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Gnosticism and Contemporary Soteriology: Some Reflections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Thomas Weinandy OFM.Cap.
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The abundant variations of Gnosticism in the second and third centuries A.D. testify both to its popularity and to the threat that it posed to the early Christian church. This threat is all the more evident in that some forms of Gnosticism were espoused by men, for example Valentinus and Basilides, who considered themselves faithful Christians. Yet, as is well known, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and other Church Fathers believed that Gnosticism was radically inimical to the authentic Christian gospel as professed by “the Great Church”. I wish to argue here that many contemporary theologians, who equally profess to be Christians, have proposed soteriological theories which are at their heart Gnostic, and constitute an equally grave threat to the integrity of the gospel today.

Before examining instances of what I consider contemporary variants of Gnostic soteriology, I will briefly state what I believe to be at the heart of the ancient Gnostic systems. I am not so much interested in the particular details of the various Gnostic Schools, but rather I want to highlight what exactly it is that gnosis consisted of for the Gnostics. What is it that the Pneumatikoi knew which brought them salvation?

The various Gnostic Schools taught elaborate cosmological systems or schemes. These were normally composed of the utterly transcendent and, often, unknowable good God, followed by the assorted lesser aeons of spirits (such as, Sige, Ennoia, Nous, Logos, Zoe, Pneuma, Sophia, angels, etc., depending on the Gnostic school). These made up the Pleroma and filled the infinite void between the transcendent God and the world of matter.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 76 , Issue 899 , December 1995 , pp. 546 - 554
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 For recent studies of Gnosticism, see Petrement, S., A Separate God: The Origins and Teachings of Gnosticism (San Francisco: Harper, 1990)Google Scholar; and Rudolph, K., Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1984)Google Scholar. For brief accounts of Gnosticism, see “Gnosticism,” Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. Ferguson, E. (London: Garland Publishing, 1990), pp. 371–6Google Scholar; and “Gnosis,” Encyclopedia of the Early Church, ed. Berardino, A. Di (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1992), Vol. 1, pp. 352–4Google Scholar.

2 London: SCM, 1990.

3 For a critique of Macquarrie, see Hefling, Charles C. Jr., “Reviving Adamic Adoptionism: The Example of John Macquarrie,” Theological Studies 52 (1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 London: SCM, 1993. Hick also proposes similar arguments in his other works. See Faiths God and the Universe of (London: Macmillan, 1973)Google Scholar; Religion An Interpretation of (London: Macmillan, 1989)Google Scholar; “The Non–Absoluteness of Christianity” and “The Logic of God Incarnate” in Disputed Questions in Theology and Philosophy of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1993)Google Scholar.

Hick notes that his book finds its historical impetus and forebear in the publication of The Myth of God Incarnate of which he was the editor (London: SCM, 1977)Google Scholar. He believes many younger theologians today hold similar views to his own. He includes such people as A. Race, P.W. Newman, J. Bowden, P. Fredricksen, K. Ward, L. Houlden (see p. 3). Other recent writers representing this tendency include: D. Cupitt, G. Kaufman, J. Knox, H. Kung, CM. LaCugna, J.A.T. Robinson, and M. Wiles.

5 Hick acknowledges that his proposal falls within the liberal tradition of F. Schleiermacher (see p. 18).

6 Theological Studies, 53 (1992) 257–286. For similar examples of this type of Spirit Christology, see Lampe, G.W.H., God as Spirit (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)Google Scholar and Newman, P.W., A Spirit Christology p. 1975 University Press of America, 1987)Google Scholar.

7 For a critique of Haight's Spirit Christology, see Wright, John S.J., “Roger Haight's Spirit Christology,” Theological Studies 53 (1992) 729–735CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Weinandy, T. “The Case For Spirit Christology: Some Reflections,” The Thomist 52 (1995) 173–188CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 God In Process (London: SCM, 1967), p. 29Google Scholar. Other significant works by Pittenger are: The Word Incarnate (London: James Nisbet and Co., 1959)Google Scholar; and Christology Reconsidered (London: SCM, 1970)Google Scholar. For other examples of Process Christology and soteriology see, Griffin, David, A Process Christology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973)Google Scholar, and Ogden, Schubert M., The Reality of God (London: SCM, 1967)Google Scholar, and The Point of Christology (London: SCM, 1982)Google Scholar.

9 Pittenger, The Word Incarnate, p. 180.

10 A Process Christology, 236.

11 For a critique of the whole of Process Christology see Weinandy, T., Does God Change?: The Word's Becoming in the Incarnation (Petersham, MA: St. Bede's Press, 1985), pp. 124–53Google Scholar.

12 It is interesting to note how often, in his Metaphor of God Incarnate, Hick contrasts the “unlearned circles” (p. 28), those “unacquainted with the modem study of the bible” (p. 29), and most of all “the fundamentalists” (pp. 87, 115, 121, 126, 147, 154, 160) with “educated Westerners” (p. 8), “highly regarded Christian theologians” (p. 11), “the scholarly community” (p. 33), “the New Testament scholar” (pp. 34. 42), the “majority of contemporary theologians” (p. 34), “modem New Testament scholarship” (p. 91), “thoughtful Christians” (pp. 113, 159), “educated Christians” (p. 116), and “responsible scholarship” (p. 151). The former not only includes those who believe God created the world in, literally, seven days, but also those who believe in anything “supernatural”. The latter, obviously, are the new elite, the Pneumatikoi.

13 For a fuller account of the biblical notion that Jesus brings about changes in kind rather than in degree, see Weinandy, T., In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh: An Essay on the Humanity of Christ (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1993)Google Scholar.

14 Sec The Metaphor of God Incarnate, pp. 80–3.