Why gnosticism is wrong

In some gnostic myths a partner, Christos, was created for Sophia and that partnership is an aid to humans. Sophia is thus simultaneously part of patriarchal myths that devalue women she is the cosmic "fall" just as Eve is the material "fall" and represents liberation from them. By those who love her she is readily seen,. Sophia fem. She arises in the later texts of the Jewish tradition, first simply as wisdom with a capital "W," and then, in the Book of Proverbs, personified in a female form.

The writings of early Christianity frequently draw on Sophia as a metaphor for Christ. The texts that include references to Sophia have only been canonized in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, but many contemporary feminists have turned to her as a general model for feminist spirituality. Her personality is riddled with contradictions. She is at once creator and created; teacher and that which is to be taught; divine presence and elusive knowledge; tempting harlot and faithful wife; sister, lover, and mother; both human and divine.

Frequently Sophia defies the feminine norm established by society. We see her crying aloud at street corners, raising her voice in the public squares, offering her saving counsel to anybody who will listen to her. Wisdom's behavior runs directly counter to the socialization of a proper lady, who is taught to be rarely seen and even more rarely heard in the sphere of public activity.

Mollenkott Just as Sophia defies definition, her origins seem impossible to trace. Scholars have suggested Semitic sources the goddess of love and fertility, Ishtar , Egyptian sources Maat , the goddess of conception , and Hellenistic sources the goddesses Demeter, Persephone, Hecate, and Isis , and yet they have found no source for Sophia within the Hebrew tradition.

Thus, it is still unclear whether she was borrowed from a nearby civilization or invented by the Hebrew writings. Scholars have dated Sophia's textual sources at least years after most of the Hebrew tradition was developed. Cady et. She grows in power throughout these texts, until, as Christian feminist Joan Chamberlain Engelsman suggests, Sophia comes to rival God's power, promising salvation for those who choose to follow her.

Both Engelsman and Rosemary Radford Ruether insist that the strictly monotheistic texts of Roman-era Judaism never portray Sophia as an autonomous female divine figure. Others have argued that some passages actually describe Sophia as a co-partner with God. Early Christians seeking to understand Jesus as savior within the context of their Jewish origins searched the Hebrew Scriptures for related figures.

Jesus did not completely match the traditional Jewish conception of the messiah who was to be a human king who would establish a new reign of justice and peace in Israel. Jesus actually seemed to have much more in common with Sophia who was part divine and part human, sent by God to change society. And, as the authors of Wisdom's Feast argue, both Christ and Sophia ultimately failed to completely transform society: Sophia's cries to humanity were in vain and Jesus was crucified.

Thus, early Christians adopted Sophia as a model for their portrayals of Christ while continuing to refer to him as the messiah. Paul makes the following associations between Christ and Sophia: Christ is the Wisdom of God; like Sophia, he is a creator, first born of all creation, the radiance of God's glory and the image of the invisible God.

Luke describes Jesus as Sophia's son who communicates her wisdom to humanity. In Matthew's writings, Jesus is explicitly described as personified Wisdom. Perhaps John's Gospel draws the strongest connection between the two figures, relating the story of Sophia as the pre-history of Jesus. The Disappearance of Sophia. Eventually Sophia was completely fused with Christ. Wisdom became Logos, and explicit associations between Sophia and Jesus disappeared from Christianity.

Many Christian feminists describe her disappearance in the psychological language of repression. In her essay, "Wisdom Was Made Flesh," Elizabeth Johnson argues that the feminine Wisdom was replaced by the masculine Logos "as it became unseemly, given the developing patriarchal tendencies in the church, to interpret the male Jesus with a female symbol of God" Johnson The authors of Wisdom's Feast offer a very different theory.

They suggest that in order to recognize Jesus as equal to God the Father, all explicit associations between Jesus and the weaker Sophia had to be abandoned. Wisdom's Feast also traces Sophia's disappearance to the tensions at this time between the Gnostics and the mainstream Christians. The Gnostics tended to downplay Jesus' humanity, and many rejected the notion that he was human.

They adopted the association between Jesus and Sophia in order to de-emphasize Christ's bodily pain and suffering and focus more on the wisdom he imparted. Mainstream Christians, eager to separate themselves from the Gnostics, thus avoided reference to Sophia.

Gnostics believe that we need to be delivered from the physical world in order to go to the spiritual world. Merely appearing to be human means that any atonement can only appear to be effective. Scripture nowhere says that matter is intrinsically evil. But those problems are caused by sin, not by physicality.

He has no intention of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. So Christians, unlike Gnostics, believe in feasting and joy. The senses we have—taste, smell, touch, sight, hearing—and the body itself are not in themselves things that the triune God is embarrassed by or wants us to somehow grow out of. He made these things and He promises to redeem them. I wonder if many of us can sometimes be functionally Gnostic. The word Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis , meaning "knowledge.

Spiritual salvation was of preeminence to the Gnostics because they thought the human spirit was naturally good and was entrapped or imprisoned in the body, which was naturally evil or merely an illusion. Their goal, therefore, was to free the spirit from its embodied prison, and the only key to unlock the prison doors was the mysterious knowledge they possessed. This radical distinction between our bodies and our spirits led Gnostics to twist the early church's understanding of who Jesus was and is.

The Gnostics saw Jesus as a messenger bringing the special knowledge of salvation to humanity's imprisoned soul. They believed that when Jesus came to earth He didn't possess a body like our own; instead, the Gnostics taught that He only seemed to have a physical body known as the heresy of "docetism," from the Greek verb "to seem". This was a denial of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation—the belief that Jesus was both fully God and fully human.

But the Gnostics went even further: they also denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus, an event Paul argued must have taken place or our faith is in vain 1 Corinthians —14, 16—17, 42— The implications of these Gnostic beliefs had profound effects on the church. Not only did the Gnostics successfully deceive some people in the church into becoming Gnostic themselves, but their misleading ideas about how Christians should live crept into some church teaching.

In practice, some Christians came to the false conclusion that they must literally beat their bodies into submission and live such ascetic lives that they never allowed themselves the enjoyment of bodily pleasures.

Others went to the opposite extreme and permitted their physical passions to run whatever course they chose. Those in this second group justified their libertine lifestyles with the erroneous notion that their evil bodies were destined for destruction anyway, while their spirits, which they believed were good, would remain unharmed.

Unfortunately, traces of Gnostic thought continue to permeate the thinking of many well-meaning Christians today.