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It never ceased to amaze me when taking Church History in Seminary and doing my "outside" reading the shock and horror that I felt when reading about the glorious history of the Christian church down through history. Let me give you an example.
In 1209 A.D. the entire population of the Albigens was slaughtered at the order of Pope Innocent III. The Albigens, in the south of France, was then the most populous, the most technically, socially, and economically advanced part of Europe. Its population was largely Gnostics and Arian Christians, and were a sanctuary for Jews who were persecuted almost everywhere else in Europe. All of these groups had a high percentage of literacy and read the Bible, which was prohibited by the Vatican. Innocent III was seeking to put a stop to the "Gnostic heresy", but found it to be entrenched throughout Europe, so he followed the "Cathar Crusade" with the creation of the Inquisition, resulting in countless millions of people being slowly and brutally tortured to death over the next 500 years for even the mere suspicion of being witches. Innocent also reinstated a prohibition against the owning or reading of Bibles by anyone other than clergy, under penalty of death.
Of course we have mentioned before the terrible persecution of the Gnostic Christians by Orthodox Roman Christianity but we never pointed out that Rome is responsible for the death of 18,000,000 people who were put to death for the "beliefs"; beliefs many of which held which were the Ancient Beliefs of the Spiritual Masters of Antiquity which had been handed down since the beginning of recorded time. These "beliefs" could easily be classified as "Gnostic". Gnosticism usually refers to an esoteric cult of divine knowledge (in reality a synthesis of Christianity, Judaism, Greek philosophy, Hinduism, Buddhism, Egyptian religion and the mystery cults of the Mediterranean which flourished during the 2nd and 3rd centuries and which was a rival to, and influence on, early Christianity before the rise of Romanism. The medieval French Cathar heresy and the modern Mandean sect (in southern Iraq) descend from Gnosticism and likewise felt the point of the Roman sword for their religious traditions concerning "the Christ".
As mentioned elsewhere Gnostic 4th-century codices were discovered in Egypt in the 1940s and they include the Gospel of St Thomas (unconnected with the disciple) and the Gospel of Mary which probably originated about AD 135. Gnosticism envisaged the world as a series of Emanations from the highest of several gods or Aeons. In this cosmology the majority of Gnostics saw as stated before that all creation emanated from One Absolute Intelligent Energy-Force-Power-Spirit and that from this One Source came all later attributes or emanations from this One which comprise the "All in the One". The lowest emanation was seen as less "pure" than this Absolute and associated with the idea of "evil" and this "evil god" (the Demiurge) was believed to have created the material world with all is death and suffering as a prison for the divine sparks that dwell in our human bodies. In other words this Demiurge was "way down the ladder" from the Perfect Absolute. The Gnostics identified this evil creator with the God of the Old Testament.
Answer for yourself: Why would they do that? Well this question is self-explanatory if you have ever read the Old Testament and can remember what you read. The God of the Jews is depicted as quite arbitrary and cruel at times. This evil god of this world (who is identified with the god of the Old Testament) is separate from a higher more abstract God revealed by the "Christ" who taught a religion religion that regards this world as the creation of a series of evil archons/powers who wish to keep the human soul trapped in an evil physical body, a religion that preaches a hidden wisdom or knowledge only to a select group as necessary for salvation or escape from this world.
These Gnostics taught that this physical world was created by this Evil God who they identified as the Old Testament God who acted without proper authorization from the Good Absolute God, who was the secret and true God. The material world, for either the reason above or some other reason, is therefore inherently evil and flawed. Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden by the Evil God for the "sin" of seeking knowledge (gnosis, get it?), thereby rendering the serpent into a heroic figure. Only later is the serpent made evil in the religion of Rome. No wonder the serpent is identified with "wisdom" all the way down through history. This Evil God is a male figure, sometimes referred to as Samael, which means "blind God," or Yaldabaoth, which means "born of chaos" or some such thing. The Good God was often depicted as a mother goddess named Sophia, which means "wisdom." One only has to read Proverbs to see the beauty of the "feminine" aspect of this Absolute God or "Sophia" as one of His Emanations. Jesus, or "the Christ" functioned as an intermediary and an emissary of the Good God (or Goddess), who was sent to Earth to impart secret knowledge to the chosen few. Now you can begin to see more clearly why the Gnostics saw that the ministry of "the Christ" within mankind was so important for he had come to attempt to liberate humanity from the dominion of this Evil God and this again was done by imparting Divine Truth and Secret Wisdom (Sophia) of the Divine Realm to those who had shown themselves worthy of such truths.
Naturally, the Roman church decided the best way to resolve their differences with these Gnostics was to kill all the Gnostics and burn all their books. This took a while, but they did a really thorough job. With the extermination of the Cathars and the Knights Templar by the Inquisition in the 13th century, the last vestiges of Gnosticism were eradicated... or so it seemed.
Rome would set out to "edit" the Bible because there were traces of gnosticism scattered through the Christian bible (specifically the Gospel and letters attributed to the apostle John, as well as the Book of Revelation). But the real survivals of the religion came in three distinct branches.
Answer for yourself: So why is all of this so important for Christianity? The Gnostic scriptures provided a lot of insight into the development of early Christianity, as well as providing textual clues to the origins of the New Testament gospels, which may have been plagiarized in part from the Gnostic originals.
Because of this "plagiarism" and "the rewriting" of the Gnostic Gospels which taught only an "indwelling Christ" and not a "literal-historical Christ" as a man who lived in Israel in the first century Rome felt compelled to silence their opponents. Thus the persecution and killing of the Gnostics and the destruction of their "knowledge" and "gnosis" was undertaken by the emerging Roman Church. Grace is a word which has so oftentimes been mentioned by the lips of Bible-thumping Christians in these earliest centuries but the Gnostics found none at the hands of Rome.
Now I want you to think with me. There has been so much emphasis on grace that most Christians have comparatively little knowledge and understanding of the Law as in the Old Testament. In fact I showed in an earlier article done years ago that the Hebrew word for "grace" carries with it the idea of "conditionalism"; that man "merits grace" from God or else he does not. And this "conditional grace" come only in man's attempt to live according to God's Torah and Commandments and Laws and when and if man fails then repentance and renewal to the task of obedience brings the "grace from God" to such a man. This is a starling revelation to the Christian Church who prides themselves today to not be "under the Law or Laws of God" and not "under grace" and who seldom ever hears of "repentance" except in a new members's class when you join the church. The fact the Church and Protestants in particular won't really follow anything in the Old Testament or even the teachings of "the Christ" himself in Matthew, Mark, and Luke has always puzzled me. We always seem to spend our time in Church reading "the black" of Paul and not the "red" of the Christ. Amazing to me as a ex-Pastor is that hardly any of God's Ten Commandments are followed at all by most mainline churches and their teachings:
And I could go on.
Most amazing is that the level of brainwashing is so severe that Christians in general are not even aware that this shift of focus away for God's Laws and Commandments had been propagated in the 2nd century. At the beginning, after all the apostles had died, the leaders who replaced them were mostly Gentile pagans. These Gentiles had comparatively little understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures unlike the Jewish apostles and followers of "the Christ in Israel" who had been exposed to the teachings of the Law and the Prophets since birth. This caused a shift in focus to the New Testament (written by fellow converts) and the elimination of anything Jewish. This was very true of the moral codes which Jesus exalted his followers to obey.
Answer for yourself: So what caused the church to virtually ignore the Law, the Hebrew Prophets, all the Apostles (except the Gnostic John), and even the teachings of the "Jewish Christ" himself and focus full attention to Paul and his writings on grace? The name is Marcion who is Gnostic.
Marcion was born around 100 C.E. at Sinope, a seaport located on the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey. His father was a leader in the church and so Marcion grew up in fellowship with the church in Asia Minor. Around 138 C.E., he traveled to Rome and became a member of one of the Roman churches. As a wealthy ship-owner, he large contributions to the church and he became a respected member in the Christian community. He was eloquent and learned in the contemporary form of the Gospel and the early Christian community and so gave the impression of being a Christian teacher with apostolic authority.
While Marcion was later condemned as a heretic over his unorthodox views and booted out of the Church in Rome, by the end of the 2nd century his doctrine became a serious threat to the mainstream Christian Church. His strange kind of Christianity had swept across large sections of the Roman Empire.
Marcion’s reference was always the teachings of Paul (the only apostle whom he trusted), especially that of the saving grace. In his belief, the saving grace of God was miraculous. He held the Gnostic idea the whole creation to be faulty, being the creation of a lesser god, thus containing no element of the divine. Marcion got it partly right and partly wrong and we need to read closely to understand this if we are to every understand "Dualism" correctly.
Marcion was influenced by Persian dualism which is often called Zoroastrianism which is a belief in two forces in the universe, one good and one bad, who are constantly fighting it out for supremacy. As well Marcion believed that the Creator God who created the material universe was the God of Israel (Demiurge), who was a totally different God from the Father spoken of in the gospel of Christ (the Good God).
Answer for yourself: Is Marcion teaching Emanationism? Yes. Believe it or not so far so good as Marcion was expressing Ancient Concepts of Emanationism as taught by the Ancient Spiritual Masters for thousands of years. But there is a problem with Marcion and his Emanationism and later Dualism that is a departure from what the Ancients believed.
Answer for yourself: What was that? Well the answer comes later in this article so hold on.
It was here in Maricon's idea of Emanationism and the reality of "belief in two forces in the universe, one good and one bad, who are constantly fighting it out for supremacy that we find the seeds for later theological error. The problem is in Marcion's understanding of the "source" of these opposing powers which we will get to later.
Answer for yourself: Did Marcion see that the "Evil God" came from the Good God (the Absolute) or did he teach that both the Evil God and the Good God were in existence from the beginning? This is very important for our concept of Emanationism!
This is where Orthodox Christians and Gnostic Christians part company on the Creation. Orthodox believe Creation (physical world and man) became "corrupt" with Adam and "the Fall" where Gnostics believe Creation was corrupt to begin with since all Creation was the work of the Evil God (Demiurge) while yet the Absolute Spirit was good. Thus we have our basic "Dualism" of light vs dark, good vs bad, etc.
In the Second Century, when Christianity was coming to light as an important new theology, the ideas of personal acquaintance with God and dualistic worldview were old hats. Important for us to notice now is that a tendency towards dualism was evident in the West as far back as Zoroaster, author and prophet of a four thousand year-old Persian religion that we know only as Zoroastrianism. Assuming a dualistic battle between the God of Truth (Ahura Mazda) and the God of Falsehood (Ahriman), Zoroaster displays the universe as the interplay of these opposing forces in battle, as the two sides share in the Creation. He understood that in created being which we call "the physical realm" that it is but a picture of the "invisible realm" as Egypt had taught in the beginning; "so Above, so Beneath". Thus there are basically two opposing Forces or Energies in the Cosmos; we can call them "positive" and "negative" for simplicity. These over time become "God" and "Satan". With the advent of Zoroastrianism, dualism was in place within Western society, and would later be evident in Gnostic scripture. Also neither Greek and the Jewish religion can be said to be decidedly free of all Zoroastrian concepts of "dualism".
Dualism states that two opposing, or opposite, ideas, things, or categories mutually exist. A person holding such views is a dualist. Dualism explains the theory of knowledge by the confrontation of two different realities, subjective or objective; the religious cosmos in the terms of a perpetual conflict between good and evil, which has always existed. As one examines any dualistic situation he discovers that the two opposites are usually considered as coming from the same or similar source (the Divine Absolute). Thus "all comes from the One"; both visible and invisible. Thus this perpetual conflict of good and evil come from the One Absolute. This is a prime dualistic subject which we find over and over again when discussing the history of religion.
Answer for yourself: What do we have here? We have the attempt of early mankind to find the origin of "evil" in Creation and as we see he does not want to lay it at the feet of the Absolute One who we desire to be all "love" without "evil".
When hearing this statement of such "dualism" many think it only pertains to recent formalized religions, but such dualism has an ancient aspect as well. This is seen in the ancient religions centered on animism; that is the belief in spirits of the same genus or origin capable of doing good or benevolent things or evil and injurious things. Understand that it is the results of the actions of these spirits or mediators which determine whether it is good or evil, not the qualities themselves. Since all these spirits are Energies or Forces of nature of the Cosmos they can be good in some respects or circumstances and bad in others but again understand that they all come from the One Absolute.
Moving onto more highly developed religions one finds that a supreme, all-powerful spirit has emerged, called a great God. According to tribal legends and the Ancient Wisdom collected from around the world this supreme God is not the sole creator of the world, but has an adversary or collaborator who committed a malicious or stupid act that lead to irreparable harm. Thus we have saved the reputation of the "great God" and no evil can be connected to Him.
Answer for yourself: Why was this "second God" theorized? Simply to explain the existence of evil, sin, death, destruction, and the existence of suffering that must be kept apart and far away from the "Good God". In protecting God's character and identity and preserving His appearance as "all Good" men theorized the existence of another entity responsible for this suffering and sorrow in this physical Creation. Thus, the birth of "dualism" is a necessity and it follows that we have the later hypothesis that there is a second entity or "God" responsible for the flawed Creation in which we live.
Such legends express the astonishment of men finding themselves in the presence of evil and death, and expressing their belief that these terrible things do not belong to the essence of things, and they are not attributable to the supreme God. Here lies the germ of the dualism; the terrible things are believed to have come from the second being even though his independent origin is never positively expressed. This being may be a creature of the Supreme God or Absolute, or his origin is omitted.
Yes there are some who will believe that this "second being" had an independent origin and this confuses this whole system of Emanationism and such a one is Marcion as we shall soon see. This is why Rome will take issue with him believing him to believe in two separate "Absolute Gods".
Answer for yourself: Where did this dualism all start?
This dualistic struggle finds it literary origin in Ancient Egypt where we find it expressed in their religious "myths". This dualistic struggle between good and evil is exhibited between the sun god Re, symbolizing life and truth, and his antagonist snake god Apep (the Greeks called him Apophis) in the ancient Egyptian religion. Apep, a monster living in perpetual darkness, perpetually tried stopping Re's barque on its nightly journey through the underworld. During this struggle between light and darkness, the gigantic serpent is wounded by knives and spears hurled by Re's divine entourage. In legend, Apep was the personification of darkness, evil, and chaos. Occasionally the deity was victorious for a short duration, but in the end Re triumphed (Sunrise). Apep was slain by Re who cut up his body and burned it (the heat of the Sun). Again it is very important that we notice that it is observed that both deities have the same divine nature but have opposite objectives. They find their origin in the Absolute One from which both "good" and "bad" emanate.
The dualism theme is expressed again in the ancient Egyptian religion with the legendary battle between Osiris and Set or Seth. Osiris, the grain god, was considered by some the counterpart of Re after death. He was crucial to Egyptian agriculture; therefore, every king was the divine embodiment of Horus in life and became Osiris after death. From this evolved the Osirian legend found in the Pyramid Texts to be later popularized and embellished by the Greek writer Plutarch. The legend describes Set as the adversary and jealous brother of Osiris who during a drunken party was persuaded by his brother to step into a sarcophagus. Once inside the coffin was nailed shut and thrown into the Nile. This was followed by years of searching by Isis who eventually found the body. She brought it home. On the journey back, she breathed breath into the body and impregnated herself with Osiris' semen and bore his son Horus. Set was not always depicted as being evil. According to one legend he helped the sun-god Re when he was about to be swallowed up by Apep. However, later Set became the personification of evil.
Answer for yourself: What do we see here? Here again, both parties share a divine nature but have opposite objectives.
Notice in the following examples down through history we have the same understanding of the Divine Realm passed on from nation to nation over thousands of years.
Answer for yourself: Did you catch the big difference above in the Zoroastrian concept of Dualism? How does this concept of "dualism" change in Zoroastrianism that causes such a huge impact upon later Judaism and Christianity as we see today? Give up?
It is in Zoroastrianism that the nature of dualism changes and assumes its more permanent characteristic. The common meaning of a dualistic conflict became good versus evil, right and/or wrong, and so on; the sources of good and evil were separate, both no longer came from a single source as in the Aegean era. Both sources of "good" and "evil" had independent uncreated origins for their source. Both were essentially eternal Forces and Powers and Energies; equals. There is no longer any Emanationism involved in the sources of "good" and "evil". No longer do we have a "unity" from the Absolute but rather a "war in heaven" between two opposing Powers with separate origins and beginnings. Now God is fighting Satan; not Satan doing God's bidding!
The Aegean gods, such as Zeus, were both good and bad; they shared both qualities as their worshippers considered them deities with human traits. Within the Zoroastrian theogony this changed, good and evil came from separate sources, not one; dualism no longer was a combat between a more powerful versus a weaker god; it now involved the struggle between the good, or perfect, deity against the evil one. This struggle, or war, between equals is to be seen influencing most-later religious philosophies.
It is here in Zoroastrianism that the concept of the "All in One" and "Emanationism" is altered and ended for the most part and the influence of Zoroastrianism in later Judaism and even emerging Christianity is responsible for the loss of these Ancient Divine Truths of "Emanationism" from the Absolute God.
The Christian Gnostics continued the cosmic dualism, but varied it in a different fashion. Good and evil still existed, but resided in two different Gods; but they yet had the same source. The Christian God, Yahweh, they called the Demiurge, the "bad God", and they believe the "good God" was impersonal and aloof from the world. Contact with the Absolute was to be made through "His Christ" within mankind. Christ was the "bridge" so to speak. The Demiurge had been born of the Spirit of God and wisdom, personified as Sophia, is the divine creative force. To explain again the evil in creation the Gnostics used as they had before various myths to explain Spiritual realities. Let us look at one. Sophia, without the knowledge of the Absolute God, her mate, gave birth to her son, the Demiurge, a horrible looking child who is the "evil God". Unbeknown to the Demiurge his mother had given him some of her power which contained the Spirit, which he thought was his and with which he created the physical world. When doing this the Gnostics believed the Demiurge entrapped the Spirit (Divine Sparks) in matter. They viewed the Demiurge as being the Yahweh, Christian God, the creator, basing their belief on the statement, "I am God, and there is no one besides me."
For the Gnostics this changed the dynamics of the dualism. It was no longer the opposition between good and evil; they held the Christian God, called Demiurge, was evil representing the Devil; but the opposition was now between Spirit and matter since the Spirit was entrapped in matter. This oppositional change of "good versus evil" to "spiritual versus material" generated an overwhelming desire to eliminate the material among members of the Gnostic sects. This desire to eliminate the material was based upon the belief that the Demiurge through creation had entrapped the Spirit, especially in man, in matter, and the only way to ultimately free the Spirit was not to prolong life through propagation and sexual union. This view was part of the intuitive or reflective knowledge, which the Gnostics called "gnosis," which came from the study of man's inner self or soul and illuminated the Logos to bring salvation.
It is time to refocus. Central to our purpose in these articles is the obtainment of the metaphysical knowledge of these earliest Ancients and whom they influenced like the earliest Christians regarding their later beliefs about God and the Soul. Let us take one by one the cardinal points of the Gnostic creed and trace them back to their earliest appearance. Central to the above ideas is that before Zoroastrianism "the All is from the One" and not separate sources if we recall. This again beings us to "Emanationism" as first understood by the Ancient Egyptians as mentioned before. What we are really talking about here is Quantum Physics.
Emanationism is contemporary with the beginning of high civilization in Egypt. The “Memphite Theology" is a tractate from the Old Kingdom. In it, Ptah, the deity whom the Egyptians of Memphis considered the eldest of the gods, has emanated from him four couples of gods, male and female, in descending order of being. Ptah thought, spoke, and his word created them. Each god or goddess had no other being than the “heart and tongue of Ptah” and by them all things were made and without them was not anything made that was made. Ptah himself, incidentally, is represented not with the ordinary body of a man, but as a swaddled mummy with a huge protruding phallus, the combination of life and death. Earlier still than the Memphite Theology is the Ennead of Heliopolis, where the same four pairs are derived from the creator Atun. This, however, is an ordinary creation myth and does not share with the Memphis tract its remarkable philosophy. The unique idea of Emanationism is that the Great God acts only through his emanations.
Let us continue in the final article in this series as we look at some important historical changes to Emanationism and Dualism.