Horizon

I successfully resisted the urge to compare the Herodotus quote about gold and one-eyed griffins to pre-iraq-invasion news stories, but here I feel justified in pointing out that none of this is surprising if you think of the battles over orthodoxy to be political ones rather than rational ones. Which they certainly were, weren't they? Look around at political discourse today: it's no better.

But as for your point about the gnostics accepting the claim of "apostolicity", I'd like to hear more. It seems to me that Jesus is saying here that they are apostles of a false or minor god. I haven't read it so maybe I am missing the context.

And what does it really have to do with the doctrine of apostolic succession? That authenticity of the apostles is necessary but far from sufficient to justify this doctrine, it seems to me.

Thanks, Ben. I don't have time to read this now, so please hold forth.

It appears to me that, if one can take this passage as representative, one of the charges of the gnostics was that the orthodox Christians -- those who adhered to apostolic succession -- had not sufficiently broken with Judaism. Both Judaism (prior to the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem) and orthodox Christianity (in the mass or holy communion) practiced altar sacrifice. Whether gnosticism rejected altar sacrifice altogether or not I don't know. More importantly, the passage suggests to me, at least, that the apostolic Christians worshipped the false g_d of historic Judaism, who the gnostics arrayed against the true g_d of their secret knowledge.

[N]one of this is surprising if you think of the battles over orthodoxy to be political ones rather than rational ones. Which they certainly were, weren't they?

In some sense, but largely they were battles fought using rational arguments about history, philosphy, exegesis, and morality. A lot of popularly-read commenters view the disputes between Gnostics, Marcionites, Donatists, and Montanists to be entirely political (thus ahistorical), and it leads them into what are in my view some rather embarrasing mistakes (elaboration upon request).

The modern style of talking-past-each-other tends to simply not engage with the same issues. In the week that saw both the Danish cartoon protests and the Gonzales wiretapping testimony in Congress, you could rest completely unaware of one of those issues while reading extensive coverage of the other, depending on which side of the blogosphere you were reading. The Gnostic condemnation of the orthodox by projecting the conflict onto the apostles is different, because it grants the other side's point in establishing its own claim to superiority, saying "sure you're descended from the apostles as you claim -- that's your whole problem!"

The Gnostics, like the Montanists, were laying claim to authenticity outside of the orthodox criterion of institutional continuity with the Apostles. However, rather than declaring that the orthodox church was not the instutional heir to the Apostolic church, they condemned the orthodox through that very continuity -- by having Jesus condemn the apostles for doing things very similar to the contemporary (orthodox) church practice.

The only parallel that comes to mind is the rhetoric you sometimes see on the Right, responding to Democratic criticism of wiretapping in service of the war. The response not being an attempt to demonstrate better respect for civil liberties by Republicans, but rather something like "Yes, and you were on the wrong side during the Civil War too, making the same civil liberties claim."

It seems to me that Jesus is saying here that they are apostles of a false or minor god.

That's precisely it, and is at the core of Gnostic cosmology. Within the Christian strain of Gnosticism, it's an attempt to reconcile the God-is-Love stuff of Christianity with all the smiting of the Hebrew bible. Their conclusion (or rather the simpler conclusion of the Marcionites that influneced the Gnostics) was that these are actually two different deities altogether.

The Gnostics elaborated upon this conclusion with the vulgar Platonic notion that divinity equals the eternal and ineffable, but that the material world can have nothing at all to do with the eternal. So you get all these complicated immanations, where the ineffable, eternal Father produces slightly less ineffable, slightly less eternal Aeons, who in turn produce progressively less "divine" sprit beings. Eventually you end up with the creation of the material world, which takes the place of the Fall in Gnosticism. In some varieties, Creation itself is an aborted Aeon, while in others, the wicked Demiurge creates the universe, then rules it as the Hebrew God.

It appears to me that, if one can take this passage as representative, one of the charges of the gnostics was that the orthodox Christians -- those who adhered to apostolic succession -- had not sufficiently broken with Judaism.

Ah, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of that.

A lot of popularly-read commenters view the disputes between Gnostics, Marcionites, Donatists, and Montanists to be entirely political (thus ahistorical), and it leads them into what are in my view some rather embarrasing mistakes (elaboration upon request).

Sure, hold forth.

But perhaps I didn't say what I really meant. By "political" I didn't mean that they were simply jockying for power in a cynical way, if that's what you mean. I merely meant that a fair amount of what I've read (and it's not that much, admittedly) amounted to name calling and fairly specious, non-serious engagement with the other side, such texts being written presumably for those who already agreed with the author and in that sense similar to politics today.

The Gnostics, like the Montanists, were laying claim to authenticity outside of the orthodox criterion of institutional continuity with the Apostles.

...and like virtually every form of Christianity subsequently suppressed by what became catholicism, right?

Isn't calling this orthodox in this context something of an anachronism? IIRC, the date range for this text is in the neighborhood of the writing of John, at least by some theories.

...and like virtually every form of Christianity subsequently suppressed by what became catholicism, right?

Including protestants of course, though they fared better.

Isn't calling this orthodox in this context something of an anachronism?

Thus the lower-case "orthodox" rather than "Orthodox". I'm not especially fond of conventions that depend upon punctuation, but the convention is for opponents-of-X-who-eventually-won to be represented as either "orthodox" or "catholic" or (sometimes) "proto-orthodox" in the literature I've read.

[I]f one can take this passage as representative. . .

To be quite honest, a truly representative passage from any of the Gnostic texts would probably be "then Monogenes . . . and . . . of the Ogdoad . . . said". The chunk I quoted is far more easily comprehensible than average, both because it isn't fragmentary and because its content deals with the narrative we're used to.

More importantly, the passage suggests to me, at least, that the apostolic Christians worshipped the false g_d of historic Judaism, who the gnostics arrayed against the true g_d of their secret knowledge.

I'd be hesitant to go quite that far, in that while the Gnostics believed that appearances of God in the Old Testament were usually appearances of the Demiurge, they acknowledged some certain apparitions to be divine revelations of the Father. They were also fairly notorious for blending into orthodox Christian groups — whether you interpret this as infiltration by an alien body or legitimate membership in an organization they were purged from — and (from what I recall) viewed the orthodox to possess the public (but not the secret) teaching of Jesus. This public teaching was partly a worship of the Father, and partly a worship of the Creator in their view. Their Gnosis was required to sort the two out.

So, in summary, I wouldn't say that this document condemns Christians of worshiping the Demiurge per se, rather that they're worshiping the Demiurge by their particular Eucharistic observances.

Incidentally, what's up with the underscores, Ralph?

I've said my share of "haShem"s in Hebrew class out of politeness, and am down with Cyprian of Carthage regarding the appropriateness of monotheists using a proper name for the deity, but have seen this all over the net lately and been puzzled. What gives?

Thus the lower-case "orthodox" rather than "Orthodox". I'm not especially fond of conventions that depend upon punctuation, but the convention is for opponents-of-X-who-eventually-won to be represented as either "orthodox" or "catholic" or (sometimes) "proto-orthodox" in the literature I've read.

So you would say that there was an "orthodox" church at this time, different from the eventually capitalized one in that it hadn't won over other forms at this point?

So you would say that there was an "orthodox" church at this time, different from the eventually capitalized one in that it hadn't won over other forms at this point?

Well, yes. Mind you I'd also say that victory wasn't quite the only difference between the "orthodox"/proto-Orthodox church of the 2nd/3rd century and (say) the Orthodox/Catholic church of the 5th century.

That said, both the winners and losers of e.g. the monophysite controversies of the 5th century both can claim a criteria of continuity with the 2nd-century patristic church that is nearly identical with the criterion of continuity that the proto-Orthodox of the 2nd/3rd centuries were claiming with the apostolic church of the 1st century. You'd expect this, as they're each lineal descendants of the victor of the 2nd century battles, but my whole point here is that the Gnostics weren't even trying to fit themselves within that criterion.

The whole set of 2nd century arguments about what Pelikan refers to as "the criteria of apostolic continuity" are fascinating, as they're really a debate over whether authenticity is granted by history or something altogether different. It's a bit like the modern-day discussions you see about whether or not the Republican Party of 2006 is really the "Party of Lincoln."

The whole set of 2nd century arguments about what Pelikan refers to as "the criteria of apostolic continuity" are fascinating, as they're really a debate over whether authenticity is granted by history or something altogether different. It's a bit like the modern-day discussions you see about whether or not the Republican Party of 2006 is really the "Party of Lincoln."

I have no doubt you know more about this than I will ever know, but my impression is that this rejection of apostolic succession was never exactly settled, in the sense that there have been, continually, groups which flatly deny the doctrine throughout the history of Christianity. Would you agree? And, if so, what makes its rejection by the person/people who wrote this gospel odd?

Also, it would be nice if you'd write a little about the label "gnostic", as I've heard it said that it is highly misleading to think of the sects traditionally subsumed under that term as being a coherent bloc.

[M]y impression is that this rejection of apostolic succession was never exactly settled, in the sense that there have been, continually, groups which flatly deny the doctrine throughout the history of Christianity. Would you agree?

I'd certainly agree that apostolic succession has been unsettled in the past and is today, with the caveat that I'm aware of no serious challenges to it between 250 and 1500 AD. Apostolic succession is both more and less than the whole story here, however.

The assertions made by the orthodox in the second century are usually described as triangular (or sometimes three-pointed circular reasoning), but for what we're discussing I'll concentrate on two points only. The first claim is what we've been describing as "apostolic succession", but really is an undeveloped kernel of that doctrine. What the orthodox asserted was that their visible, institutional churches had institutional continuity with the churches established by the Apostles.

This is a specifically historical claim, and they supported it with tedious historical argumentation — citing a sort of instututional genealogy of their leadership that led back to an individual apostle. These were of the form "Clementius is the current head of the church in Ephesus, and he replaced Anastasius (154-183), who replaced Linus (121-154), who replaced ..... who replaced Paul who originally founded this church on his way from Antioch to Athens."

The second claim made by the orthodox was that they were teaching what the Apostles taught, as evidenced by comparing their teaching to the creeds that everyone agreed antedated them by enough years to possess some authority.

Let's look at the response to this line of reasoning by the (non-Gnostic) Montanists to see how you might expect such a debate to play out: The Montanists were a group much like modern Pentecostals — a group that split from the orthodox church, led by charismatic leaders. They were "rigorist" in that they followed much stricter behavioral codes than the orthodox did, and practiced what they called prophecy, which I assume means glossolalia.

Montanists pointed to their own genealogy of leadership from the orthodox church in Phrygia they split off from, claiming (probably reasonably) that it was as valid as any of the orthodox churches. They also pointed to the fact that their doctrine did not conflict with anything in the various creeds or gospels. But what's important about them is that they laid claim to a different criterion of apostolic continuity. They looked at the evidence of "prophecy" in the early church (as spoken of by Paul, or in Acts), and claimed that its presence among themselves and its absence among their orthodox opponents as proof of their continuity with the Apostolic Church. They're saying "we fit your criterion A and B, but we also fit criterion C — which you fail."

This is almost equivalent to saying "Sure the Republicans advocated equal rights in the 1870s, but we Democrats are the real heirs of Lincoln because we're advocating equal rights now."

And, if so, what makes its rejection by the person/people who wrote this gospel odd?

If you define down Apostolic Succession to the sort of institutional continuity I'm talking about, what's interesting is that the Gnostics didn't reject it at all. They're saying: "Yes, your churches descend from the apostles. Yes, your churches teach what the apostles taught. But what the apostles taught was the public teaching, a pack of humanistic love-thy-neighbor mumbo-jumbo. The real Truth is that your spirit came from the Realm of Barbelo, and can't return until you understand that and memorize these mystical passwords. Your church teachings are wrong because your churches descend from the apostles and teach what they taught."

Also, it would be nice if you'd write a little about the label "gnostic", as I've heard it said that it is highly misleading to think of the sects traditionally subsumed under that term as being a coherent bloc.

From what I understand, both the label "gnosis" and the beliefs of those referred to as "Gnostics" are hard to pin down. The label itself appears to have been used within both orthodox and heterodox communities (to whatever extent they were separate) in the second century to refer to their teachings. Clement of Alexandria is the last orthodox writer (early 3rd century) to try to lay claim to the term, and writes so defensively as to think the battle for terminology had been lost already.

The battles over terminology still exist: see the Wikipedia article's section "Gnosticism as a potentially flawed category" for more.

See also the " History of Gnosticism" article at Wikipedia.

I'm really pretty impressed by the Gnosticism articles in Wikipedia — don't know whether they were lifted from somewhere else or the result of a concerted effort, but they're certainly well above what you'd expect.