Gnosis and Gnosticism
Extracts: Serge Hutin The Gnostics
The Gnosis, published by the EGA in 1909
Gnosis could be looked at in two aspects. Esoterically, it is a synthesis; it is a fusion with the Doctrine of Christ, the Tradition of the Patriarchs, preserved from time immemorial. Exoterically, its aspect is symbolic, it results from the juxtaposition, around Christianity and the Egyptian Tradition, from all the traditions derived from the patriarchical synthesis. It is that which explains that so much of the systems so different in appearance may be united under the name of "GNOSIS". Gnosis has taken the analytical form in order to be more in harmony with the Intellectualism of the West.
The Gnosis, published by the EGA in 1909
Gnosis could be looked at in two aspects. Esoterically, it is a synthesis; it is a fusion with the Doctrine of Christ, the Tradition of the Patriarchs, preserved from time immemorial. Exoterically, its aspect is symbolic, it results from the juxtaposition, around Christianity and the Egyptian Tradition, from all the traditions derived from the patriarchical synthesis. It is that which explains that so much of the systems so different in appearance may be united under the name of "GNOSIS". Gnosis has taken the analytical form in order to be more in harmony with the Intellectualism of the West.
Gnosis Takes Several Forms
Here are the great divisions in succession: Gnosticism's first form of Christianity which introduces several distinct periods in which diverse systems strain to be merged into only one. After Marcionism, Valentinianism, Ophitism. Barbeloism, Manicheism, Priscillanism, Valeism, finally arises Catharism which offers a complete synthesis proposing the return of the Primitive Church. However, in the first centuries of Christianity, a certain category of people had the pretention to monopolize, to exploit Christianity in arranging in their own way to forbid others from thinking differently from them. They sold Christianity to Caesar. They got hold of Temporal Authority. Then they employed this force against those who resisted. The Gnostics, faithful to Primitive Christianity, were persecuted more than others. After different atrocities, particularly: the crusade against the Cathars, Rome represented usurped spiritual power, it could make believe that Gnosis was annihilated and its tradition lost. There was not any truth to it. The Templars, contemporaries of the Cathars, had purified the Gnosis in going back to its true source, and they stood erect against Rome. Rome made them disappear. But their voluntary sacrifice gave an unseen soul to Gnosis. The RoseCruscians succeeded the Templars, and the Gnostic Chain was never broken. Thanks to Dr. Gerard Encausse (PAPUS), Jean Bricaud, Robert Ambelain, the Church exists today despite the trials which were not lacking. The Gnostic Church develops little by little but surely.
If "GNOSIS" signifies simply "KNOWLEDGE", Gnosticism differentiates itself from Gnosis in its doctrine, its religious attitude founded on the experience of the attainment of salvation through KNOWLEDGE. All Gnostic Christians claim to be linked with mysterious paths to secret teachings given by Jesus to his disciples: Basilides, claimed to have received from Mathias the esoteric doctrines revealed by the Savior to his Apostles. One credits the Gnostics to have put in circulation numerous Apocryphal Gospels. Gnosticism assures a sort of liaison, a bridge, between religions with a personal sentimental from and religions said to be impersonal and mystic. Everyone knows the famous passage of St. Paul often invoked by Christian esoterism. (2 Corinthians Chapter 12, verses 1 to 5) It is then by its characteristic of lived experience that Gnosticism manifests its true originality.
The Gnostic saves himself by KNOWLEDGE. Also we are lead to study its soterology.For him dualism is the basis for all cosmogony. In the same way that the Christian Church admits the existence of God, the good angels, the demons and Lucifer; the Gnostics believe in one duality. It is first the Demiurge Proto-Archon, the God Creator, well below the angels, the Archons, the Lords. They are all creatures resembling God, but they are not God. According to Marcion, for example, the doctrine of the Demiurge becomes a rigorous dualism: to the Creator of the visible world is opposed the unknown God, invisible stranger, hidden, and transcendent; the former is the just God of the Bible, the latter is the good God announced by the impassioned Christian gospel. Marcion left behind an unshakable postulate, the absolute truth of the gospel. Isn't it evident that Christ presents himself as the son of an unknown and supremely good God both at the same time? Marcion interprets the scriptures in the most literal fashion that could be: he is nothing of an allegorist, the opposite of the other great gnostics. For him the Old Testament is nothing but a succession of myths, still less a collection of lies: it tells a true but repulsive story, that of the tyrannical domination by the creator of the world and of mankind.
The Roman Church and Gnosticism
Gnosticism, remarks the Canon Christiani, renders a providential service to the Roman Church in obliging the faithful to stand close together around their shepherd and principally around the bishop. Eugene de Faye opposes this thesis. According to the former, the Roman Church would have transported saving grace in its bosom by the sacramental rites of the gnostic communities. In the Roman point of view, the gnostic crisis represented a mortal danger, even more formidable that the dogma was not established and there was no practical way to fight efficaciously against the clever propaganda written or oral of the gnostics who prided themselves in regular spiritual powers. To obviate this disadvantage the Roman Church ascribed to itself a sole ecclesiastical government and started mercilessly combatting the gnostics. Having become the state religion, Roman Catholicism will finish unfortunately by using detestable means (informants, call to arms, destruction of books...)against the gnostics; but such behavior was explained (instead of justifying it)by the retrospective fear for the tempting and encroaching gnosticism.
Catholic Esoterism
If the illumination of the heterodox gnostics had nothing Christian in its origin, it is necessary to recognize, on the other hand, the existence of a true esoterism in the Primitive Church. Does not one read, in the Gospel according to St. Mark: To you disciples, it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. But for the multitude, these things are told in parables that what they see, they do not understand and what they only hear, they understand nothing. (Mark 4:11-12)
Until the fourth century, the discipline of the ARCANE which progressively made the catechumens comply with the knowledge of the rites and doctrines was in practice in the Church. At the beginning of the fifth century, Synesius, bishop of Ptolemy wrote: The truth must be held secret and the masses need a teaching in proportion to their imperfect reason.
In the New Testament, esoterism shows itself more than one time, e.g.the tip of the ear, and certain mysterious formulas could not be explained by a literal exegis. The last of the books of the New Testament, the Apocalypse of St. John, is totally strange: the symbolism of the images and of the numbers plays a very large role, and one finds there an allusion to the doctrine of reincarnation from which the true Christian can escape The one who will conquer, I will make him a column in the temple of my God. He will never leave again.
In the Gospel according to St. John, we find allusions to the Divine Light about which the darkness understands nothing and a passage where a call is made to the knowledge which the Christian possesses: You worship declares Jesus to the Samaritan woman what you do not understand; as for us we worship what we know (John IV verse XXII)
In St. Paul, we find common doctrines of Primitive Christianity and of gnosis. The apostle himself made an appeal to the wisdom of God...which is hidden, that God foredained before the world for our glory and none of the Princes of the Archons, the rulers of this world, has known. St. Paul debated before Marcion against the law of Moses, of which the Commandments were qualified of "Ministry of the Dead, engraved in letters on stones" in opposition to the new law, "Ministry of the Spirit" announced by Jesus (1 Corinthians II v 7 and 8) Paul adopts the tripartite division of man "Body Soul Mind". Satan is the prince of this world, assisted by numerous powers. In the Paulinian perspective, man will succeed in a glorious body, when Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God (II Corinthians 2 verse 7). But St. Paul refuses to put on the Creator the responsibility of Evil and Original Sin. There exists a principal difference (independently from doctrinal opposition) between the esoterism of the Primitive Church and that expressed by the gnostic concept. Because for the latter, salvation is only offered to a handful of initiates, even though the church opens salvation to all, even to the minds less apt to understand the mysteries. In Catholic esoterism, it is not a question of examining thoroughly, of understanding the doctrines and the rites accessible to all the faithful.Among the post apostolic representatives of orthodox Christian esoterism of a true Gnosis, it is necessary to mention the illustrious names of Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Origen, in particular, who lived at the beginning of the third century, the head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, exercised a very important influence, in spite of the condemnation of his teaching by the Counsel held in 553. He taught the eternity of the creation and the infinite world of successive worlds, the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls and their fall in the body (to atone for their faults) the denial of the resurrection of the flesh; he taught equally the final universal restoration, the devil himself could be redeemed at the end of time (Reference Father Jean Danielou: Origen Paris 1948). After Origen, we find his disciple Gregory of Nyssa and the writings of the pseudo Denis the Aeropagite abruptly appeared in 533. The High Middle Ages were illuminated by the grandiose system of the Irishman Jean Scot Erigene, like CRETIO, succeeded the REVERSION or DEIFICATION of which the principal is the Christ, who by his final return will complete all things in God. St. Hildegarde de Bingen (1098-1178) about LIBER DIVINORUM OPERUM SIMPLICIS HOMINIS in which she recounted and commented on her theosophical visions, shows us the world enclosed by the "OBSCURE CIRCLE" which isolates the terrestrial world from the kingdom of the Divine Light: Hildergarde re-echoed the principal trait of the gnostic cosmology, the enclosing by the on high, of the terrestrial world, by means of the circle of dark fire, the domain of Lucifer stirred up, which introduces itself in the God of this world and menaces the execution of the work of salvation, in forbidding man access to this supracelestial world, to the "Otherworldly" God and his Son. Meister Eckart (born around 1260, died between February 1327 and the beginning of 1329) is the very famous name of the German mystic of the Middle Ages. His influence was very prodigious. Catholic esoterism did not disappear with the coming of modern Europe. One finds it in eminent representatives throughout the 20th century. It is curious to establish that a thinker like Father Teilhard de Chardin, coming from the fields of biology and anthropology finished by joining with the great gnostic points of view. It is dependent on this point, that the authentic diverse religious traditions are different reflections of the same truth.
On the subject of the Gnostic Church properly stated, its history, its ethics, its asceticism, its doctrine, see the studies of Mgr Herard, Primate of North American and of Mgr. Fieschi, Primate of the French.
Translated from the French
Under the Auspices of
Monseigneur Robert M. Cokinis
Presiding Bishop of the Midwest
Ecclesia Gnostica Apostolica Catholica
Here are the great divisions in succession: Gnosticism's first form of Christianity which introduces several distinct periods in which diverse systems strain to be merged into only one. After Marcionism, Valentinianism, Ophitism. Barbeloism, Manicheism, Priscillanism, Valeism, finally arises Catharism which offers a complete synthesis proposing the return of the Primitive Church. However, in the first centuries of Christianity, a certain category of people had the pretention to monopolize, to exploit Christianity in arranging in their own way to forbid others from thinking differently from them. They sold Christianity to Caesar. They got hold of Temporal Authority. Then they employed this force against those who resisted. The Gnostics, faithful to Primitive Christianity, were persecuted more than others. After different atrocities, particularly: the crusade against the Cathars, Rome represented usurped spiritual power, it could make believe that Gnosis was annihilated and its tradition lost. There was not any truth to it. The Templars, contemporaries of the Cathars, had purified the Gnosis in going back to its true source, and they stood erect against Rome. Rome made them disappear. But their voluntary sacrifice gave an unseen soul to Gnosis. The RoseCruscians succeeded the Templars, and the Gnostic Chain was never broken. Thanks to Dr. Gerard Encausse (PAPUS), Jean Bricaud, Robert Ambelain, the Church exists today despite the trials which were not lacking. The Gnostic Church develops little by little but surely.
If "GNOSIS" signifies simply "KNOWLEDGE", Gnosticism differentiates itself from Gnosis in its doctrine, its religious attitude founded on the experience of the attainment of salvation through KNOWLEDGE. All Gnostic Christians claim to be linked with mysterious paths to secret teachings given by Jesus to his disciples: Basilides, claimed to have received from Mathias the esoteric doctrines revealed by the Savior to his Apostles. One credits the Gnostics to have put in circulation numerous Apocryphal Gospels. Gnosticism assures a sort of liaison, a bridge, between religions with a personal sentimental from and religions said to be impersonal and mystic. Everyone knows the famous passage of St. Paul often invoked by Christian esoterism. (2 Corinthians Chapter 12, verses 1 to 5) It is then by its characteristic of lived experience that Gnosticism manifests its true originality.
The Gnostic saves himself by KNOWLEDGE. Also we are lead to study its soterology.For him dualism is the basis for all cosmogony. In the same way that the Christian Church admits the existence of God, the good angels, the demons and Lucifer; the Gnostics believe in one duality. It is first the Demiurge Proto-Archon, the God Creator, well below the angels, the Archons, the Lords. They are all creatures resembling God, but they are not God. According to Marcion, for example, the doctrine of the Demiurge becomes a rigorous dualism: to the Creator of the visible world is opposed the unknown God, invisible stranger, hidden, and transcendent; the former is the just God of the Bible, the latter is the good God announced by the impassioned Christian gospel. Marcion left behind an unshakable postulate, the absolute truth of the gospel. Isn't it evident that Christ presents himself as the son of an unknown and supremely good God both at the same time? Marcion interprets the scriptures in the most literal fashion that could be: he is nothing of an allegorist, the opposite of the other great gnostics. For him the Old Testament is nothing but a succession of myths, still less a collection of lies: it tells a true but repulsive story, that of the tyrannical domination by the creator of the world and of mankind.
The Roman Church and Gnosticism
Gnosticism, remarks the Canon Christiani, renders a providential service to the Roman Church in obliging the faithful to stand close together around their shepherd and principally around the bishop. Eugene de Faye opposes this thesis. According to the former, the Roman Church would have transported saving grace in its bosom by the sacramental rites of the gnostic communities. In the Roman point of view, the gnostic crisis represented a mortal danger, even more formidable that the dogma was not established and there was no practical way to fight efficaciously against the clever propaganda written or oral of the gnostics who prided themselves in regular spiritual powers. To obviate this disadvantage the Roman Church ascribed to itself a sole ecclesiastical government and started mercilessly combatting the gnostics. Having become the state religion, Roman Catholicism will finish unfortunately by using detestable means (informants, call to arms, destruction of books...)against the gnostics; but such behavior was explained (instead of justifying it)by the retrospective fear for the tempting and encroaching gnosticism.
Catholic Esoterism
If the illumination of the heterodox gnostics had nothing Christian in its origin, it is necessary to recognize, on the other hand, the existence of a true esoterism in the Primitive Church. Does not one read, in the Gospel according to St. Mark: To you disciples, it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. But for the multitude, these things are told in parables that what they see, they do not understand and what they only hear, they understand nothing. (Mark 4:11-12)
Until the fourth century, the discipline of the ARCANE which progressively made the catechumens comply with the knowledge of the rites and doctrines was in practice in the Church. At the beginning of the fifth century, Synesius, bishop of Ptolemy wrote: The truth must be held secret and the masses need a teaching in proportion to their imperfect reason.
In the New Testament, esoterism shows itself more than one time, e.g.the tip of the ear, and certain mysterious formulas could not be explained by a literal exegis. The last of the books of the New Testament, the Apocalypse of St. John, is totally strange: the symbolism of the images and of the numbers plays a very large role, and one finds there an allusion to the doctrine of reincarnation from which the true Christian can escape The one who will conquer, I will make him a column in the temple of my God. He will never leave again.
In the Gospel according to St. John, we find allusions to the Divine Light about which the darkness understands nothing and a passage where a call is made to the knowledge which the Christian possesses: You worship declares Jesus to the Samaritan woman what you do not understand; as for us we worship what we know (John IV verse XXII)
In St. Paul, we find common doctrines of Primitive Christianity and of gnosis. The apostle himself made an appeal to the wisdom of God...which is hidden, that God foredained before the world for our glory and none of the Princes of the Archons, the rulers of this world, has known. St. Paul debated before Marcion against the law of Moses, of which the Commandments were qualified of "Ministry of the Dead, engraved in letters on stones" in opposition to the new law, "Ministry of the Spirit" announced by Jesus (1 Corinthians II v 7 and 8) Paul adopts the tripartite division of man "Body Soul Mind". Satan is the prince of this world, assisted by numerous powers. In the Paulinian perspective, man will succeed in a glorious body, when Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God (II Corinthians 2 verse 7). But St. Paul refuses to put on the Creator the responsibility of Evil and Original Sin. There exists a principal difference (independently from doctrinal opposition) between the esoterism of the Primitive Church and that expressed by the gnostic concept. Because for the latter, salvation is only offered to a handful of initiates, even though the church opens salvation to all, even to the minds less apt to understand the mysteries. In Catholic esoterism, it is not a question of examining thoroughly, of understanding the doctrines and the rites accessible to all the faithful.Among the post apostolic representatives of orthodox Christian esoterism of a true Gnosis, it is necessary to mention the illustrious names of Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Origen, in particular, who lived at the beginning of the third century, the head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, exercised a very important influence, in spite of the condemnation of his teaching by the Counsel held in 553. He taught the eternity of the creation and the infinite world of successive worlds, the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls and their fall in the body (to atone for their faults) the denial of the resurrection of the flesh; he taught equally the final universal restoration, the devil himself could be redeemed at the end of time (Reference Father Jean Danielou: Origen Paris 1948). After Origen, we find his disciple Gregory of Nyssa and the writings of the pseudo Denis the Aeropagite abruptly appeared in 533. The High Middle Ages were illuminated by the grandiose system of the Irishman Jean Scot Erigene, like CRETIO, succeeded the REVERSION or DEIFICATION of which the principal is the Christ, who by his final return will complete all things in God. St. Hildegarde de Bingen (1098-1178) about LIBER DIVINORUM OPERUM SIMPLICIS HOMINIS in which she recounted and commented on her theosophical visions, shows us the world enclosed by the "OBSCURE CIRCLE" which isolates the terrestrial world from the kingdom of the Divine Light: Hildergarde re-echoed the principal trait of the gnostic cosmology, the enclosing by the on high, of the terrestrial world, by means of the circle of dark fire, the domain of Lucifer stirred up, which introduces itself in the God of this world and menaces the execution of the work of salvation, in forbidding man access to this supracelestial world, to the "Otherworldly" God and his Son. Meister Eckart (born around 1260, died between February 1327 and the beginning of 1329) is the very famous name of the German mystic of the Middle Ages. His influence was very prodigious. Catholic esoterism did not disappear with the coming of modern Europe. One finds it in eminent representatives throughout the 20th century. It is curious to establish that a thinker like Father Teilhard de Chardin, coming from the fields of biology and anthropology finished by joining with the great gnostic points of view. It is dependent on this point, that the authentic diverse religious traditions are different reflections of the same truth.
On the subject of the Gnostic Church properly stated, its history, its ethics, its asceticism, its doctrine, see the studies of Mgr Herard, Primate of North American and of Mgr. Fieschi, Primate of the French.
Translated from the French
Under the Auspices of
Monseigneur Robert M. Cokinis
Presiding Bishop of the Midwest
Ecclesia Gnostica Apostolica Catholica