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In the Gospels, Christ himself explained to the disciples, privately, teachings which the "multitude" could only hear in parables. In the Gospels also, many of his sayings were said to be, for a time, beyond the understanding of the apostles themselves.
Matt 13:11 11 He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. (KJV)
Mark 4:9 9 And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. (KJV)
As we saw repeatedly in previous articles one of the identifies of Gnosticism is that their teachers taught "gnosis," "mysteries" and "hidden knowledge" to only certain people. The masses were not privy to this hidden understanding of the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus taught in parables and obscured the deeper meanings of many of the things he taught.
Matt 13:14-15 14 And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: 15 For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. (KJV)
Luke 8:10 10 And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand. (KJV)
Central to the formation of a universal Christian doctrine is the question: "How can a religion on such a high level be taught to, and made the rule of conduct for, the multitudes?
By "multitudes" is meant not necessarily the poor and unlettered, but the great mass of those only superficially interested and with little spiritual understanding - often including "the great ones" of the world.
Answer for yourself: How then could the Christian teachings that were handed down, and the principles underlying them that were formulated, expounded, and explained, be understood by the indiscriminate mass?
There were geographical and cultural differences dividing the hearers of these doctrines, but the differences of level - spiritual and intellectual - would seem to present an even greater problem. "No great historical religion has wholly succeeded in bringing its message to the masses without making some concessions to the weakness of average humanity" (S. Angus, Religious Quests of the Greek and Roman World).
Answer for yourself: A further question then arises - how great must these concessions be and how much do the concessions become distortions?
The Gnostics gave an answer to this question, though their type of answer came to be considered dangerously heretical by the Great Roman Church. The Valentinian Gnostics held that people did not come into the world basically alike, but that there were three definite classes of human beings:
The Redeemer came for the Gnostics and for those Psychics who could repent.
Mark 2:17 17 When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (KJV)
In most Gnostic systems, the Psychics could never reach the height of the Pneumatics, and their heaven was that of a psychic Christ, "seated at the right hand of the Creator-God". In all systems the Gnostics could ascend with the true Christ to the First Beginnings. The Choics had no hope.
For those who held these beliefs, true, inner Christianity could be understood only by the one class of people, born on a higher level than the rest. Many could only receive it in a limited, exterior form, and the great mass could not receive it at all.
This doctrine of the three different levels of men seemed to do away with the difficulty of how Christianity could be explained to all people, regardless of their understanding. It seemed to take into account the many hard sayings in the Gospels. But though it solved some difficulties, it raised an even greater one: predestination. If men, from their birth, were divided into these categories, their destiny was already carved out for them. In many Gnostic systems, the Pneumatics were saved already, and in all, the lowest class was barred, from birth, from any possibility of growth. Only the Psychics had some choice, and that was limited.
The idea of a hierarchy among human beings has been, consciously or unconsciously, accepted until modem times. It gradually degenerated into an acceptance of social grades within society, and has now virtually disappeared in the West.
The concept of a class of men, by nature spiritually more advanced than others, was acceptable to the people of the first centuries. That some were born with an innate striving after Truth and would sacrifice all for this striving was clear to the Gnostics. "This is the manner of those who possess (something) from above of the immeasurable greatness, as they stretch out after the one alone, the perfect one, the one who is there for them." (Gospel of Truth)
According to many Gnostic teachers the essential purpose of these "spiritual ones" was to strive upwards, so that through their efforts they could help others. For other Gnostic groups, these were already "the perfect" and needed no salvation. This latter conception was to find its way into many later "heresies", through the Middle Ages and beyond. As in so many religious teachings "heretical" and "orthodox", there may have been insights of value in Gnostic ideas, but these also held dangers when not fully understood, or when their balance was not kept. There was the continuous danger of the "simple" exalting and venerating as "perfect" those still far from perfection. For the "perfect", there was the danger of Antinomism, which means literally "the incompatability between two laws".
Antinomism was not an "heretical" system, but was, like Docetism, a tendency that appeared and reappeared in many schools and sects. It was based on the misunderstanding of an idea found in St Paul's epistles, (particularly in Romans), that those who lived by grace were beyond the Law. Paul was teaching that when all thoughts and deeds are moved by the energy of God there can be no sin - the true Spirit within man does not sin. This was distorted to mean:- "It does not matter what carnal sins the 'perfect' commit; these are only in the 'natural' body and have no connection with the 'spiritual'."
In the original Gnostic conception it seems that the "pneumatics" were not so much the privileged ones, as those from whom much more was demanded - much more than from the lower orders. "For, unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more" (Luke XII 48).
Today, the idea of different levels of humanity, as described by the Gnostics, would be an abomination and certainly not "politically correct." Not only would it seem contrary to the idea of an all-loving God, but would go against all modern conceptions of "democracy". In the first centuries, it was not these objections that made this doctrine heretical, but the implicit denial of Free Will contained in it. It implied predestination.
Strangely enough, St Augustine, in the fourth century, one of the greatest of the Church Fathers, whose teaching was to be the most powerful influence in the Catholic Church for over a thousand years, was stronger in his ideas on predestination than the Gnostics ever were. The foreknowledge of an omnipotent God, on the one hand, and the consequences of Original Sin on the other were the foundations of his philosophy: from the beginning of the world, all that is to happen is already in the Mind of the Creator, and the fallen are unable of themselves to rectify the results of their sins. His refutation of Pelagianism led him to the explicit formulation of these ideas.
The existence of a pre-ordained "elect" was a central tenet of Gnosticism, though it never became part of Catholic dogma; yet the spiritual superiority of some souls over others appears to be an obvious fact. If there is a Divinely planned universe, this must be part of the plan. If this is so, how can it be reconciled with man's freedom of will?
The Gnostics made the problem less intractable for themselves by their belief in pre-birth - in a life of the soul before this life on earth. The true Gnostic "knew" that he was a spiritual being, now imprisoned in a soul and body as a result of Sophia's Fall. Moreover, the Gnostics subscribed to a belief similar to that held in many Eastern religions - though they never clearly stated this - a belief in further lives after this one.
Some Gnostic schools held that there was a secret teaching given by Christ to his disciples and handed on by them to the chosen ones - the elect. We saw the the passages above that this is certain. Many of the Gnostic documents discovered at Nag Hammadi purport to be extracts from these secret teachings. Found at Nag Hammadi were the Apocryphon of John, and Apocalypses of James, of Paul and of Peter. These documents were in the form of dialogues between Jesus and the particular Apostle who was to hand on that secret teaching.
Some of the sayings in the Gnostic books seem artificial and contrived, as if trying to prove specific Gnostic theses. But there are others, particularly in the Gospel of St Thomas, that are not like this. The fragments of this "Gospel" found at Nag Hammadi have been dated about 400 AD; it is the most complete Apocryphal gospel that we have. It is written in the Coptic language and was presumably translated from an earlier Greek original, thought to be of the second century. Some scholars believe that it is closely related to St Mark's Gospel, assumed by many to be the main source, or based on the main source, of the Synoptic Gospels.
The Gnostics called the Gospel of Thomas the Secret Sayings of Jesus. The preface to this gospel reads: "These are the secret words which Jesus, the Living, spoke and which Didymus Judas Thomas wrote. And He said: He who will find the interpretation of these words will not taste death." (Quoted by R.M. Grant in The Secret Sayings of Jesus) In the Gospel of Thomas, "to understand" is equivalent to "keeping the word of Jesus".
The Gospel of Thomas had disappeared and was not discovered until 1945, and then only in its Coptic translation. But Bishop Hippolytus mentioned it in the third century, saying that it was used as their sacred book by the Naassenes, a second-century Gnostic sect, whose doctrines, as described by Hippolytus, seem to be closely related to the teaching of "Thomas".
The Naassenes were a branch of the Ophites and, like them, they revered the snake as the symbol of wisdom. They may even have identified this symbol with Christ. As with all Gnostic schools, they believed that Christ came to reveal saving knowledge to chosen disciples and that traces of their gnosis could be found in ancient traditions - in the Jewish Scriptures and even in Oriental religious teachings.
They believed - and their beliefs were similar to those found in Egyptian Hermetic literature:
The different grades of humanity in the Naassene system were also akin to those described by the Gnostics. There were the "gnostics", the "psychics" and the "choics"; and so there were three types of "church" - "the elect" (the gnostic), "the called" (probably the Christian churches of the time) and "the captive" (which would be for the rest of humanity). The "gnostics" were those who were able to receive and understand the saving knowledge.
The main theme of the Sayings collected in the Gospel of Thomas is that true religious experience is the recognition of one's own identity. "When you know yourselves, then you will be known; and you will know that you are the sons of the Living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty and you are poverty." (Quoted by R.M. Grant in Secret Sayings of Jesus).
The collectors of the Secret Sayings claimed, not only that many of these Sayings were unknown to the Christian churches, but that the Canonical Gospels, as read in the churches, were merely "psychic teaching" and should be interpreted by those who knew the secret tradition. The Gospel of Thomas was such an interpretation.
In the Gospel of Thomas, it is the inner meanings of Jesus' Sayings that alone have importance. The Kingdom of Heaven is never seen as a consummation to be looked for in the future, but exclusively as a spiritual state within a man - in fact, the state of self-knowledge. There is no mention of the Resurrection, and the idea of resurrection is given in purely spiritual terms - "Come into Being as you pass away." Human existence is not true being; true being is only achieved when human existence is transcended. Salvation was not seen as an act of God nor as something that could take place in the future, but as the present acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge of where a man comes from, who he is, and where he is going is the kernel of Gnosticism. This knowledge is not given by intellectual instruction, but it is the possession of a special revelation for those capable of receiving it. The Gnostic attitude to Christian tradition, therefore, necessarily implied the handing down of secret teaching to an inner group - to people with developed understanding.
The Gospel of Truth, which was mentioned in the writings of Irenaeus and Hippolytus but which has only recently been discovered among the Nag Hammadi documents, does not pretend to give the words of Jesus himself, but is about him and about the theme, central to Gnosticism - "If one has knowledge, he is from above... Having knowledge, he does the will of the one who called him... He who is to have knowledge in this manner knows where he comes from and where he is going."
Irenaeus did not explicitly reject this "Gospel"; he said only that it was unlike the other four. But the "orthodox" Church never accepted into its teaching the existence of a chosen grade of believers, and Irenaeus affirmed that there could be no hidden teaching, or else the successors of the apostles would have spoken of it.
By the end of the second century, the accepted Roman Canon of Scripture was more or less as we know it now. The alteration and replacement of the earlier Gnostic New Testament of Marcion and Paul had been, for the most part, accomplished. It is not difficult to see why what was accepted was accepted. Rome was not accepting an allegorical understanding of Divine concepts has had been done by the Ancients and the Gnostics; they literalized everything and invented many epistles and gospel writings to ensure this interpretation of "the Christ myth." It is equally no more difficult to understand why many existing documents from Marcion's First New Testament were added to in the later Roman construction of the Second New Testament. To this also no more difficult to understand why some documents from Marcion's First Gnostic New Testamet were left out of Rome's Second New Testament. As far as Rome was concerned the Gnostic Reedemer, "the Christ" had to be stripped of its non-human status and presented to a literalistic Greek world in "literalistic" manner if it was ever to be accepted and unity ever to be brought to the Roman Empire.
There was a Gospel of the Hebrews mentioned by Jerome, theologian of the third century and by other ecclesiastical writers of the time. Sayings of Jesus were sometimes quoted by them from a source now unknown to us. One of these, ascribed to Jesus though appearing in no known Gospel, is this teaching on prayer: "Ask for the great things and God will add unto you the little things" (Quoted by Maurice Wiles, The Making of Christian Doctrine). Some of the Gnostic "gospels" were also in circulation at this time. In the late nineteenth century, fragments of a Gospel of Peter were discovered in Upper Egypt. Eusebius, an "orthodox" Church historian of the fourth century, had mentioned it, saying that in the year 190 there were queries about the Gospel of Peter and that it was rejected by the Church leaders as giving an unreal and mythological picture ofJesus.
What was agreed to be Apostolic authorship became the test for inclusion in the Canon of Scripture. Notice I said "agreed" to be Apostolic. Sadly truthfulness did not matter to Rome when constructing their Second New Testament and many writings were forged in names of dead Apostles and Paul in order to promote their authority among the people. It is a fact and most probable that fear of Gnostic heresy excluded all writings that seemed tinged with it. The Apocryphal gospels portrayed Jesus as the Divine principle, the totality of authentic being, but not as a human being, living a human life at a definite period of time. So one reason for the rejection of these gospels may have been that they had no connection with historical fact. Historical reliability was considered to be an essential ingredient of "orthodox" Christian teaching. The Gnostics new better as "the Christ" was a Divine principle and not a human person and had been understood as such since the earliest dawn of mankind. One only needs to become familiar with Egyptian religion and its religious concepts to understand this fact.
The fear of Gnosticism even brought the Fourth Gospel under suspicion. "You shall know the Truth and the Truth will make you free" (John 8: 32), was thought by some Gnostic schools to sum up their whole system; and the first fourteen verses of St John's Gospel would also be especially relevant for them. Nevertheless by the time that the four New Testament Gospels had secured acceptance by the masses then there was never serious doubt about them becoming the the kernel of Christian Scripture due to their popularity among the people regarless of traces Gnosticism still mixed within them following Rome's purge of Gnosticism from the New Testament. Hard as they tried Rome was not able to destroy all traces of earlier Gnostic thought from the New Testament even though they tried. One skilled in Gnostic thought could yet spot Gnosticism and this explains why Gnostics relied heavily on Pauline epistles to promote their religious doctrines.
That there was a secret teaching given orally to chosen and specially ordained pupils, cannot, of course, be disproved, though the existence of such a teaching was strongly denied by the Great Church. The beginning of this article and the passages listed from the Gospels prove that Jesus believed in a secret teaching and taught this "mystery" to his "elect." This should make us rethink and ponder just what we are reading when picking up the New Testament and what parts that we read "literally" should be understood "allegorically" as did the earliest followers of Jesus. But belief in the possibility of such a teaching entered into many of the early Christian heresies and unorthodox schools of thought, and is one of the reasons why the early heresies are especially important in studying the development of Christianity. If this "heretical" belief is true, then Christianity, as it developed, has deviated from that original religious doctrines and dogmas accepted and taught by Jesus and his earliest followers. The realization of this fact should not only be terribly arlarming but should motivate you as a child of God to devote your life to recovering these Divine Truths. It did me!