The Gnostic Gospels (10 page)

After the day of rest, Sophia [literally, “wisdom”] sent Zoe [literally, “life”], her daughter, who is called Eve, as an instructor to raise up Adam … When Eve saw Adam cast down, she pitied him, and she said, “Adam, live! Rise up upon the earth!” Immediately her word became a deed. For when Adam rose up, immediately he opened his eyes. When he saw her, he said, “You will be called ‘the mother of the living,’ because you are the one who gave me life.”
⁸

The
Hypostasis of the Archons
describes Eve as the spiritual principle in humanity who raises Adam from his merely material condition:

And the spirit-endowed Woman came to [Adam] and spoke with him, saying, “Arise, Adam.” And when he saw her, he said, “It is you who have given me life; you shall be called “Mother of the living”—for it is she who is my mother. It is she who is the Physician, and the Woman, and She Who Has Given Birth.” … Then the Female Spiritual Principle came in the Snake, the Instructor, and it taught them, saying, “…  you shall not die; for it was out of jealousy that he said this to you. Rather, your eyes shall open, and you shall become like gods, recognizing evil and good.” … And the arrogant Ruler cursed the Woman … [and] … the Snake.
⁹

Some scholars today consider gnosticism synonymous with metaphysical dualism—or even with pluralities of gods. Irenaeus denounced as blasphemy such caricatures of the conviction, fundamental to the Hebrew Scriptures, that “the Lord your God is one God.” But Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus’ contemporary, tells us that there was a “monadic
gnosis”
; and the discoveries at Nag Hammadi also disclose that Valentinian gnosticism—the most influential and sophisticated form of gnostic teaching, and by far the most threatening to the church—differs essentially from dualism. The theme of the oneness of God dominates the opening section of the
Tripartite Tractate
, a Valentinian treatise from Nag Hammadi which describes the origin of all being. The author describes God as

a sole Lord and God … For he is unbegotten … In the proper sense, then, the only Father and God is the one whom no one else begot. As for the universe (
cosmos
), he is the one who begot and created it.
¹⁰

A Valentinian Exposition
speaks of God who is

[Root] of the All, the [Ineffable One who] dwells in the Monad. [He dwells alone] in silence … since, after all, [he was] a Monad, and no one was before him …
¹¹

According to a third Valentinian text, the
Interpretation of Knowledge
, the Savior taught that “Your Father, who is in heaven, is one.”
¹²

Irenaeus himself tells us that the creed which effectively screened out Marcionites from the church proved useless against the Valentinians. In common with other Christians, they recited the orthodox creed. But Irenaeus explains that although they did “verbally confess one God,” they did so with private mental reservations, “saying one thing, and thinking another.”
¹³
While the Marcionites openly blasphemed the creator, the Valentinians, he insists, did so covertly:

Such persons are, to outward appearances, sheep, for they seem to be like us, from what they say in public, repeating the same words [of confession] that we do; but inwardly they are wolves.
¹⁴

What distressed Irenaeus most was that the majority of Christians did not recognize the followers of Valentinus as heretics. Most could not tell the difference between Valentinian and orthodox teaching; after all, he says, most people cannot differentiate between cut glass and emeralds either! But, he declares, “although their language is similar to ours,” their views “not only are very different, but at all points full of blasphemies.”
¹⁵
The apparent similarity with orthodox teaching only made this heresy more dangerous—like poison disguised as milk. So he wrote the five volumes of his massive
Refutation and Overthrow of Falsely So-called Gnosis
to teach the unwary to discriminate between the truth, which saves believers, and gnostic teaching, which destroys them in “an abyss of madness and blasphemy.”
¹⁶

For while the Valentinians publicly confessed faith in one God,
¹⁷
in their own private meetings they insisted on discriminating between the popular image of God—as master, king, lord, creator, and judge—and what that image represented—God understood as the ultimate source of all being.
¹⁸
Valentinus calls that source “the depth”;
¹⁹
his followers describe it as an invisible,
incomprehensible primal principle.
²⁰
But most Christians, they say, mistake mere images of God for that reality.
²¹
They point out that the Scriptures sometimes depict God as a mere craftsman, or as an avenging judge, as a king who rules in heaven, or even as a jealous master. But these images, they say, cannot compare with Jesus’ teaching that “God is spirit” or the “Father of Truth.”
²²
Another Valentinian, the author of the
Gospel of Philip
, points out that names can be

very deceptive, for they divert our thoughts from what is accurate to what is inaccurate. Thus one who hears the word “God” does not perceive what is accurate, but perceives what is inaccurate. So also with “the Father,” and “the Son,” and “the Holy Spirit,” and “life,” and “light,” and “resurrection,” and “the Church,” and all the rest—people do not perceive what is accurate, but they perceive what is inaccurate …
²³

The Protestant theologian Paul Tillich recently drew a similar distinction between the God we imagine when we hear the term, and the “God beyond God,” that is, the “ground of being” that underlies all our concepts and images.

What made their position heretical? Why did Irenaeus find such a modification of monotheism so crucial—in fact, so utterly reprehensible—that he urged his fellow believers to expel the followers of Valentinus from the churches as heretics? He admitted that this question puzzled the gnostics themselves:

They ask, when they confess the same things and participate in the same worship … how is it that we, for no reason, remain aloof from them; and how is it that when they confess the same things, and hold the same doctrines,
we call them heretics
!
²⁴

I suggest that here again we cannot fully answer this question as long as we consider this debate exclusively in terms of religious and philosophical arguments. But when we investigate how the doctrine of God actually functions in gnostic and orthodox writings, we can see how this religious question also involves
social and political issues. Specifically, by the latter part of the second century, when the orthodox insisted upon “one God,” they simultaneously validated the system of governance in which the church is ruled by “one bishop.” Gnostic modification of monotheism was taken—and perhaps intended—as an attack upon that system. For when gnostic and orthodox Christians discussed the nature of God, they were at the same time debating the issue of
spiritual authority.

This issue dominates one of the earliest writings we have from the church at Rome—a letter attributed to Clement, called Bishop of Rome (c. 90–100). As spokesman for the Roman church, Clement wrote to the Christian community in Corinth at a time of crisis: certain leaders of the Corinthian church had been divested of power. Clement says that “a few rash and self-willed people” drove them out of office: “those of no reputation [rose up] against those with reputation, the fools against the wise, the young against the old.”
²⁵
Using political language, he calls this “a rebellion”
²⁶
and insists that the deposed leaders be restored to their authority: he warns that they must be feared, respected, and obeyed.

On what grounds? Clement argues that God, the God of Israel, alone rules all things:
²⁷
he is the lord and master whom all must obey; he is the judge who lays down the law, punishing rebels and rewarding the obedient. But how is God’s rule actually administered? Here Clement’s theology becomes practical: God, he says, delegates his “authority of reign” to “rulers and leaders on earth.”
²⁸
Who are these designated rulers? Clement answers that they are bishops, priests, and deacons. Whoever refuses to “bow the neck”
²⁹
and obey the church leaders is guilty of insubordination against the divine master himself. Carried away with his argument, Clement warns that whoever disobeys the divinely ordained authorities “receives the death penalty!”
³⁰

This letter marks a dramatic moment in the history of Christianity. For the first time, we find here an argument for dividing the Christian community between “the clergy” and “the laity.” The church is to be organized in terms of a strict
order of superiors and subordinates. Even within the clergy, Clement insists on ranking each member, whether bishop, priest, or deacon, “in his own order”:
³¹
each must observe “the rules and commandments” of his position at all times.

Many historians are puzzled by this letter.
³²
What, they ask, was the basis for the dispute in Corinth? What
religious
issues were at stake? The letter does not tell us that directly. But this does not mean that the author ignores such issues. I suggest that he makes his own point—his religious point—entirely clear: he intended to establish the Corinthian church on the model of the divine authority. As God reigns in heaven as master, lord, commander, judge, and king, so on earth he delegates his rule to members of the church hierarchy, who serve as generals who command an army of subordinates; kings who rule over “the people”; judges who preside in God’s place.

Clement may simply be stating what Roman Christians took for granted
³³
—and what Christians outside of Rome, in the early second century, were coming to accept. The chief advocates of this theory, not surprisingly, were the bishops themselves. Only a generation later, another bishop, Ignatius of Antioch in Syria, more than a thousand miles from Rome, passionately defended the same principle. But Ignatius went further than Clement. He defended the three ranks—bishop, priests, and deacons—as a hierarchical order that mirrors the divine hierarchy in heaven. As there is only one God in heaven, Ignatius declares, so there can be only one bishop in the church. “One God, one bishop”—this became the orthodox slogan. Ignatius warns “the laity” to revere, honor, and obey the bishop “as if he were God.” For the bishop, standing at the pinnacle of the church hierarchy, presides “in the place of God.”
³⁴
Who, then, stands below God? The divine council, Ignatius replies. And as God rules over that council in heaven, so the bishop on earth rules over a council of priests. The heavenly divine council, in turn, stands above the apostles; so, on earth, the priests rule over the deacons—and all three of these rule over “the laity.”
³⁵

Was Ignatius merely attempting to aggrandize his own
position? A cynical observer might suspect him of masking power politics with religious rhetoric. But the distinction between religion and politics, so familiar to us in the twentieth century, was utterly alien to Ignatius’ self-understanding. For him, as for his contemporaries, pagan and Christian alike, religious convictions necessarily involved political relationships—and vice versa. Ironically, Ignatius himself shared this view with the Roman officials who condemned him to death, judging his religious convictions as evidence for treason against Rome. For Ignatius, as for Roman pagans, politics and religion formed an inseparable unity. He believed that God became accessible to humanity
through the church
—and specifically, through the bishops, priests, and deacons who administer it: “without these, there is nothing which can be called a church!”
³⁶
For the sake of their eternal salvation he urged people to submit themselves to the bishop and priests. Although Ignatius and Clement depicted the structure of the clergy in different ways,
³⁷
both bishops agreed that this human order mirrors the divine authority in heaven. Their religious views, certainly, bore political implications; yet, at the same time, the practice they urged was based on their beliefs about God.

What would happen if someone challenged their doctrine of God—as the one who stands at the pinnacle of the divine hierarchy and legitimizes the whole structure? We do not have to guess: we can see what happened when Valentinus went from Egypt to Rome (c. 140). Even his enemies spoke of him as a brilliant and eloquent man:
³⁸
his admirers revered him as a poet and spiritual master. One tradition attributes to him the poetic, evocative
Gospel of Truth
that was discovered at Nag Hammadi. Valentinus claims that besides receiving the Christian tradition that all believers hold in common, he has received from Theudas, a disciple of Paul’s, initiation into a secret doctrine of God.
³⁹
Paul himself taught this secret wisdom, he says, not to everyone, and not publicly, but only to a select few whom he considered to be spiritually mature.
⁴⁰
Valentinus offers, in turn, to initiate
“those who are mature”
⁴¹
into his wisdom, since not everyone is able to comprehend it.