I’d put this in GQ, but I suppose that it belongs in GD since it deals with religion and it’s possible that it doesn’t not have a clear cut answer either.
I have an interest in the pseudo-gnostic systems of Marcion, Apelles, the Paulicians, the Cathars, et cetra. One thing that I have been wondering though, is why after the extermination of the Cathars in 13th century, there was no major resurgences. Specifically, why is it that during the Reformation, these systems didn’t make a return then?
Now, this is a historical question, not a question of religious belief proper. I looking for historical reasons why these systems did not make a major comeback, not “they’re wrong and God stopped it” or something of that sort. So if you think that’s the case, please keep it to yourself.
Well, there was the Calvinist idea of “the Elect”. And Protestantism in general was, and still is, about a personal, emotional understanding of God, rather than an academic, intellectual one.
Hermeticism, which was essentially a form of Gnosticism, was extremely important during the Renaissance, and continuing through the Reformation era in the work of such people as Giordano Bruno and John Dee (to give just one Catholic and one Protestant example). It may never have had the level of overt, popular following that Catharism attained in the fairly small region where it briefly flourished, but it had a huge impact on intellectual life all over Europe over a considerable period. (See the works of Frances Yates, and of the many subsequent historians she has influenced.)
I would venture to guess that it’s probably because there simply wasn’t any documentation or information about other interpretations of Christianity available after that point–everything else having been suppressed.
I guess I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks, I’ll be sure to check out some of the stuff by Yates. Though, I’m still wondering why similar dualistic systems didn’t re-emerge though. As far as I can tell, Hermeticism does not espouse that. I mean, I could be wrong, but I don’t think it does.
Christianity is, largely, already a dualistic system between God and the Devil. Certainly the Devil is minimized a bit compared with other versions, but it’s still coming from the same place.
My answer is that mainstream Christianity tended to internalize certain aspects of Gnosticism (hatred of the flesh in favour of the spirit, dua;listic world order) and that other aspects, such as appeals to esoteric “secret knowledge”, did indeed make a resounding come-back - in the mass appeal of a plethora of secret societies of all types.
Perhaps the best book on this phenomina is Yates’ The Rosecrutian Enlightenment.
Consider the nature of the Reformation. Martin Luther was not a Gnostic and he did not begin thinking himself a schismatic; he merely wanted to reform perceived abuses of the Church. After he broke with Rome, his doctrine was essentially that every Christian should study the Bible to find the true Christian doctrine, rather than relying on the Catholic Church and its bishops and synods and centuries of accumulated traditions and interpretations. Anyone who did that would be inspired to Gnosticism only to the extent such inspiration could be found in the Scripture – and where is it, in the canonical books?
One definition would be that it is any version of Christianity that didn’t become popular canon. Another definition is that it is any Platonistic/Mystery Religion adaptation of Judaism that tracks its ancestry back to ~30BCE, in which case Christianity is simply the most popular version of Gnosticism.
As I understand it, the defining feature of Gnosticism is the idea that the material world is evil or corrupt, and that the religious quest is about the spirit’s struggle to escape its entrapment in evil matter. Surely mainstream Christianity decisively rejected that view (from the time of the Council of Nicea, if not earlier) on the grounds that the material world, being God’s creation, must be fundamentally good.
I am a bit puzzled by the references to dualism. It is true that Gnosticism (I think in its Hermetic version too) involves a dualism of matter and spirit, but surely the God/Devil sort of dualism (the idea of the universe as ruled by two antagonistic and more or less equally powerful spiritual forces) is something quite different, and does not come from Gnosticism at all, but from the Zoroastrian tradition, which developed into Mithraism and Manichaeanism during the Roman era. Of course all this stuff, and early Christianity, and all sorts of other religious and philosophical traditions, got mixed together and mixed and matched like crazy during the Hellenistic era and the first couple of centuries A.D., and what we now recognize as Christianity was the product of that melting pot (as was Hermeticism), but surely it is possible and worthwhile to try to differentiate different strands within the mixture.
Incidentally, it may be a bit obvious to say it, but the fact that there was no significant revival of quasi-gnosticism at the popular level, as in Catharism, ever again may well have had a lot to do with the extreme brutality and thoroughness with which the Church destroyed the Cathars. Perhaps nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition, but they were really a bunch of pussies compared to the crusade against the Cathars. Furthermore, the anti-Cathar crusade led to the emergence of the orders of Friars, especially the Dominicans, who acted as a sort of spiritual police force primed to stop any heresies of that sort ever even beginning to take root ever again. I wonder if the Reformation only succeeded because Luther’s “heresy” was so totally unlike Gnosticism that it caught them by surprise.
I agree that Calvinism is, while not gnostic exactly, sort of an agnostic take on Gnosticism’s themes. And of course esoteric religions are gnostic by definition, & they’ve been floating around for a while.
Very interesting question. My own, admittedly amateur suggestion, is that the Reformation shared some of Gnosticism’s goals without feeling the need to embrace many of its specific positions.
Philosophically, both Gnosticism and Lutheranism advocated a ‘simpler’ faith, in which the faithful could achieve a more direct relationship with God by personal revelation and direct reading of Scripture with less (but not no) need for a middleman.
However, as is so often the case, philosophy cannot be divorced from politics when power and wealth are at stake. Any diminution of importance of said middlemen, even so sensible a suggestion as priests not literally turning wine into blood via a miracle during Communion, will be strongly and forcefully opposed by said middlemen’s ‘guild’. IMO it is no exaggeration to say that the sheer brutality of the Church’s response to Cathar heterodoxy in medieval Southern France was comparable to the Nazi Holocaust. (Indeed, the former may even have caused the latter in some part: Judaism, at that time and in that region, chose the ‘mystic’ path of Kabbalah over the Aristotelian, ‘scientific’ path urged by Maimonides. Jews were subsequently associated more with Cathar heresy than Christian orthodoxy - them, not us - leading to their expulsion from most of Western Europe into Poland and the Ukraine. Had they been allowed to remain and integrate, Hitler would have found fewer to murder when he expanded East.)
The atrocities of the 12th Century Inquisition may have done much to discourage Reformers from even appearing to share any specific theologies with Gnosticism, while still sharing similar overall goals.
Gnosticism isn’t a religion. There are several different religions, each with their own founder, that fall within the scope of Gnosticism.
From what I can tell, they do tend to have more elaborate cosmogonies than the Christianity of today, but if you look through Catholic stuff of older days you’ll find plenty of complex breakdowns of things: Heaven, Earth and Hell; How many wings an angel has based on rank, and what circle of heaven he is in; that angels are hermaphroditic; Etc.
Early Christianity was, almost certainly, lighter on all of this sort of stuff than Gnostic works, but earlier Gnostic religions were also lighter on this sort of stuff. And it’s impossible to know how much of this was originally in Christianity (i.e. taught by Jesus) but then lost because it was taught as gnosis (i.e. secret lessons) and the gentiles weren’t ever really taught any of this because the head of their church was Paul, who (if you ignore magic) could only have known as much about Christianity as Ananias (not one of the higher ups in the church) knew. It’s entirely possible that all of the (what we perceive to be) Gnostic elements of the church were teachings that survived the Jewish rebellion just to be squashed by the gentile’s church as heretical.
Manichaenism is a later Gnostic religion, ~250CE, and isn’t really linked to any of the founders of Christianity. It was essentially just created wholesale by Mani–though possibly he had some works that he had found. Valentineanism started ~120CE. Mandaeism possibly started with Dositheos, another apostle of John the Baptist (i.e. an equal and contemporary of Jesus). Sethianism possibly predates all of these, showing the first attempt to reform Judaism into something more Platonic.