Gnosticism is perhaps the most ancient heresy of all. It posits a radical spirit-matter dualism, matter/creation as the result of a demi-urge, a hierarchy of being and deities, it denies the OT, the God of the OT, and the humanity of Jesus. According to gnosticism what Christians call “creation” and “good” is really evil. Salvation from this “evil” material world comes through the acquisition of secret knowledge (gnosis, hence “gnosticism”). According to Darryl Hart, modern evangelicalism has some unpleasant similarities to gnosticism.
A bit unfair of a comparison. One can say there are isolationist tendancies in the URC and Canidaian Reformed churches or there are wannabe roman catholics in the PCA and the OPC.
Joseph,
You read his post, considered his arguments, and rejected them before the pixels in the link had dried on my screen!
“…modern evangelicalism has some unpleasant similarities to gnosticism”
I’d say so do some of the Reformed responses to the whole ruckus revolving around Bruce Waltke as of late.
Chris,
Can you explain?
Some (only some) of the responses seem to me to be especially suspicious of what God’s creation reflects, and whether or not it reflects real history. I find that unnecessary, if not a tad gnostic in its mistrust of what we can know via observation of empirical data.
Has my criticism missed the mark?
I guess it depends on which responses you have in mind.
Hart: “If it doesn’t matter if you go to a Lutheran, Presbyterian or Baptist church to be an evangelical, then a time may (and possibly has) come when it doesn’t even matter if you go to church.”
Could I say “If it doesn’t matter if you go to a PCA, OPC or URCNA church to be Reformed, then a time may (and possibly has) come when it doesn’t even matter if you go to church”? I attend a Baptist church that I’m sure self-identifies as evangelical (and Reformed, for that matter). Nothing in Hart’s criticisms seem close to home. There are plenty of external forms and none of the church members would say it is unimportant whether you are a Baptist or not, even though it may be unimportant to whether you can call yourself an evangelical.
If Hart’s nonsequitur doesn’t discredit him, the comparison with gnosticism should. Should I begin to list the similarities between the Reformed faith and the Roman? Or between Christianity and Islam? Of course not. The differences are all important, and even the similarities may be misleading.
Jordan,
You’ve quite misunderstood Hart.
His point is that what is essential to evangelicalism is NOT one’s church affiliation. What matters most about evangelicalism is one’s (more or less) disembodied encounter with the divine. That isn’t true of the great Protestant churches and traditions. Membership in a certain church, a certain confession of the sacraments (an ecclesiology) is essential to the Reformation in a way it is not and cannot be to modern evangelicals.
The entire movement as crafted in the 20th century was designed to circumvent (overcome) the visible church, which they founders of neo-evangelicalism regarded as an obstacle.
Hart’s point here isn’t radical at all among those who study American evangelicalism.
I understand this, but I think I agree with Jordan in that dropping the “gnostics” bomb is really quite silly.
But in response to the more substantive point, I think I probably agree more with Hart’s description of evangelicalism than I would with “confessing Protestants”. However, I still think both are running aground on the notion that church are some little independently-existing institutions (e.g., XYZ Baptist Church; ABC Pres. Church). If one views the church simply as the people of God, then church isn’t something that one goes to. It’s something that one is a part of; a community.
I actively partake in the church by meaningful and intentional interactions, relationships, and arrangements. I can become or I can join with others in recognizing certain men who are gifted with teaching the Word and we live life together. Sometimes gathering to eat, sometimes gathering to hear the Word, sometimes gathering to pray, sometimes doing all.
So one can reject the notion that to live the Christian life is primarily about being a member of some particular little non-profit (or sometimes for profit?) business/building and one can reject the notion that to live the Christian life is primarily about some individual experience with God apart from concerns about community and theology.
I dunno, maybe I’m making no sense, and maybe I’m just wrong.
Zachary,
I think you are wrong. I just finished another project on the history of American religion and was quite impressed anew with the distinctively radical character of much of American religion since the 18th century. It really is largely disembodied.
Consider Mormonism. Consider Mary Baker Eddy. Consider Robert Schuller, in some respects. The list could go on and on. Much of American Christianity, and especially much of American evangelicalism really is all about the the spirit-matter dualism. I’m shocked that people are shocked. This interpretation is well established. Harold Bloom has argued that gnosticism IS the American religion.
Zachary states:
I actively partake in the church by meaningful and intentional interactions, relationships, and arrangements. I can become or I can join with others in recognizing certain men who are gifted with teaching the Word and we live life together. Sometimes gathering to eat, sometimes gathering to hear the Word, sometimes gathering to pray, sometimes doing all.
This is wrong on so many points but here are a few. You partake in the church because the Holy Spirit draws you there. The church is all about our relationship to God and the “meaningful and intentional interactions” with the Godhead in worship. The men who have been given the gift to preach God’s Word do so because they were first called then ordained and finally have oversight. All this is scriptural and none of your definition of church is. Gathering to hear the Word and to see it and eat it in the sacraments is how we Christians are fed spiritually.
You give yourself too high a stature in comparison to God and how he has ordained us to worship Him. It is not about coalescing around a human or humans. It is not about community, though there is one formed. It is about the coming together of His chosen people and praising and worshiping our creator the way he has fashioned for us to do so. In all humbleness and asking for his forgiveness.
We worship God because He has commanded us to do so and the Holy Spirit having changed our hearts of stone allows us to want to follow His commandments as laid out in scripture. If all it was was a little food, some lectures and some meditation. I could get those from anywhere.
The church is not just a series of relationships! It’s an institution, a divine-human institution. The very notion of the church as primarily consisting of relationships is not only unbiblical but it’s part of a story promulgated by post-pietist German liberals.
Start here:
http://wscal.edu/clark/ecclesiology.php
http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2008/12/27/on-churchless-evangelicals-pt1/
http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/are-church-members-free-agents/
http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/bog-standard-evangelicalism-circa-1962/
http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/to-the-evangelical-nicodemites/
http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/fencing-the-table-or-the-scandal-of-the-church/
http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/why-membership-matters/
http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/when-should-i-leave-my-congregation/
http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/on-lapsing-members-coping-with-a-transient-culture/
You’ll notice that I didn’t say that the church is relationships. I said that church simply was the people of God; it simply is the community of God. One partakes in the church by means of relationships. For this is what community is, the interactions of a people. In our case, these interactions are to be guided by the scriptures.
Well, perhaps we should define more clearly what we mean by spirit/matter dualism. If we simply mean to say that there are two types of “substances” (whatever such a word might mean), then that is entirely biblical. You mean to suggest that there are not two kinds of substances (one extended in space and one not)?
Or do you simply mean to say that evangelicals put too much emphasis on the spiritual and not on the body? I mean, I’m not sure how you would measure that. Nor am I sure what you do to the passages where, for example, Peter says that he is about to shed his earthly tent. He, the real him, is going to shed his tent (i.e., his body). Or to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, not half with the Lord. Further, I’m not aware of any evangelical that speaks of matter as inherently evil.
Zachary,
Please read the materials I supplied. Christ established and institution and there are relationships that exist within that institution. On this see Belgic Confession articles 28-29.
No one is saying that all evangelicals are full-blooded gnostics but their relative churchlessness has uncomfortably gnostic over-tones.
One might say that the evangelicals do not put enough emphasis on the “spiritual” properly defined (i.e., that which is related to the Holy Spirit). The Spirit operates freely and sovereignly but he does so ordinarily through the due use of ordinary means, word and sacrament ministry.
I fear that evangelicals are seeking to escape the body! That would be gnostic. They have little time for a real flesh and blood, institutional church with real sacraments and real sinners.
No doubt there is a genuine body-soul dualism. Scripture teaches that. It is possible, if un-natural, to be disembodied (2 Cor 4). Nevertheless, we were created to be embodied and we will be resurrected bodily.
Our Savior did not come for ghosts. He didn’t come for angels. He came as a true man for men. I think Hebrews says just that.
You’ll notice that I didn’t say that the church is relationships. I said that church simply was the people of God; it simply is the community of God. One partakes in the church by means of relationships. For this is what community is, the interactions of a people.
I don’t think any confessionalist would disagree that one way to describe the church is to say it is the people of God. But it is odd to say that one participates in the people of God (or church) by means of relationships. It’s redundant and self-referential, isn’t it, like saying I participate in my family by having relationships with them? People have to have something to commune through beyond themselves, which is why we speak of the means of grace (Word and sacrament) instead of means of relationships. With apologies to the modern mantra of “quality time,” when I spend time with my natural family we actually do stuff. Same with my supernatural family, we do more than get together—we get together and do something specific.
Further, I’m not aware of any evangelical that speaks of matter as inherently evil.
Well, the devil doesn’t really have cloven hooves and a pitchfork. The genius of world-flight pietism is not to go around hating creation or explicitly calling it evil. One way to be Gnostic is to create your own subculture, with everything from language to schools. In short, anything that is found in created, human enterprise has a redemptive alternative because creation just isn’t quite good enough inherently. Maybe it would be better to say that evangelicalism represents a soft Gnosticism over against a hard one?
Zachary:
Let me give you the bumper sticker, slogan version of the point you’re missing. Church as People of God: This is expressed as an assembled people. For this side of glory, this side of the final day, the realized eschaton or the already, the Church always has an address.
Yes, there is an invisible aspect to the church (catholicity across time), but the Church as a confessing assembly of Christians is always found in a local, visible expression. The Church assembles in a specific place and time in response to the call of the elders to meet with God in worship. That’s the basis for, and expression of. a community that upholds mutual accountability in the Word, before the Lord.
Review “assembly” in Scripture, note the phrase “assembly of the congregation” as well.
Maybe off topic, but I found this argument for links to gnosticism in Reformed circles as interesting. What do you think?
http://www.relocatingtoelfland.com/2010/04/15/adversus-haereses/
Bad exegesis of James. Thus, not helpful. James us law! “You say you have faith…” He’s (i.e., James) prosecuting the nominalism of the Jerusalem congregation, not advocating justification by works.
Justification on the basis of the obedience of Jesus the true man isn’t gnostic.
Sent from my iPhone
Helpful or not, I’d have a hard time concluding that the writer of the article said that “justification on the basis of the obedience of Jesus the true man” is gnostic. His point was that, in our zeal to not blur law and gospel, faith and works, we risk failing to recognize the transforming effect that real justification should have. Stated in the reverse, real sanctification only takes place with real justification. The two must
I am slightly curious about this particular part:
“If we moved the busy life into a different position – if we placed it as the basis for divine grace – we would be blurring faith and works in a way neither Paul nor James would countenance. But there is surely some sense in which we must say, if we are to be faithful to either Paul or James, that the ‘law’ here is ‘gospel’: the new life is part of what we know and believe by faith, and it is no small part of what it means to be saved.”
More specifically: “the ‘law’ here is ‘gospel.'” I understand and agree that the new life is no small part of what it means to be saved, even if “conversion” is a life-long process as I have understood it.
I would post these queries to his blog, but the comments aren’t active.
My thanks for any feedback.
“All spirit and no flesh”…Has evangelicalism ever really been able to confess the Incarnation?
If we’re talking about (historical) gnosticism clearly defined, I stand by my comments. If we’re just talking about hating material things and elevating immaterial things, then I just don’t think we’re really talking about gnosticism. You say: “It posits a radical spirit-matter dualism, matter/creation as the result of a demi-urge, a hierarchy of being and deities, it denies the OT, the God of the OT, and the humanity of Jesus.”
I just don’t see this in evangelicalism. The form of dualism espoused therein seems to me to be pretty much the same as that found in historical orthodox Christianity. I don’t see a doctrine of creation out of pre-existing matter through a demiurge subordinate to the Father. I can see major flaws in evangelicalism. It’s why I’m not an evangelical. But I don’t see it as a species of gnosticism, not even close. (And I perused Bloom’s “The American Religion” in the library once, even reading the opening chapter, but it didn’t convince me to read further.) Perhaps you can flesh out the gnostic elements in evangelicalism more clearly, because I don’t see gnosticism in what Hart criticises (insofar as I agree that his criticisms are fair and true).