent body (a body kata dokesin) to suffer an apparent death on the cross in order to save humanity by his teaching and the salvific energy of his cross.
The third point, closely connected with the first two, was an abhorrence of matter, of the body, of any pleasure, and especially of the pleasure of sexuality, along with the rejection of images, holy relics, and the honor paid to the human persons of the saints. The gnostics believed that by a systematic practice of asceticism and by an intellectualist rationality they became capable of liberation from the demands of matter and attained likeness to God.
The Church fought against gnosticism from the first steps of its historical journey—most of the information we have about it derives from Christian writings produced to com bat its opinions. Yet it survived historically in the Christian world with astonishing tenacity through the centuries. What survived were its basic points and the tendencies, views, and outlooks related to it, in collective forms, with different names at different times but with the same experiential identity.
It is worth noting in brief outline the main stages of this historical development.
The communities of Marcionites (the followers of Marcion) flourished until the time of Constantine the Great (fourth century) and remained active historically until the seventh century. They were then assimilated by the Paulicians in the East and by the Manichees in the West.
The Paulicians emerged from the Marcionites and also from the Messalian s (or Massalians or Euchites), another branch of gnosticism that had appeared in the fourth century, mainly within the world of monasticism, and represented extreme tendencies of asceticism and enthusiasm. The Messalians survived at least until the seventh century in Syria and Asia Minor. They rejected or were contemptuous of the Church’s sacraments and rites. They aimed at atomic union with God through atomic asceticism and atomic prayer or through dancing that led to the ecstasy of the atomic individual.
From the seventh century onward, the movement that continued the tradition of gnosticism in Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Thrace was now the Paulicians. They derived their name from the special honor they gave to the Apostle Paul and his teaching. They accepted Marcion’s ontological dualism and Christ’s docetic human presence, and rejected the Hebrew tradition and the Old Testament, together with the ecclesiastical rites, the clergy, the churches, the icons, and the veneration of the saints. The only people they called “Christians” were themselves; those who belonged to the Church were sim ply called “Romans,” bereft of grace and salvation. These are features that clearly point to the religious denial of the ecclesial event and its institutional expressions, and to its replacement by a pietistic individualism —the route of atomic access to salvation.
In the tenth century this gnostic-Manichaean pietism was transplanted by the Paulicians into Bulgaria, under the form of groups or com m unities that called themselves Bogomils (which in Bulgarian means “lovers of God”). They preserved all the doctrines of the Paulicians, developing in addition an extreme asceticism. They abhorred marriage, loathed sexuality, abstained from meat, and celebrated baptism without submersion in water, only by the laying on of hands. Within three centuries, from the tenth to the thirteenth, the Bogomils had developed into a powerful movement with an impressive expansion both toward the East (where they were usually called Neomanichees) and toward the West (where in the first half of the twelfth century they were given the name Cathars, or “pure ones”).
The Cathar heresy, with all the above marks of a Manichaeistic pietism, presented not only a religious but also a serious social challenge to the peoples of the West in the Middle Ages—a real scourge. The heresy’s aggressive opposition to the Church’s institutions echoed the unhappiness of a large number of people about the worldly, authoritarian character of these institutions, the taxes that were imposed on the laity, the different life of the clergy and their provocative opulence. These anticlerical and antipapal tendencies favored the demand for an objectively assured and measurable “purity,” which was easily identified with an aversion to sexuality and ended up as a fanatical dissemination of the rejection of marriage. Such facts created the feeling that the powerful Cathar trend threatened the cohesion and even the biological survival of the communities where they predominated.
Roman Catholicism, the prevailing authority in the West, reacted forcefully against the heresy of the Cathars, at first with banishment, confiscation of property, and excommunication; later with imprisonment and torture; and finally with death at the stake, inflicted on the heretics by the Holy Inquisition, an institution founded by Pope Gregory IX in April 1233.
The gnosticism of the early Christian centuries (and chiefly Manichaeism) was continued and spread historically by the Marcionites and Messalians. From the latter came the Paulicians, from the Paulicians the Bogomils, and from the Bogomils the Cathars. The historical succession is continuous, without gaps. There are historians who regard the Cathars as forerunners of Protestantism and see in the great religious trends generated by the Reformation, in puritanism and pietism, the continuation and survival of a Manichaeistic pietism up to our own days.70
Puritanism is not confined to groups of English Reformed Protestants in the sixteenth century who wanted their Calvinism to be kept “pure,” uncontaminated by any residue from Roman Catholicism —nor is Puritanism sim ply a verbal echo of the Cathar heresy.71 It is the real continuation of their outlook and practice, manifest in a host of “confessional” groups and movements in the Protestant world to this day. Puritanism is the matrix that has formed the distinguishing identity of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Anabaptists, Quakers, Baptists, and so on.
By an unyielding historical dynamic, pietism too, transplanted originally from Anglo-Saxon Puritanism to Holland and Germany, rapidly succeeded in crossing the boundaries of traditions and “confessions.”72 Today pietism appears to have imposed a Manichaeistic dualism and a moralistic individualism as a definitive element of Christian life in every corner of the world.
It is not by chance that Manichaeism was a syncretistic amalgam of elements of deriving from several religious traditions (Babylonian-Chaldaic, Zoroastrian, and Jewish). These are elements that primarily satisfied the demands of natural, instinctive religiosity: a war between light and darkness, between good and evil, between spirit and matter, and the participation of the individual in this war with the aim of acquiring purity, righteousness, and salvation as an atomic individual—the eternal perpetuation of atomic life.
This observation largely responds to the question: Why did Manichaeism, in its various forms and under various names but always with the character of individualistic pietism, constantly shadow the historical development of the Church? The answer is clearly that this parallel development embodies in historical terms the constant temptation of religionization that manifestly battles against the ecclesial event. The temptation is that of an objectified individualistic pietism ever present as an alternative proposal that substitutes religion for the Church.
Notes:
70. See Vasileios Stephanidis, Ekkiesiastike Historia, 3rd ed. (Athens: Astir, 1970), 571, 575; Vlasios Pheidas, Ekkiesiastike Historia, vol. 2 (Athens, 1994), 452, 458ff.; Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947); E. Voegelin, “Religionsersatz. Die gnostischen Massenbewegungen unserer Zeit,” Wort und Wahrheit 15 (1960): 7; S. Lorenz and W. Schroder, “Manichaismus II,” in the Historisches Wbrterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Ritter, Griinder, and Gabriel, 5:715-16. But before the historians, Pascal had stated unequivocally, “Les Manicheens etaient les Lutheriens de leur temps, comme les Lutheriens sont les ManicWens du notre” (Ecrits sur la Grace, in vol. 11 of Oeuvres completes de Blaise Pascal, ed. L. Brunschvicg [Paris: Hachette, 1914], 282).
71. Puritanismus, from the Latin purus, which means “clean.”
72. On the dominant influence of Protestant pietism today on the life of the Orthodox churches in particular, see my Freedom of Morality (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), 119-36; and Orthodoxy and the West (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006), 217-50.
Books by Christos Yannaras
here.
Chapter Two of: Anatomyzing Divinity
Anthropos, Cosmos, and Theos According to the Orthodox Catholic Tradition and the Alchemico-Hermetic Tradition: Two Divergent Triadologies.
According to the Orthodox Fathers of the Church, theology’s proper beginning point is not any concept of God, however intellectually satisfying or emotionally compelling such an idea may be. Rather, the Orthodox begin with the reality of the Incarnation of Christ, the Son of God. “God became man that man may become as God.”11 The Son is the perfect image of God the Father. We know that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three divine Hypostases or Persons because those masters of the spiritual life who have become united to the Holy Trinity in this life all report the same thing: They have become united to the Holy Trinity through a sharing in the divine resplendence or glory (Gr. doxa), which, though being from Three, is also One.
However, Orthodox spiritual life has nothing in common with individualism or pietism, for no one can baptize himself, and no one can be perfected apart from the communal life of the Divine Liturgy. One begins as a hearer, as a babe who must begin with milk before he can have solid food. The milk is the opening stages of ascesis in the form of 1) obedience to a spiritual father who is a doer, one who teaches from experience of God, and 2) participation in the Holy Sacraments of the Church, the Sacrament par excellence being the Holy Eucharist, where the communicant receives the Body and Blood of God into his body. The higher stage that constitutes “solid food” is direct experience of the uncreated glory of God, though the friend of God never rises above the need for repentance and the Sacraments, but rather lives out these aspects of Orthodox life more fully. Such a communion, far from being magical, is in actuality the only Way (Heb. Torah) that delivers man from idolatry: “There are two ways, one of life and one of death.” “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”12
So, if man does not come to know God through concepts, then how does man ever know God at all? Man is created in the image of God, which means that his life is meant to be an eternal journey toward the divine. This journey is possible because man’s center is his God-created nous, or inner man (eso anthropon).13 The nous is never equated with the brain or the rational mind(dianoia) by the Orthodox Fathers; it is precisely this confusion of the noetic with the merely rational that characterizes the Augustino-Platonic tradition of the Christian West. The nous is also designated as the heart (kardia) by the Orthodox Fathers.14 This spiritual heart is man’s unique organ of communion with the uncreated energies of God. These energein of God are not a part of God, nor are they an intermediary between man and God. Neither are God’s energies anything other than the very Life, Light, and Love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These energies are God’s going out of Himself toward creation in an act of love (kenosis, self-emptying) to save creation from corruption through communion with His incorrupt life. The recipient of God’s energies does not receive a part of God, because God is not composite, but rather man receives the body of Christ, which is a mystico-noetic—and for that very reason eminently realistic—communication of the life of the Holy Trinity.15 Nor are the divine energies anhypostatic, but rather are the true resplendence of God, distinguished from the divine essence but not separate from it.
The suffusion of the divine energies throughout all of creation is the overflowing of divine love. This descent of the Hand of God into the heart of man is the new thing under the sun for which St. Solomon, the prophets, and all of the sages of every era have pined. God divides Himself undividedly to enter the heart of each and every man who will co-operate with Him to perfect selfless love therein. Accordingly, the true significance of man being “in the image of God” is that man has been created already conformed to God in such a way that he can—with the aid and sustenance of divine grace, that is, synergistically and ascetically—love in the exact way that God loves His creation, that is, freely and selflessly (the only difference being that man is not uncreated by nature, as is the Holy Trinity, but rather man becomes uncreated by grace or energy).16
Strictly speaking, only Christ is the Image of God; man is the image of the Image. There is a dual aspect of the image of God in man: Man was created in the image and likeness of God. The image of God in man, considered by itself, is a given, for Christ, the Second Adam, through His Incarnation reconstituted the human nature shared by every man. However, the “likeness of God” is not a given, but rather is a task, a Way to be followed, to be lived within. Man transcends himself non-dialectically by emptying himself of all self-concern and eudaemonia [well-being] through a co-working with God’s uncreated grace, a grace that is not opposed to creation. It bears repeating: God’s uncreated glory does not coerce creation into acting as a God-serving automaton, but rather ceaselessly calls man (the little cosmos) and all of creation (the big cosmos) into a deeper and deeper union with Him, “from glory to glory.”17
Because the teachings of the Church Fathers are not conditioned by the dubious logic of the “dialectic of oppositions,” they can, without any inconsistency, proclaim that God’s Hand (his energies) can come down to the heart of man without any resultant development or division in the Godhead. The experience of the Orthodox Fathers of the Church is identical to that of the friends of God of the Old Testament. For example, the Three Holy Children—St. Shadrach, St. Mechach, and St. Abednego—were seen in the fiery furnace with a fourth Person, the Lord of Glory (Christ) who suffered there with them, sustaining them through His grace. Likewise, St. Solomon, standing in the Holy of Holies of the newly-consecrated Temple, marveled that God could at the same time be both beyond and above all of creation, and also come and dwell between the cherubim atop the Ark of the Covenant.18
Unlike the Hellenistic/hermetic tradition, which posits an analogy between the life processes of creation and a supposed principle of dialectical development in the essence of God, the Orthodox tradition holds that salvation is deliverance from the dialectical meanderings of fallen creation. To state things starkly, the Orthodox view of man begins with God and views man as an icon of the Godman without any rationalistic analogy being allowed. Orthodox anthropology is thus Hebraic rather than Hellenistic.19
In keeping with its Hellenistic basis, the Gnostic anthropology of hermeticism takes man as its starting point: An intuitive feeling—”the call”—provides the Gnostic with an unquestionable certitude that he or she is actually a part of God, albeit a lower emanation of Him.20 Starting from his human fear of extinction and his desire for self-fulfillment and immortality, the Gnostic projects his eudaemonistic passions into the divine sphere: Man ceases to be a willing subject distinct from other persons and becomes himself a theo-cosmological process which allows God to know Himself.21 Put succinctly, there are three levels in the Gnoseo-hermetic scheme: 1) Anthropos (Man), 2)Cosmos (World), and 3) Theos (God). All three of these levels are God, though the first two are lower emanations or manifestations of the divine essence.22
The foregoing discussion of the Orthodox and hermetic anthropologies is shown to have a great relevance for alchemy if we refocus our attention on the Orthodox and hermetic attitudes toward matter. For the Orthodox, God created the world “very good,” and He also created the world in such a way that its material sphere—its matter—is conformable to the incorruption of the noetic realm, the realm of God’s uncreated glory. Most importantly, matter is made to be imbued with God’s life, not as something foreign to it, but as its own true telos; in this sense, to speak of the alchemical process of changing matter into spirit is inhuman and docetistic,23 involving the obliteration of creation rather than its deification. With the creation of man, matter and nous/spirit were shown for what they truly are: perfective, non-opposed creations of God which, forever entwined, are intended to ascend from non-defective goodness to greater and greater levels of perfection in God’s energies, which energies are His very life.24 To safeguard the path to union with God and to avoid idolatry and blasphemy, the Orthodox Fathers of the Church distinguished three categories that apply both to the uncreated and to the created:
1) Essence (Gr. ousia), which answers the question, “What is it?”
2) Person (Gr. hypostasis), which answer the query, “Who is it?”
3) Operation or energy (Gr. energeia), which answers the question, “What does it do?”25
These categories do not stand as analogies of being between God and creation, but instead serve to set the correct boundary between the divine and the created.
By contrast, the Gnoseo-hermetic view holds that the created world is a pale imitation of a truly real realm of Forms. These “ideas” are incorporeal, unchanging and rational. Since an ideal/real oppositional dialectic is presupposed, two superficially distinct cosmological attitudes result: Some gnoseo-hermetic texts denigrate matter as an evil cesspool ruled by demons, while others hold the world to be good. However, even the seemingly positive Gnostic assessment of the world is just another form of matter-hatred (docetism26), since what is held to be “good” in the world is what is hidden within or behind matter. In other words, matter is a husk, an unreal shadow that contains (or hides) “good” reality.27 The cellophane wrapper is good because one can see through it to the candy it contains. We all know what happens to the wrapper afterwards.
Hopefully the underlying dialectic of oppositions is recognized here, in that motion, matter and unreality is here being opposed to stasis, form and reality. The dualism of this gnoseo-hermetic view of matter complements the “process dualism” (my term) which lies behind the alchemical trinity. The latter is the yin-yang dualism of “two contrary principles” of which Tenney L. Davis writes, and to which we above alluded. In the following section our examination of alchemical trinitarian imagery will attempt to illustrate how these two dualisms interact in medieval textual illustrations.
Notes:
11. St. Athanasius the Great, De Incamatione 54.
12. “There are two ways”: The Didache, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 10 vols., A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, eds. (New York, 1926 [1885-1887]), 1.148.” Thou shalt have no other gods before me”: Exodus 20.3.
13. For an excellent introduction to the Orthodox teachings on the nous, see John Chryssavgis, Ascent To Heaven: The Theology of the Human Person According to Saint John of the Ladder (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1989), 70-124.
14. For the identification of the nous and the heart in Orthodox spirituality, see John McGuckin, Standing in Cod’s Holy Fire: The Byzantine Tradition (London: Dar-ton, Longman and Todd, 2001), 56ff.
15. See Kelley, Realism of Glory, 40-42.
16. The Orthodox teaching about man being created “in” or “according to” the image of God contrasts with the Western Christian view which followed Blessed Augustine’s formulation that man is the image of God, a created reflection of God’s essence. For a sophisticated discussion of Orthodox and Augustinian “imago Dei” theology see M. Aghiorgoussis (now Met. Maximos of Pittsburgh), “Applications of the Theme ‘EIKON THEOU’ (Image of God) according to Saint Basil the Great,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 21.3 (Fall 1976): 265-288.
17. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Even though the Orthodox spiritual life is concerned preeminently with experience of God, and even though the Orthodox do not mistake words such as prayers and sacred writings for communion with God in His glory, words are nonetheless central to spiritual life as images or symbols that call the worshipper to communion with God (Gr. symbollon: “bringing unlike things together”). It must be stipulated, however, that though the Orthodox proclaim the realism, or reality of God’s glory in the heart of His holy ones, they never reify the uncreated, ineffable Light. The danger is that terms like “glory” and”energy,”the more they are handled and circumscribed in our reasoning and through our lips, begin to represent God’s love as a concept, as something already “known about.”
18. Daniel 3.25: “He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God”; I Kings 8.27: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?”
19. For a discussion of the Hebraic/Hellenistic anthropology from an existentialist viewpoint see William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958; rpt, New York: Anchor Books, 1990), 61 -119.
20. On “the call” in Gnosticism see Werner Foerster, Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts, 2 vols., trans, and ed. R. McL Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972): “The central factor in Gnosis, the’call,’ reaches man neither in rational thought nor in an experience which eliminates thought. Man has a special manner of reception in is ‘I.’ He feels himself’addressed’and answers the call. He feels that he is encountered by something that already lies within him, although admittedly entombed. It is nothing new, but rather the old which only needs to be called to mind it is like a note sounded at a distance, which strikes an echoing chord in his heart” (1.2).
21. John S. Romanides, The Ancestral Sin, trans, with an introduction by George S. Gabriel (Ridgewood: Zephyr, 2002). See especially chapter one, entitled “Creation, the Fall, and Salvation in Greek Philosophy in General” (41-49), where Fr. John analyzes the happiness-centeredness of the Hellenistic mind: “The immutable and inactive One of Greek philosophy is rather a projection of the human thirst for a secure understanding of the meaning of existence itself and for eudaemonia. It is the object of man’s intellectual desire for an entirely natural certainty of salvation but without a real revelation and the gradual saving energy of God in the world. It is also a self-centered principle imaginatively constructed according to the desires of man” (47).
22. For a stimulating discussion of this tripartite gnoseology in the context of the writings of Paracelsus see Elizabeth Ann Ambrose, “Cosmos, Anthropos,and Theos: Dimensions of the Paracelsian Universe,” Cauda Pavonis 11.1 (1992): 1-7. For an engaging (but ultimately unconvincing) discussion of gnoseo-hermetic cosmology which strives to contrast a supposedly positive hermetic attitude toward the world with a negative Gnostic view, see R. van den Broek,” Gnosticism and Hermetism in Antiquity: Two Roads to Salvation,” in Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. R. van den Broek and Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998), 1-20, esp. 9-11.
23. See note 27, pg. 58.
24. Here “nous/spirit” refers not to the uncreated energies of God, but rather to the created “spirit of man” which is not a divine “spark” or “piece of God” as the Gnostics would have it.
25. Farrell, God, History and Dialectic, 28.
26. Joseph P. Farrell, in an unpublished typescript in the author’s possession entitled “Partial Listing of Christologies of Classical Heresies and Gnostics,” notes that docetists ”begi[n] with the assertion that matter is crude and evil; and so conclud[e] that Christ was pure spirit; the physical appearance was an optical illusion and mere semblance (dokesis); Christ was merely God masquerading as man”(4; unnumbered pages).
27. Section two will make apparent why, from a certain point of view, alchemico-hermetic texts seem to praise matter. To anticipate my later argument, matter is “honored” by alchemists because it is believed to have been divided, developed, and “scissioned” from the “aither,” the materia prima, which is uncreated and which contains every divine attribute. See the Introduction for background on the slightly different context and meaning of “aither” as it was used in Greco-Egyptian alchemy. Titus Burckhardt gives us a sense of the ambiguous, because literally otherworldly, attitude toward matter found in alchemy specifically and Hermeticism generally: “In this view, matter remains an aspect or function of God. It is not something separated from spirit, but its necessary complement. In itself it is no more than the potentiality of taking on form, and all perceptible objects in it bear the stamp of its active counterpart, the Spirit or Word of God.
“It is only for modern man that matter has become a thing and no longer the completely passive mirror of the Spirit’ (Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul, tr. William Stoddart [Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 1997], 58-59, emphasis added). Here “ousia” or nature is spirit; matter is reduced to a different ontological category, namely, “function/will/energeia,” which lacks a sentient, thelemic existence since everything it does is done by someone above who has a nature, that is, who exists and subsists. This ambiguity toward matter seen as the husk containing divine light is reflected in the later American version of hermeticism—American “nature religion”—which denies the reality of the concrete world in order to serve “the world” (Albanese, Republic of Mind, 25).
