The Gnostic Stance
Carl Jung was not
only interested in Gnosticism; he was a Gnostic. And so am I.
But let’s back up a few steps.
The father of demythologizing was not
Rudolf Bultmann, but rather that worthy’s student Hans Jonas, who wrote one
of the earliest major books on Gnosticism, The Gnostic Religion. In
an appendix to the second edition he introduced demythologizing. He wanted
to “psych out” the ancient esotericists, including Valentinians, Mandaeans,
Manichaeans. Why did they bother giving time, effort, and credence to a
system of mythology that seems, if anything, more outlandish than ordinary
Catholicism by a good country mile? Lin Carter once commented to me that, if
he were to choose a religion (though he wasn’t about to!) it would have to
be Gnosticism with its baroque complexity, all of its warring archons and
aions, its hidden worlds and cosmic intrigues, and most of all, I suspect,
its claims to privileged knowledge. To Lin, after all, it was almost the
same being a Theosophist (modern kin of the Gnostics) and simply having read
Madame Blavatsky’s opus, The Secret Doctrine.
Anyway, Jonas suspected that there must
be some deeper hook to the religion that made the old Gnostics commit
themselves to it, especially once you remember how they sometimes got
persecuted for their faith. Jonas figured that the Gnostics’ mythological
system must embody and express their existential self-understanding. It must
have seemed to be a way of articulating their stance and finding a course of
symbolic action that would enable them to “act out” existence as they saw
fit, even if it were “only” a matter of cathartic self-expression in either
ritual or secret libertine behavior (though most Gnostics were sour-pussed
ascetics. Lin wouldn’t have liked that!)
From this, Bultmann adapted his program
of demythologizing the New Testament. Though many seem to have forgotten it,
Bultmann was arguing not so much against orthodox supernaturalism as against
Ritschl-style religious Liberalism, which simply rejected biblical
supernaturalism and emphasized the abiding moral content of what remains.
Bultmann wanted to interpret mythology, not just subtract it. He was,
therefore, a Neo-Orthodox theologian, not a Liberal. And his hermeneutic of
demythologizing has proven a valuable way of understanding the myths of many
cultures. You can see how the Greek self-understanding is expressed in the
myths of Prometheus and of Icarus, for instance.
I do not for a nano-second embrace the
doctrines of classical Gnosticism. I demythologize. I reject the very aspect
of Gnosticism that Lin Carter liked about it. I retain the Gnostic
self-understanding of existence in the world. The Gnostic (“knower”)
occupies a superior vantage point to that where the common run of mankind
dwell. Not just a different one, mind you, but a higher one (1 Corinthians
2:14-16). As John Stuart Mill said, the pig cannot judge Socrates because
poor Porky knows only the lot of the pig. But Socrates can judge the pig
because his viewpoint includes that of the pig, at least of infantile,
sensual pleasure. This is what I believe lends credibility to my books
Beyond Born Again and The Reason-Driven Life. I do not approach
my critique of born-again fundamentalism as an alien entity, as I should,
for instance, should I be writing a book against Nazism. Thank God, I’ve
never been a Nazi, but, groan, I have been a fundamentalist. I have seen it
from both sides.
How does the Gnostic, ancient or modern,
know better than his or her contemporaries? For one thing, he knows
himself. This is the psychoanalytic aspect of Gnosticism explored by
Jung and expounded by disciples including Ira Progoff, Erich Neumann, and
Stephan Hoeller. Let me recommend my book Top Secret, chapter 9,
“Know-It-Alls,” for more on this aspect. But here I want to focus briefly on
the sociology of knowledge angle. In fact, in this sense, the most “Gnostic”
book I know is not the ancient Pistis Sophia or even Hans Jonas’s
The Gnostic Religion but The Social Construction of Reality by
Peter L. Berger and Thomas V. Luckmann. It is written from a true Gnostic
standpoint. Like Berger and Luckmann, the ancient Gnostics understood that
the “foundations” of society, with its system of values and grid of social
morality, are all a kind of consensus fiction, something workable but
artificial and imposed upon each person as he haplessly enters the world.
The all-embracing catechism, the water in which the young minnow will
henceforth be swimming, is what neo-Freudian Jacques Lacan calls “the Law of
the Father.” The Gnostic knows what the Sophists of ancient Greece knew once
they got back from their travels abroad: the way it’s done at home isn’t
necessary the unique and absolute truth, and certainly not the revealed
creation of the gods. No, we have received our social order from our
ancestors. Ancient Gnostics said we received this education, this molding,
from the Demiurge, the inferior deity who made the disastrous material
world. The modern Gnostic, the sociologist of knowledge, the psychologist,
knows the Demiurge as a mythic mask for the dead hand of the human past, a
collective name for the all-too-human founders of our society. They seem
like gods in retrospect, the inerrant word of their laws (e.g., the
Constitution) ever to be obeyed with numinous awe. But they are the
creations of humans like us (James 5:17, “Elijah was a man with a nature
like ours…”). Look closely, and you can see the fingerprints. If you are
Charles Beard, you see nothing but fingerprints, and bloody ones at that.
This is certainly no less true of
conventional religion than it is of government. The ancient Sethians,
Valentinians, Basilideans, et. al., understood that Judaism and Catholicism
were not revelations from God Most High as their deluded adherents were
taught to believe (by catechists fully as deluded as themselves). No, they
came from a lower source. For Gnostics, these religions were founded by the
Demiurge as a scheme for bringing the fledgling, hapless humans into the
orbit of his vainglorious worship. The Gnostic knew of a higher way. The
Unknown Father had sent the Christ-Aion into the world to awaken all those
with a sentient spark within them as to their true origin and destiny. The
modern “Gnostic,” the critical intellectual, understands that there is no
Demiurge except as the figurehead human priesthoods have carved out and
installed on the prow of the social ship. And of course the priests have not
done so merely to fatten themselves off it (though his has happened often
enough). Conventional religions have been a crucial social structure, a
bulwark against the flood of otherwise ungoverned human passions, instincts,
and desires.
But, you may ask, do we, does society,
really require religion for that purpose? Why not just set forth the needs
of people in society and make a rational appeal for all persons to respect
the rights of all other people? Ah, now you’re talking Gnosticism! True,
pure knowledge ought to be enough. But it isn’t. As Aristotle lamented, it
seems to be beyond the capability of most people to make distinctions. The
truth doesn’t always work because many or most will never grasp it. And they
may not appreciate hearing it either. Hence those of us who are convinced we
know better must be circumspect.
One cannot finally escape, I fear, the
Gnostic analysis of humankind into three groups. First there are the
two-legged animals “whose god is their belly” (Philippians 3:19) and have no
horizons. To oversimplify, they behave “correctly” (as defined by social
consensus and catechism), but they do so mainly in order not to get caught
and jailed. These are they, as Kant said, who are merely “acting in
conformity with their duty,” that is, when they do behave. And too
many never will. No education, no remediation or rehabilitation will change
them. The second group are those who “act for the sake of duty” simply
because it is their duty. These are the conventionally pious. But the third
group, the elite Gnostic aristocracy, have, in Nietzschean terms, embraced
their own case as that of the Superman, responsible for creating his own
values, no matter what the mob may say. And the Gnostic Superman’s
obligation is not to seek to replace the Demiurge, not to become a new
Demiurge, because God is dead, even the god whom the Superman is. God
is the same as Truth. Neither exists. Both alike are empty drawers. And they
must remain empty. We dare not allow our collection of ideas and beliefs
from the next drawers (the ones labeled “fiction” and “theory”) to creep
over and refill the empty “God” and “Truth” drawers. If we do allow that, we
will not be long in mistakenly opening that drawer to find something in it
and to proclaim that something “True” or “God” simply because that’s what
the label on the drawers said. We have to keep them empty to avoid that
error. We cannot come to believe in our own infallibility and inerrancy. “I
said it! God believes it! That settles it!”
That is to say that the true Gnostic is
responsible for only his own beliefs. Who assigned him the task of setting
everyone else straight? Who appointed him Philosopher King? His task is not
to order everyone else around, even if he does know better. They will have,
one day, to come to see “it” for themselves, and the Gnostic must be around
to help them do it. “Funny you should raise that question! Have you ever
considered this point?” The Gnostic is patient. He is Socratic, not
Draconian. An imperialistic zealot out to convert everyone else to his view,
or worse, to try to rule others who do not share his enlightened opinions,
is only going to bring those opinions into disgrace and expel them ever
farther from realization. This is the meaning of the saying “Do not throw
your pearls before swine, or your holy things before dogs, lest they crush
them underfoot, turn on you, and maul you” (Matthew 7:6). The Gnostic has to
act slowly and subtly, like leaven working its way through the dough. In
other words, if people do not (or cannot be brought Socratically to) see it
for themselves, our “truth,” our “gnosis,” our perspective will do them no
good.
So says Zarathustra.
