Davide's Notes

In the second chapter of Pagels' "The Gnostic Gospel" there is a most interesting discussion on the troubles that early orthodoxy had to go through in order to draw a clear line between canonical vs. non-canonical interpretations of the nature of God. The thesis is that how one understands the nature of God brings about political implications related to the relationship with the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In particular, Pagels suggests that the way gnostics understood the divine nature allowed them to break away from the slogan "one God, one bishop".

The first point that sounds utterly modern is how Irenaeus describes the gnostics:

These men discourse to the multitude about those who belong to the Church, whom they do themselves term "vulgar," and "ecclesiastic. By these words they entrap the more simple, and entice them, imitating our phraseology, that these [dupes] may listen to them the oftener; and then these are asked regarding us, how it is, that when they hold doctrines similar to ours, we, without cause, keep ourselves aloof from their company; and [how it is, that] when they say the same things, and hold the same doctrine, we call them heretics? (AH, 3:15)

So we see here again that one of the dangers of the so-called heretic movements was the apparent trouble to clearly distinguish them from the so-called orthodoxy. Cf. the notes on Marcion for another example, and specifically the worries of Cyril of Jerusalem.

It is difficult for me at this stage to discriminate between apologetic and reality in Irenaeus' words. It seems clear, though, that what Irenaeus says is consistent with what I have read so far about gnosticism in general and valentinians in particular:

[...] they describe to them in private the unspeakable mystery of their Pleroma. But they are altogether deceived, who imagine that they may learn from the Scriptural texts adduced by heretics, that [doctrine] which their words plausibly teach. For error is plausible, and bears a resemblance to the truth, but requires to be disguised; while truth is without disguise, and therefore has been entrusted to children. And if any one of their auditors do indeed demand explanations, or start objections to them, they affirm that he is one not capable of receiving the truth, and not having from above the seed [derived] from their Mother; and thus really give him no reply, but simply declare that he is of the intermediate regions, that is, belongs to animal natures. (AH, 3:15)

This agrees with the strong predestination tones shown e.g. in the Treatise on the Resurrection; and this concept of predestination is probably by itself reason enough to explain the worries that orthodoxy had toward gnosticism from a political point of view.

But another point struck my attention: in the Gospel of Philip we read

Names given to the worldly are very deceptive, for they divert our thoughts from what is correct to what is incorrect. Thus one who hears the word "God" does not perceive what is correct, but perceives what is incorrect. 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 correct but they perceive what is incorrect, [unless] they have come to know what is correct. The [names which are heard] are in the world [...] deceive. If they] were in the eternal realm (aeon), they would at no time be used as names in the world. Nor were they set among worldly things. They have an end in the eternal realm. (53-54)

Pagels suggests, and very rightly it seems to me, that once one understands that names point to a higher reality, it is a short step to conceive a completely different view of worldly institutions. So, if I know that what I mean by the word God is not what really God is and, even more importantly here, if I know that what I mean by the word church is not what the "real" church really is, it is understandable that I may regard with suspicion those, like the bishops and the priests of the early centuries, who built their spiritual (and political) power on the exclusive claim to be the the only authorized messengers of a reality that (to the gnostics) seemed very much entrenched in the (deceptive) world.

Pagels points out then that this distinction between words and reality has recently been suggested by Paul Tillich.

But it seems to me that well before Tillich such distinctions were made. The debates on nominalism in the Middle Age very much focused on this. As a matter of fact, Aquinas says:

Summa, Prima Pars, Quaestio XIII, A.1 ("Utrum aliquod nomen Deo conveniat"):

[...] Deus in hac vita non potest a nobis videri per suam essentiam; sed cognoscitur a nobis ex creaturis, secundum habitudinem principii, et per modum excellentiae et remotionis. Sic igitur potest nominari a nobis ex creaturis: non tamen ita quod nomen significans ipsum, exprimat divinam essentiam secundum quod est, sicut hoc nomen homo exprimit sua significatione essentiam hominis secundum quod est: significat enim euis definitionem, declarantem euis essentiam.

And, in A.3 ("Utrum aliquod nomen dicatur de Deo proprie"):

Intellectus autem noster eo modo apprehendit eas, secundum quod sunt in creaturis: et secundum quod apprehendit, ita significat per nomina. In nominibus igitur quae Deo attribuimus, est duo considerare: scilicet, perfectiones ipsas significatas, ut bonitatem, vitam, et huiusmodi; et modum significandi. [...] Quantum vero ad modum significandi, non proprie dicuntur de Deo: habent enim modum significandi qui creaturis competit.

This is not of course to say that Aquinas was "a gnostic": it is very clear that the aristotelian ontologism of Aquinas is different from that of the gnostics, with their pleroma, mythologies, and so on; still, the gnostic idea of nominalism (that entailed a conception of the world, of God, of the church, and of the function of its hierarchy so worrysome for Irenaeus and other church fathers) seems to have some similarity to what will later become the "orthodox one".

---

Categories: Church_History