Gnosticism or Orthodoxy: What’s More Attractive? Responding to Alex O’Connor & Justin Sledge

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1. 0:00

   Alex O'Connor

   There were some significant Christian communities who believed this. This wasn't some kind of crazy heretic who gets condemned. These are like communities of people who really think this is the way to interpret the existence of God and Jesus.

2. 0:12

   Michael Horton

   The problem with Gnosticism is it's very anti-nature, anti-body, anti-creation, and anti-the God of creation religion. That's why it was never accepted in Christianity.

3. 0:27

   Justin Sledge

   Dualism in general is an attractive solution at first. I think it creates more problems than it solves. Or it creates another set of problems where now the world is evil and human bodies are bad. And can you have an ecologically positive idea about, you know, saving the planet or taking care of your body if you're—all matter is fundamentally evil?

4. 0:44

   Michael Horton

   If you're a materialist, how can you say, as the Gnostics did, that matter is evil? If you believe that matter is all there is, then you mean all there is is evil?

5. 0:55

   Justin Sledge

   A history that leaves out the mess isn't really a history. History is messy. And we should be unsurprised that the history of Christianity is actually quite messy.

6. 1:03

   Michael Horton

   Yeah, right. He's absolutely right about study of history. Absolutely. History is messy. But the point is, there was an orthodoxy before the Gnostics came along that was defined by the scriptural canon. Christianity was defined over against these heresies, and the Gnostics themselves recognized that and didn't want any part of the great church.

7. 01:36

   Michael Horton

   Hi, my name is Mike Horton, and I teach theology and apologetics. And, you know, somebody I've really gotten to like lately is Alex O'Connor. Love watching his interviews and his reasoning skills. He's an atheist, but he really has some fantastic insights into some of the problems that atheism has as well. He's interviewing in this program, we're going to take a look at Dr. Justin Sledge. Dr. Sledge is an advocate of Gnosticism and mysticism and magic and so forth. So we're going to take a look at what Alex O'Connor thinks of this take on things.

8. 2:13

   Alex O'Connor

   I must say that the more I learn about Gnosticism, and it's always been like adjacent to the stuff that I've been doing, but I've never really done a deep dive, but I've been trying to learn as much as I can recently about it. And, you know, my friend recently said to me that a lot of this is interesting for the same reason The Da Vinci Code was so popular. There's this sort of secret knowledge and you sort of have to resist a little bit against that because it is a bit fun. It is a bit sort of radical and interesting. But I must say that also realizing that there were some significant Christian communities who believed this, this wasn't some kind of crazy heretic who gets condemned. These are like communities of people who really think this is the way to interpret the existence of God and Jesus. I must say that it seems to me a much more attractive prospect than the Christianity that we've inherited. I mean, a lot of my criticisms of Christianity and a lot of the reasons why I would say that it doesn't make sense to me as a worldview have to do with things like the problem of evil and divine hiddenness and pointing to Old Testament atrocities. I talk about this kind of stuff all the time.

9. 3:14

   Michael Horton

   The problem with Gnosticism is its answer to the problem of evil. Their answer was matter, that the reason there is evil in the world is because there's matter in the world. And the God of the Old Testament who created matter is the evil god. We're not looking for the resurrection of the body, looking forward rather to our divine self within us finally escaping this prison house of flesh. It's a very anti-nature, anti-body, anti-creation, and anti-the God of creation religion. That's why it was never accepted in Christianity. Gnostics themselves referred to the great church, which they thought was filled with reprobates. They didn't have the higher knowledge that they had from these supposed revelations that their favorite prophet received supposedly from Jesus or John or Mary and so forth. There was absolutely no agreement among these Gnostic groups because they picked their own psychopomp to represent their own theology, and they were never organized into any group. They were called after the names of their leaders, and soon they would die out and another one would take their place. But they all referred to the great church. There was an orthodox church, a church that was gathered around the scriptures, around the gospel. They had a canon, which means a rule, The Holy Scriptures, and that was the only basis for their unity. That's what held them together as one church, those scriptures. The Gnostics claimed that these various oral traditions that came down from their favorite disciple were additions, were revelations beyond the Bible. They also believed they were against the New Testament. The Gnostic Gospels quote the canonical Gospels and then say, but it's not like that. So it isn't as if there were Christian communities that were kind of broad and sort of like today where you have everything from liberal to conservative. And the Gnostics were considered heretics. Even pagans in the 2nd century, like Celsus, philosopher who really disliked Christianity immensely, distinguished between the Gnostics and the Christians. A lot of people today who basically are ex-Christians and they're scholars, maybe they were raised Roman Catholic or Protestant or what, but they are spiritual but not religious. And they use their scholarship to try to make Christianity one option among many in the ancient world. And that just isn't the case. Christianity stuck out like a sore thumb. Gnosticism didn't. Gnosticism made sense to Greeks. Christianity didn't.

10. 6:21

    Alex O'Connor

    And all of that kind of melts away if you can just attribute all of that to a creator demiurge and say that Jesus cuts through. It's fascinating and troubling and really interesting. And hopefully, to those listening who have been interested in this little bit at the end here, it's something that we'll be diving into a lot more.

11. 6:39

    Michael Horton

    I find it really intriguing that I believe Alex O'Connor is a materialist. He's an atheist—would ordinarily make someone a materialist. But how, if you're a materialist, how can you say, as the Gnostics did, that matter isn't real or that matter is evil? If you believe that matter is all there is, then you mean all there is is evil?

12. 7:11

    Justin Sledge

    Gnostic dualism, dualism in general is an attractive solution at first. I think it creates more problems than it solves, or it creates another set of problems where now the world is evil and human bodies are bad. Can you have an ecologically positive idea about saving the planet or taking care of your body if all matter is fundamentally evil? It generates another set of problems. And in fact, even other pagans didn't like Gnosticism. Platonus wrote a whole book against them because he thought they really missed the mark. It does solve at least the problem of evil. It does provide an elegant solution to the problem of evil in a way that feels much more tactile than Augustine's solution, that evil is just a privation, it's not really real. That doesn't—go tell someone who's been violently attacked that what they're experiencing is a privation. It's not going to really land. The Gnostic solution does give some better chops to it. And to your point earlier, these are big communities. I mean, Irenaeus wrote his book because Valentinus nearly became the Bishop of Rome.

13. 8:16

    Alex O'Connor

    Yeah. Valentinus, that is the sort of classic Gnostic writer and thinker.

14. 8:21

    Justin Sledge

    Marcion also tried to kind of bribe his way to becoming high up in the church, ultimately took his toys and went home.

15. 8:27

    Michael Horton

    Marcion didn't take his toys and go home. He actually gave a lot of land. He was from a shipbuilding family and had a lot of wealth. And when he became a Christian, he gave much of his land to the church. And once he took up his heresy, the church excommunicated him and gave him his money back.

16. 8:55

    Justin Sledge

    We should not overstate what it means to be Bishop of Rome in the second century. It's not like the Pope in the same way that the Pope is the Pope now, but it wasn't nothing. And the fact that Valentinus had a real shot at becoming the Bishop of Rome in the second century, in the 140s, I think that should tell us that these are not one-off weirdo people secretly scribbling crazy stuff.

17. 9:19

    Michael Horton

    Peter Lampe, by the way, L-A-M-P-E, has written the definitive study of this whole era in Rome. It's called [From] Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries. It really hits the mark here, and it shows that there were no bishops at this time. And Valentinus certainly almost got the moderatorship of the presbytery. He tried to worm his way into it, but he too was pushed out of leadership. And it took a while for people to realize what this was. It was new and strange. And they still called themselves Christians, but they were Gnostic Christians, Christians “in the know,” rather than Christians who merely preach Christ and him crucified, as they would say. The main point here is there were no popes, there were no bishops in the first two centuries of the church.

18. 10:26

    Justin Sledge

    Now, these are whole communities of people for whom these stories were theologically important and meaningful. And it's a form of Christianity that—and again, I don't have a dog in the fight of which Christianity I'm rooting for, because I'm not rooting for any of them particularly. But I do think that a history that leaves out the mess isn't really a history. History is messy. And we should be unsurprised that the history of Christianity is actually quite messy. And when we sort of impose upon it a teleology that it was always going to go a certain kind of way, then we totally distort what it is that we're studying. This is the same true of Judaism.

19. 11:02

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, right. He's absolutely right about study of history. You can't impose a teleology. This is where it should go. So this is where, like, the march of history, you know, from superstition to science and those big narratives. Absolutely. History is messy. But the point is, there was an orthodoxy before the Gnostics came along that was defined by the scriptural canon, and therefore there could be a rule for judging Gnosticism to be antithetical, first of all, to the teaching of the New Testament, but also in addition to the New Testament, which the ancient church rejected. The canon is closed. The New Testament is complete. This is our scriptures. Did you know Bruce Metzger at Princeton once said that if all of the manuscripts, if all of the copies of the New Testament had been lost, we could still reconstruct the entire New Testament from the writings of the church fathers? That's how the scriptures defined what the great church was, and the Gnostics simply said those writings aren't true. They don't tell you the higher truth, which is that Jesus didn't come in the flesh. John writes in 1 John, “whoever says he didn't come in the flesh is antichrist.” So we're already dealing with this in the New Testament era from the very beginning. Christianity was defined over against these heresies. And so it's not a teleology, it's not imposing some kind of anachronistic picture that this is where it should have ended up at the Council of Nicaea. It’s that the Council of Nicaea and all of the other councils that outlined where the guardrails are here were logical next steps from what had always been the orthodox position, and the Gnostics themselves recognized that and didn't want any part of the Great Church.