The Ancient Poisons: Discernment Heresies of the New Testament

The second is an attitude that is self-centered, as contrasted with most religions which are God-centered. Gnostics do not generally worship God, but they meditate on the “god within.” Third, Gnosticism is subjective; it relies on personal revelations and continuous spiritual experiences with little or no concern for scripture, tradition or discernment.

St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (177-200), one of the earliest and ablest “Fathers” of the Church, spent much of his career fighting various Gnostics sects that were trying to infiltrate the churches. His great work, Against the Heretics (circa 180), shows us much about early Gnosticism.[19] Because of their subjectivity, Irenaeus found specific Gnostic ideas most difficult to categorize:

Since they disagree with one another in teaching and in tradition, and the more recent converts pretend to find something new every day and to produce what no one ever thought of, it is difficult to describe the opinions of each.[20]

Thus, like the Pharisees, the Gnostics should not be seen primarily as teachers of wrong ideas (although often their ideas are erroneous and bizarre). Rather, their radical non-discernment is the key to their destructiveness. With Gnosticism the value of the scriptures is debased and made subject to the latest vision or revelation.

Gnosticism is fatal to the human spirit (and thus a true heresy) principally because it obstructs a faith-trust relationship with God and Jesus. The person, cut off from trust in the scriptures, believes himself spiritually autonomous and a god. This is why meditation instead of prayer is the central spiritual activity of Gnostic sects. By universalizing the meaning of “Christ” as one who is enlightened, Gnosticism trivializes and cuts the worship relationship with Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ.

Gnosticism and Phariseeism are direct opposites. The Pharisee venerates the Scriptures and believes that his specific traditions are equal, or almost equal, to scripture. At the same time, the Pharisee is deeply suspicious of spiritual experiences he cannot locate within his traditions. The Gnostic has little use for either scripture or tradition. What is important for him is a steady flow of new visions, revelations and spiritual experiences. The Pharisees may believe that certain spiritual experiences or phenomenon are from the devil when they are really from God, and the Gnostic errs in the opposite way by believing everything they experience is from God, when in fact it is mostly self-delusion or from demonic sources. The Sadducees were out of this argument, as they would have claimed that spiritual experiences and visions were all self-delusional and not caused by spiritual agents.

 

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Notes

[1]Aside from Gnosticism, little work has been done by modern scholars in showing that these groups have had a permanent presence and influence on the Church. An exception is an insightful article by the Evangelical scholar, Craig Blomberg, “The New Testament Definition of Heresy (Or, When do Jesus and the Apostles really get mad?),” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 45:1 (March 2002), 59-72. Blomberg stresses the Judaizers as prototypes of modern legalists and ritualizers, close to what I term Pharisees, but only hints at the Gnostics as being present in New Testament times, missing the work of Walter Schmithals and others (see below).

[2] Another term for these heresies might be “epistemological heresies,” which would impress seminary professors and intimidate enemies, but is too technical for common usage.

Tags: ancient, discernment, featured, heresies, poisons, testament

Category: Church History, Winter 2018