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A Comparative Analysis of Gnostic and United Church Theologies

By Carman Bradley
 

Orthodoxy, the English equivalent of Greek orthodoxia (from orthos, “right,” and doxa, “opinion”) means right belief, as opposed to heresy or heterodoxy.  The term is not Biblical; no secular or Christian writer uses it before the second century, though orthodoxien is used by Aristotle.  The word expresses the idea that certain statements accurately embody the revealed truth content of Christianity, and are therefore in their own nature normative for the universal church.  This idea is rooted in the New Testament insistence that the Gospel has a specific factual and theological content and that no fellowship exists between those who accept the apostolic standard of Christological teaching and those who deny it.  Paul wrote to the Christians at Corinth:
 

Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the Gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.  By this Gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you.  Otherwise, you have believed in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:1-2).
 

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.  For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?  Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?  What harmony is there between Christ and Belial?  What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?  What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?  For we are the temple of the living God.  As God has said: I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.  Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord” ( 2 Corinthians 6:14-17). [Note: NIV Study Bible footnote states, “For Corinthian believers to cooperate with false teachers, who were really servants of Satan, notwithstanding their charming and persuasive ways, is to become unequally yoked, destroying the harmony and fellowship that unite them in Christ.”]
 

At Colassae in Asia Minor, Paul met with perhaps the gravest heresy threatening the early Church.  This was the syncretistic blending of Christianity with theosophical elements drawn from the mystery cults and partly from heterodox Judaism.  According to Henry Chadwick author of The Early Church this heresy belonged to the general category commonly labeled “Gnosticism.”[i]  This is a generic term used primarily to refer to theosophical adaptations of Christianity propagated by sects which broke with the early Church between 80-150 A.D..  The term Gnosticism is derived from the ordinary Greek word for knowledge (gnosis).  The second century sects claimed to possess a special “knowledge” which transcended the simple faith of the Church.  The Gnostic initiate was taught to acknowledge no responsibilities.  According to Kurt Rudolph, author of Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnoticism, the traditional Church accused the Gnostics of deceit and falsehood declaring the supernatural cause of Gnostic teaching to be Satan himself, who sought to corrupt the Church.[ii]
 

Gnostic tradition frequently drew its material from varied existing traditions, attached itself to them, and at the same time set it in a new frame by which this material took on a new character and a completely new significance.  This “anything goes” theology was anathema to the early Church, as it should be today.  The period between 150 and 250 A.D. was evidently a high point in the debate between the Christian church and the Gnostics.  According to Kurt Rudolph, there was no “Gnostic church” or normative theology, no Gnostic rule of faith nor any dogma of exclusive importance.  No limits were set to free representation and theological speculation so far as they lay within the framework of the Gnostic worldview - that God is forever unknown.  In all but one sect, there was no Gnostic canon of scripture (authorized text).  In libertine sects, the adherent was seen as a new kind of person who is subjugated neither by the obligations nor the criteria of the present world.  Historian H. Jonas writes that the Gnostic in contrast to the orthodox Christian:
 

…is free from the law - in a quite different sense from that of the Pauline Christian - and the unrestrained use of this freedom is not just a matter of a negative license but a positive realization of this freedom itself.  This ‘anarchism’ then was stamped by a ‘determined resentment against the prevailing rules of life,’ and by ‘obstinate defiance of the demands of the divine cosmic powers who are the guardians of the old moral order.[iii]
 

Gnosticism culminates in the assumption of a new unknown God, who dwells beyond all visible creation and is proclaimed the real lord of the universe.  Gnosticism is a religion of self-redemption, one is already redeemed, all that is necessary to achieve salvation (freedom) is knowledge.  The Gnostic gospel, Thomas 22, reads:
 

When you make the two one, and when you make the inmost as the outermost and the outer as the inner and the above as the below, and when you make the male and female into a single unity, so that male will not be only male and the female will not be only female, when you create eyes in the place of an eye, and create a hand in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and also an image in the place of an image, then surely will you enter the kingdom[iv].
 

Gnostic redemption is deliverance from the world and the body through wisdom, not as in Christianity from sin and guilt by Christ’s atoning sacrifice.  That the Christian Gnostics considered themselves to be Christian and not pagan, and were using the name, severely vexed their ecclesiastical rivals.  Rudolph writes that the Church Fathers commented on the Carpocration Gnostics:
 

[They] are so abandoned in their recklessness that they claim to have in their power and to be able to practice anything whatsoever that is ungodly (irreligious) and impious.  They say that conduct is good and evil only in the opinion of men…according to their scriptures they maintain that their souls should have every enjoyment in life, so that when they depart they are deficient in nothing.[v]
 

Subsequently, the Fathers of the Church simply traced the rise of Gnosis to the devil.  The classic formulation of this view was made by the father of ecclesiastical historiography, Eusebuis of Caesarea (ca. 264-339), in his Ecclesiastical History:
 

Like brilliant lamps the churches were now shining throughout the world, and faith in our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ was flourishing among all mankind, when the devil who hates what is good, as the enemy of truth, ever most hostile to man’s salvation, turned all his devices against the church.  Formerly he had used persecutions from without as his weapon against her, but now that he was excluded from this he employed wicked men and sorcerers, like baleful weapons and ministers of destruction against the soul, and conducted his campaign by other measures, plotting by every means that sorcerers and deceivers might assume the same name as our religion and at one time lead to the depth of destruction those of the faithful whom they caught, and that others, by the deeds which they undertook, might turn from the path to the saving word those ignorant of the faith.
 

According to Chadwick, the Church’s defense against these anti-Christian forces was threefold.  The first defense against Gnosticism was developed in the idea of orthodoxy through succession from the apostles.  Against any heretical claim to possess new and varying revelations of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, there was the clear argument that Christ would not have failed to impart such wisdom to Peter and Paul and that these apostles would have shared such doctrines through the line of accredited Church teachers.  The succession argument was key for two reasons.  First, the faithful were thereby in some sense assured that revelation was knowable as retrospective historical fact.  Second, it enabled defenders of orthodoxy to oppose the proliferating Gnostic sects, with the concept a one true church unanimous in its possession of an immutable revelation.  The second weapon of orthodox defense was the gradual formation of the New Testament canon.  The controversy with the Gnostics gave sharp impetus to control the authentic tradition which a written document possessed and which oral tradition did not.  The contemporary version of these two defenses is to hold to the authority of the Bible over abject revisionism.  The third and last weapon against heresy was the “Rule of Faith,” a title used to mean a short summary of the main revelatory events of the redemptive process.  The crux of the creed for polemical purposes lies in the assertion of the unity of the divine plan from Old Testament to New.  Gnostic heretics did not believe in the God detailed in the Old Testament and with their low valuation of the Old Testament, were not interested in the fulfillment of prophecy.  [Today Christian creedal statements still have the value of anchoring the faith of adherents and exposing heterodoxy, although the traditional creeds need to be augmented in detail to counteract religious liberalism.]
 

There is one single point, with which the orthodox can agree with the liberal theologian Rev. Dr. John Shelby Spong: “it matters how one thinks of God.”  Theology affects our faith and the theology of the UCC, to the extent that it can be identified (and unmasked) is as unique from Christianity as Gnosticism was found to be by the first and second century apologists.  Moreover, UCC theology is the equivalent threat to Christianity today that Gnosticism was to the early Church.  Christians are called to confront heretical doctrines and when the teachings persist, to separate from those giving false witness.  The “Rule of Faith” action plan taken by the early Church is a sound model for dealing with apostate denominations (and individuals) that falsely claim to be Christian.  StandForGod.Org proclaims a comprehensive Christian Worldview (as an augmented creedal statement) for protecting the right faith in contemporary times.  It is crucial to compare the extent of UCC apostasy with Gnosticism to recognize the deception and danger existing within Canadian Christendom.
 

The word “apostasy” comes from the Greek apostasia, a late form of apostasies, originally to desert a post or station in life.  Apostasy is a “falling away” to the revelation of the man of sin, or Antichrist, a passing over to unbelief.  Apostasy is dissolution of the union with God subsisting through faith in Jesus Christ.  The risks of apostasy are well documented:
 

But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you.  They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them – bringing swift destruction on themselves.  Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. (2 Peter 2:1-2)
 

If we deliberately keep on sinning [NIV Study Bible: committing the sin of apostasy] after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that would consume the enemies of God.  Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.  How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sacrificed him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? (Hebrews 10:26-29) [NIV Study Bible: to reject Christ’s sacrifice for sins is to reject the only sacrifice; there is no other.]
 

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