The Beliefnet Guide to Gnosticism and Other Vanished Christianities

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T HE

BE LIE FN E T

G UI D E

TO

gNOSTICISM AND OTHER VA NI S HED CHRISTIANITIES

A lso n·onilnble

T HE BEL IEFNET GU IDE TO .10BBALAH THE BE LI EF NET GU I DE TO SVANCE LICA L CHRISTIANITY T H E SE LI EFNET G U I D E T O JSLA11'1

THE

BELIE FN ET

GU I D E T O

gNOSTICISM AND OTHER VANISHED (HRISTIANITIES Richard Valantasis Pufau hy

Marcus Borg

Three leaves Press Doublt'day I New York

THR~~

L~,\1 ~' PR~ ,-,

PUIILI S iiED IIY D O UIIL E DAY

a division of Random H ouse, Inc. and its colophon are u·ademarks of Random House, Inc., and DOUBLEDAY and its colophon are registered u·ademarks of Random House, Inc.

THREE LEAVES PRESS

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Valanrasis, Richard, 1946The Beliefnet guide to Gnosticism and other vanished Cluistianitics I by Richard Vabnrasis ; preface by Marcus Borg.- lst Three Leaves Pressed. p. cm.- (The Beliefner guides) 1. Gnosticism. 2. Heresies, Christian- History- Early church, ca. 30-600. 3. Church history- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600. I. T itle. 11. Series. BT1390.V35 2006 299'.932-dc22

2005050577

ISBN 0-385-51455-7 Copyright © 2006 by Beliefnet, lnc. Preface copyright © 2006 by Beliefnet, Inc. All Rights Reserved PRI NTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMER I CA

First Three Leaves Press Edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

PREFACE BY MARCUS BORG

1x

INTRODUCTION: NOT ON£ RELIGION BUT MANY

T he Invention of Orthodoxy

xv11

xx1

T he "Big Bang" Theory of C hristian Origins

xx1v

TIMEL/NE: A CHRONOLOGY OF EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORY AND LITERATURE

x xvii

1. THE 1\i.L~NY KINGDOMS oF Goo

Jesus and Diversity

1

Multiculnual Paul

5

2. THE VARIETIES oF GNosTic E xPERIENCE

Bmied Treasure

9

What Is a G nostic?

12

\ .Vhat Did the Christian Gnostics Believe?

15

Hidden Knowledge-The Key That Unlocks the Spirit The Myth of Sophia

20

17

Gnostic Anthropology

23

Gnostic Systems of Salvation

28

Gnostic Biblical Interpretation Demons and Angels

29

30

Pmyer and Mystical Language

31

The Succession of Teachers

32

3. THREE GNOST IC SECTS

Who Were the Sethians?

35

What Did the Sethians Believe?

37

\1\Tho Were the Valentinian Gnostics? \/\That Did the Valentinians Believe? Who Were the Carpocratians?

A

49

54

What Did the Carpocratians Believe?

4.

44

55

NoN-GNoSTIC CHALLENGE TO 0RTHODO:>..'Y

Who Were the Marcionites?

63

The Marcionite Scriptures Marcionite Theology

64

67

5 . T HE OTHER GosPELS

The Gospel of iVIary The Gospel of Thomas The Gospel of the Savior

73

76 78

6. F EELING THE B uRN: AscETIC CHRISTIANITY AND THE QuEsT FOR BoDILY P uRITY

Who Were the "Continents" (aka Encratites)? A Different Kind of Romance Novel

83

What Was Solitary M onasticism? Who Were the Boskoi?

88

93

Who Were the Stylites?

94

Who Were the "Fools for Christ"?

95

Who Were the Vagrant Monks?

7. HoLY

82

96

R oLLERS AND SAcRED TERRORI STS

Who Were the Montanists?

99

What Did the Montanists Believe?

1 02

Who Were the Donatists and the Circumcellions?

1 05

8 . CHALLENGES TO CHRISTIANITY FROM THE R oMAN VVoRLD

Who Were the Manicheans?

11 5

What Did the Manicheans Believe? Who Were the Hermeticists?

121

The Legacy of the Henneticists \1\fhat Is Neoplatonism?

11 7

126

127

What Did the Neoplatonists Believe? The Legacy ofNeoplatonism

APPENDICES GLOS SARY

131

134

13 7 1 47

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

15 3

PRE FACE

BY MARCUS

BORG

T his book on ''vanished Christianitics'' puts us in touch with forms of c.arly Christianity that did nor survive. It thus describes directions Christianity could have taken but d idn't. Scholars and some C hristians have become increasingly aware of cad y Christian diversity over the past few decades. Until about a half century ago, we knew abour these groups primarily from t hc.ir Christian opponents. Bm in 1945, an early Christian library from the fourth century was discovered in southc.rn Egypt. It containc.d fifty-one Christian documents from the first few cc.nrurics of Christianity, most of them hit herto unknown. T hey wc.rc published in English n·anslation in

1977 as The Nag Hammadi Library. At about the same time., Elaine Pagels's book The G11ostic

Gospels became a bestseller. More recendy, her book Beyond Belief(anoth cr bestseller) contrastS the Gospel of Thomas wit h the Gospel ofJohn as t\\'0 very different fonns of early Christianity. Along with Bart: Ehrman's Lest Christianities, it has once again brought early Christian diversity to public attention. T h is book by Richard Valantasis not only stands in t he same

PRE f AC E

'

genre, but also makes a major contribution to our awareness of the, varieties of early C hristianity. Such a\varc.ncss is both intc.r-

cscing a nd important, cspcciaUy for C hristians, and for both historical and contemporary reasons. T o begin with why it's in te resting, here you will mcc.t '(vanished " voices from the first three centuries o f C hristianity. In this book, to mention only a fc.w of the Christian groups that Valantasis describes, we meet: Valcntin.ian Christians (sc.cond century): an dire. intellectual group who devised a sophisticated allegorical and s pirjntal in te rp retation of scJip turc. Marcionitc Christians (second century): a g roup who rejected Jewish scripture (wh at Christians now call th e Old T estament) and the God of Judaism, and produced a "New Testament'' consisting o nly o f a highly editc.d version of Luke's gospel and a collc.ction o f Paul's lc.ne rs.

Montanist Christians (second and third centuries): a c harismatic Spirit-filled ''radical fe minist" g roup {to usc Valantasis' language) t hat ordained women as deaco ns, priests, and bishops. Do natist Christians (early fourth century): a rigor-

ous group that rejected any Christians who had collaooratcd with Rome during the great persecution of th e. c.ar1y 300s, and whose "te rrorist win~., the C ircwncellions, physically attacked collaoorncionist Christians cvc.n as they also sought martyr-

dom.

F'R!;fACE

You will also encounter catly C hristia n documents fro m t his pe riod t hat d id not make it in to t he New Tcstame.n t: the Gospel

of Mary, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of the Savior, Semi Gospel of Mark, and so fo rth. T hese vanished fo rms of C hristianity in vite speculation about "counterfactua1" h istory. Such history im agines what the world would be like if t he historical process had de.vcloped differently. For example, what would our world be like ifHitle.r had vanquished t he R ussians by beginning h.is R ussian campaign a month earlie r in 1941 so that he could have. conquered Leningrad and tv[oscow before the Russian winter set i n? O r, to usc Phi lip Ro th's most recent novel Tht Plot Against A mtr-

ica as an c.-...:ample: W hat would have h appe ned if an isolationist and Nazi sympath izer had won the p residential election against Franklin Roosevelt in '1940? Valantasis engages in such ''countc.rfactual" speculation in his e ngaging o pe ning chapter, in which he imagines what Christian congregational life today might be like if one or ano the.r o f these. groups had continued as the ro ad most taken. An awareness o f early C hr istian itics is not o nly interesting but importan t and hdpful. For C hr istians in particular, it mattc.rs for more than o ne reason. Many of the questions that C hristians struggled with in the first three. cenrurics arc stiU with us: Is the Bible to be interpreted o nly litcrall)\ or may it be in terpreted metaphorically and spiritually? H ow should C hristians live. in a dominant cul-

ture whose values arc radically difiCrc.m fi·om the

xii

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Christian vision? Is Christianity primarily about an inner spiritual fre,cdom that can accommodate. itself to any domi nant culrure, or docs lt also lead to resistance to dominant culture? In early C hristianity, the dominant culture was the Roman Empire. In our tin1c, it is modern VVcstcrn culture. coupled (for Americans) with imperial power. How nmch can Christians comprotnisc with culture, with "the world,"' and still be C hristian? How much should d1e sacred scripture of Judaismwhat C hristians call the Old Testament-matter to Christians? Probably at least a slight majority of Christians today arc "Niarcionitc" without being aware of it.. There is a v.ridcsprcad Christian stereotype that contrasrs the God of the O ld Testament as a God of law and judgment with rlle God of d1e New Testament as a God of mercy and love. T his contrast is implicit :Marcionitism, e.ve.n as it is also wrong. To "'demote"' the God of the Old Testament impovc.rishes our understanding of the Bible and Christianity. There is yet another reason that awareness of early Christian dive.rsity matters. Namely, we arc living in a time of major change (and thus conflict) withi n North American Christianity. A way of being Christian (which I call "an earlier C hristianity"') has ceased to be. persuasive to millions of pe.oplc in our time, including manv who arc Christians as well as manv who ~ ' have left the church or never been part of it. Another way of being Christian (which I call "an emerging

F'R!;fACE

xiii

Christianity") is lx.ing embraced by many within the church . Opponents of this change frequently defend their form of Christianity as being '"traditio nal" Christianity, that is, as the right way of bc.ing Christian, the correct fo rm of C hristianity. But this book makes us aware that there has neva been one single form of C hristianity. As Valantasis ernphasizcs, we mistakenly rend to think of Christian diversity as a relatively late development. Our conunonly told story portrays the church and C hristianity as a unified institution until the eleventh century, the period of "the o ne true church." Then in 1054 the great cUvision betw~.n western (Roman Catholic) and eastern (Orthodox) C hristianity occurred. Some centuries later, in the Protestant Reformation of the si.xteenth century, western Christianity divided again, c.ventually into hundreds of denominations, many of them scelcing to return to the "pure" form of Christianity of the Nc.w Testament and the earliest ccnruries. But thc.re were many forms of Christianity from its earliest days. There have been many ways of being Christian fTom the beginning. No one way can c1aim robe the only way. So also in our time: no particular fOrm of Christianity can claim to be the o nly true form, the only right way. This awareness raises ano ther question: Arc there some ways of being Christian that aren't really Christian? To put that diffcrc.n tly, is every group that claims the name "Christian" authentically C hristian? I don't have a prc-eisc. answer. But two things seem dear to me. On the one hand, there arc ditlCre.nccs that do not disqualifY o ne from being Christian. I usc as an example the famous conflict bct'A•ccn t\vo Christian leaders of tl1e early fourth ccntUf)') Arius and Athanasius. They were the prim ary antago nists

xiv

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at the Council of Nicaca in 325 C. E., the council (as this book notes) that created most of the. Nicc.ne Creed that is used in churches to this day. At the cc.n tcr of the controversy was the ultimate status of Jesus. For both Athanasius and Arius,Jcsus \ll,'aS utterly ccnn·al. But was Jesus one with God, of the same substance as God, coeternal with God, part of the Trinity (Athanasius)? Or was Jesus of mmost importance but nevertheless a little. bit less than God, created and no t co-eternal (Arius)? Athanasius and his position won. But docs this mean that Arius wasn't really o r authentically Christian? 1\l[y own answc.r: of course. Arius was a Christian. T he difference bctwc.cn him and Athanasius wasn't great enough to disqualify him as a Christian. In general, doctrinal d.iffere.nccs like this do not seem to me to be the determining factor in whether a person o r position is Christian. On the other hand, it seems equally clear to me that there arc groups and thc.ologies that claim to be Christian that arc. not. To usc two obvious c.'\an"'ples, the Branch Davidians convc.ned by David Korcsh and white. supremacist "'Christian" groups arc far beyond anytlllng recognizably C hristian. About such groups, it is not ditlicult to say, '"Nor Christian.·• Of course, those arc the e.asy cases. Bm they do suggest that thc.re arc. boundaries to what can be called C hristian, even as those boundaries should not be narrowly drawn. Discernment about the boundaries of authentic forms of Christianity is less clear when we think about some of the forms of cad y C hr istian diversity that Valamasis reports. Fo r cx:unple, several of these groups disparaged the material wor1d as lxing the crcarion of an inferior god, a god who 'A'aS evil, and

F'R!;fACE

not the true God. So, do we say, "TI1cse people denied that the world was created by God, and therefo re they ,,.,eren't C hristian''? Or do we say, "These were Christians who denied that the material world was the good creation of G od''? Such discernment is difficult. Bur accord ing to a saying of Jesus reported in lVlatthcw's gospd} the p rimary test o f discernment is "'By t helr fruits~ you shaU know thc.m." The fruits arc o ften vc.ry mixed in t he lives of most Christians. O f the C h ristians whom Valantasis describes, we know very linle about the virtues their lives embodied. IVlost of th em viewed the world as evil. But were their lives filled with compassion, i n spite of their frequent disparagement of the world as evil? Or were their lives filled with judgmentalism, grounded in spiritual clitisrn or unredeemed anger or both? \ •Vould we sec among them~ if we knew more about t hem, the lives o f saints? Thus also in our tim e., the test of'wauthc.mic,. Christianity is

"By their fruits, you shall know them." The Spirit of God can and docs work th rough a varic.ty of \vays. So, I welcome you to this book. Read it to satisfy your curiosity about these vanished forms o f C hristianity, including some vc.ry strange ones. And usc ir to reflect about what it means to be religious today by struggling with the questions that faced th em.

I N TROD UCT IO N

NOT ONE RE LIGI ON

BUT MANY

l n the first cc.nturics aftc.r the crucifixion o f Jesus, a rich variety of beliefs and practices developed throughout the ancient world,

n1any of thc.m C h ristian in name but startlingly d.iffc.rcnt from what we thin k o f as Christiani ty today. !VIcmbers of long forgotte n Christian movements created dauntingly complex philosoph.ical systems- some of which dcscrlbc the world as the creation of a lesser God and Jesus as a mo rtal man. There

wc.rc pious monks who sat o n pillars in the d esert; others crawled about on their hands and knees eating grass to save the wor1d; still othe rs regarded fla tulence as an audible sign of d ivine grace. Thc.rc: were. ascetics and libertines; biblical fu ndamentalists and revisionists- some C.'ior) naturt. The third part/ the lo:w (Omists ofmaterial that i1 a//egoriall and 1)'11lbolic. It prtunts 1m image of tramandmt spiritual realities. Thtu the Savi(IT' metaphfffi:ud, taking material from the phyma/ and Lord. Therefore my mind desires to make hymns to you dai1y.1 am the organ ofyour splrir~ the mind is your plectrum; and your counsel plucks me. I sec mysdf. I have received power from you, for your love has touched us. T he. expe rience was almost complete. The in itiate had become. an adept, a master, now capable of guidin g othc.rs in the search for knowledge and chc. experience of chc divine. Thc.rc was one last ste p, howcvc.r : th e. writing of a book. The

guide instructed the newly initiated: ''0 my son. write this book in hieroglyphic c haracters fo r t he Diospolis temple.'' The process ended with the continuation of knowledge and learn -

ing, in books that articulated the engagement with God and thus helped othc.rs to fi nd che way.

T HE L EGAC Y OF TH E HERM ET I C I STS

TI1c H c rmcticists' ability to create intense and loving conununitics of spiritually alive.. intd lcctually expansive) and socially responsible seekers posed a serious challenge to C hristian ity. T here v~ras no room here fo r blind f.'lith or mindless trust, such as the Christian bishops demanded from their fai thful. Soon some. C hristia n c hurches would require their baptizands to undergo a similar init iat ion of reading and smdy, so that by the time o f t heir baptism they would be completely nansfo rmedan idea taken almost d irecdy from thc.ir H en netici,st rivals. In 1462 C{)simo de' Medici commissioned 1'v1arcilio Ficino, th e fiunous Italian scholar and a uthority on ancient languages,

CHA l l ENGES

TO

CHR I ST t AN i f ' ( .

.

.

12 7

to translate into Latin the: Greek text of the: Hermetic treatises, which he had just secured from the. Byz.: