There are a few different points that I meant to address from the lengthy interview with John Lash that I posted earlier in the week. In one section, Las [...]

When I first read Tim’s recent interview with self-proclaimed revelator of Gnostic mysterie [...]

study of religious heresy, this book raises many questions concerning the master themes of Eternal Conflict (Good versus Evil) and Moral Design. Drawing upon Gnostic teachings repressed by the Christian Church, it considers alternative scripts of sin and redemption, contrasting with those received in Judaeo-Christian tradition.

Just another example of Lash’s anti-Christian bias that pervades his entire website. He misleadingly asserts that Pagels is presenting views contrary to the Judeo-Christian tradition, when she herself is knowingly engaging in a study of a subsection of the Judeo-Christian religion. It is also bunk for Lash to say that “Gnosticism” was stomped by the “Christian Church” since the Gnostics of the time and place concerned were all Christian. It is more accurate to say the ROMAN STATE Church stomped out Gnosticism within Christianity. There were still Hermetics in Egypt, Mandaeans in Judah and Mesopotamia, and later Sufis and Kabbalists all over the damn place. This language, found all over Lash’s website, is always geared to generalize Christianity as a bad “ism” hellbent on the destruction of a purely pagan, essentially non-Christian thing called “Gnosticism,” which Lash defines as Pagan mysteries. Even the Valentinians, he argues, were Pagans, not Christians.

Lash is trying to paint a portrait where we don’t need Christianity because the pagan mysteries tell us all these truths already. That may be half true, and certainly Jung would agree with the latter half, but Lash ignores that Christianity is the cultural/memetic language many many folks think in, and to many people, gnosis can most easily be found in Christianity because their symbolic mental language is in these terms. Furthermore it is frustrating to me that he augments his obvious anti-Christian bias by twisting his words to make it look like Christianity is this rigid oppressive thing as defined by Pope Ratzinger and Jerry Falwell. Sorry Lash, this Christian doesn’t buy your propaganda, and I’m sure Teilhard de Chardin doesn’t, Stephen Hoeller doesn’t, and Thomas Merton doesn’t. These guys are not Christians according to the Pope, but is Lash prepared to demonstrate that we can’t call these folks Christian?

Frankly, I don’t think that Gnosis as a spiritual path will appeal to many people today, mainly because of stupidity, currently at record levels, and still rising. It takes exceptional intelligence, a certain kind of deep, intuitive and poetic intelligence, to grasp the Gnostic message.

that’s complete and utter tripe. gnosis is available to *anyone*, and i find mr. lash’s claims that gnosticism can’t be grasped by ’stupid’ people pretty ludicrous. who determines who is “stupid”? john lash? no wonder some folks think gnosticism is ‘elitist.’ sheesh . . . .

i think his system misses an absolutly essential facet of gnosticism: compassion.

I am however very interested to see more connections between Sophianic mythology and the Gaia theory.

I wonder if his conclusion that Christ’s presence in the Nag Hammadi library is a modern corruption lacks context: many, if not most, of the Nag Hammadi scriptures were known to talk about Jesus Christ because snippets and bits of them are quoted and/or referenced in the works of polemicists and heresiologists from the time they were written and used. We knew they existed before 1945. The polemicists in question wouldn’t have considered Gnosticism heresy if it wasn’t making claims to be Christian, it seems to me they’d have just dismissed it as paganism, which they did often to pagans. In this sense, its damn near impossible for him to claim that he’s forging an unadulterated Pagan version of Gnosticism from Christian Valentinian sources.

And look, I understand that gnosis isn’t solely Christian, I myself am a Christian greatly affinitized to Sufism, but if the savior of the Nag Hammadi Library wasn’t Christ, I’m sure many more Christian traditionalists would be beating this conspiracy theory to death to discredit gnosticism. I have serious doubts that there is any more than conjecture here. Show me the money, John Lash!

This is confusing:

Christos in Gnostic teachings is a god or Aeon of the Pleroma who does not incarnate in human form. Gnostics denied the divinity of Jesus.

Jesus was not “divine” in the sense that he was like a normal human, but through awakening his divine spark at Baptism, the Holy Spirit (read: Sophia, Understanding!) descended on him and gave him access to the Aeon Christ, making him more resemble the divine. In fact, the Gnostics believe so strongly in the divine spark, pneuma, that they would have problems denying the latent divinity of anybody!

Then theres this bit:

There will be no replay of the Gnostic protest, because those dedicated to Gnosis in our time have their attention elsewhere - and, besides, they have enough common sense not to engage with vicious and deviant people.

This is the only bit that really gets my goat, per se. I am a Catholic, and speak for many of the philosophical problems that Catholics in this time have with Catholicism. My protest of Catholicism made me a revival Gnostic, not because I’m a punk rebelling against the system (dude! rock!) and I needed something hip to piss off my mom, but because Gnosticism seriously tries to answer some of the questions I had that Catholicism didn’t even allow me to ask: Whence evil? How is moral purity salvific if achieved for selfish reasons (don’t send me to Hell!)? For a long time I kept my pseudo-Catholic gnosticism to myself, thinking A) it is my own interest and very personal; and B) it doesn’t suit the style of evangelization anyhow. But when Catholics close to me heard mention of my gnosticism, or saw me reading a book on it, or perhaps seeing my webpage by accident, the same damn questions started to pour out. My own brother ended up pouring out all the same questions I had, and I gave him the answers I found, and now he’s a pseudo-Catholic Gnostic like me, doing the reading and research on his own, genuinely motivated. In this sense, yes Gnosticism is a giant threat to Catholicism, and no, it isn’t. It is a threat to stuffy-old-nonsense Catholicism, Ratzingerian Catholicism, pre-Vatican II Catholicism. The spirit of more modern Catholics, speaking at least for America, already starts to reflect the spirit of Gnosticism, and looks like if unhindered by the Ratzingerian Nazi-crats (like that?) Catholicism would evolve to be not gnostic, but at least gnostic-ISH, in the next couple decades. The questions the Gnostics address are very relevant questions, and although you can expect Catholicism to never be gnostic, in the near future you CAN expect it to look to gnosticism to answer some of its questions.

Check out the work of a Catholic Priest, Ed Hayes: The Gospel of Gabriel; for a gnostic-ish Catholicism.

Secondly, I resent my cultural upbringing being generalized to “vicious and deviant people.” This is complete bullshit. It shows off ignorance of the tradition in general, (and ignorance of the definition of “deviant”) when you slap such negative labels to a tradition like we’re all a bunch of barbarians. I know priests who disagree with our Pope on theological matters, who wholly support Vatican II, and have attended marches and protests to have child molesting priests kicked out of church and jailed. I know very very ritually traditional Catholics who study Buddhism, or read the Gospel of Thomas, for insight into their own tradition. In fact, the conservative powers in the Church that are undoubtably getting it slandered as “deviant and vicious” by Mr Lash are a minority that are reacting fanatically to their decline. This only serves to make them look like jerks in the long run to their own people. Expect the church not to die, but to change.

In conclusion, Lash is a little hell-bent on separating Christianity from Gnosticism, and his distaste for Christianity seems to be the motive for this. The thing about Gnosticism is that it doesn’t HAVE TO be Christian, nor do many people make this claim. I would never say that. Gnosticism is more fluid than “this or that.”. But to this Christian, Gnosticism compliments and ‘fixes’ the gaps I percieve in Christianity. The major insights of the Gnostics also appear to fix the gaps thet the Sufis percieve in Islam, and the gaps the Jewish Kabbalists see in Judaism. Our friend and roommate in the Palm Tree Garden, Jeremy Puma, believes Gnosticism to augment and compliment Zen Buddhism (though I clarify that he does not seem to value one over the other). Father Jordan Stratford considers himself Gnostic but not Christian, but still recognizes Christ as prophet and bringer of gnosis. Gnosticism is more fluid than Mr Lash wants it to be, and he is just as welcome to cram Gnosticism in his own little box as some Christian or Zen Buddhist is to cram it in his. Lash said it himself - Gnosticism is anti-authoritarian. Nobody is twisting your arm!

I would say that the Archons have migrated into cyberspace.

Hell yeah. They are the AI manifesting in our internet.