10 Comments

Not sure if I agree with this article. Religion relies on dogma and revelation, but the philosophical traditions you discussed (such as Gnosticism or Neoplatonism) are firmly based on reason and logic. Fun to read though, good historical overview.

Expand full comment

Oh goodness, not trying to take you to school. This is a topic we share an interest in but come to from originally different places. I came out of Judaism so that part is more familiar for me but most Christians are barely aware of it.

I've been peeking into Orthodoxy's opinions of Augustine and he gets heresy accusations there, but also more nuanced treatments about fallibility and error. https://www.goarch.org/-/saint-augustine-greek-orthodox-tradition

I'm not sure yet how to understand Augustine in this context... should he be understood as a former Gnostic and Manichean who brought it in, or an antagonistic but fallible ex-Gnostic who is part of Christianity's developing immune system to it?

It'll be interesting to see where it all leads!

Expand full comment
Jan 8Liked by Jean Marie Bauhaus

Nice piece, except Kabbalah does not appear until the Middle Ages in Europe, with source material rarely going back past the 11th century, so it's hard to see how it could be an influence on 2nd century Christianity.

Greek philosophy was influential and, and there were a variety of attempts to reconcile the Greco-Roman way of life and worldview with Judaism. It's a normal process when two philosophies collide, especially with colonization. The weaker party must adapt to survive.

So, yes you'll see a lot of attempts to describe Judaism and Jewish mysticism in Platonic terms and it has influence on subsequent Jewish mysticism. And you can see bits and pieces of similar ideas in other religions. But as a self-replicating holistic system, adapting to survive purges? That arises totally within Christianity probably because it was so young then, with few defences to it.

Gnosticism is a competitive system, fatal to the host ideology and unable to be assimilated and neutralized. It cannot simply live quietly as a minority view within another ideology for long. Give it the opportunity it spreads until it destroys the original.

Nothing like that evolves in Judaism until Shabbatai Tzvi in the 18th century, who was influenced by Dutch and English Protestant millenarianism and the remains of Gnostic ideas creeping around Europe in the Enlightenment. Hasidism arises around the same time and creates backlash but is ultimately assimilated, as Kabbalah was.

Shabbatai Tzvi is an interesting one to look up to see the mass hysteria and mob behaviour that ensues when Gnostic ideas cross back into Judaism as Jewish communities become less insular in this period....and which unlike Christian communities had few religious antibodies to it. Because we have so much historical material about the messianic craze it set off, you can really see the resemblance to the meteoric rise of Woke in post-Christians who have lost most of their antibodies.

Shabbatarianism was chaos, with whole communities selling all their goods to prepare for aliyah, and dissenting rabbis fleeing from murder plots and violent mobs. The damage to the reputations of both Judaism and sects of Christianity involved led directly to mass defections from Judaism and the rise of Jewish and Christian Atheism. We're still living in the wake of that.

Expand full comment

Amazing read, you explain it so well. Crazy enough I’m reading Nag Hammadi scriptures again right now to understand all of these connections better. I see book of Thomas is very different from the rest of it. I read in the few older documents that it’s believed that Magnus the sorcerer started Gnosticism.

Expand full comment