The Gnostic Gospels (21 page)

The Savior explains that such persons made an imitation of the true church, “having proclaimed a doctrine of a dead man and lies, so as to resemble the freedom and purity of the perfect church (
ekklesia
)”
³
Such teaching, he charges, reconciles its adherents to fear and slavery, encouraging them to subject themselves
to the earthly representatives of the world creator, who, in his “empty glory,” declares, “I am God, and there is no other beside me.”
⁴
Such persons persecute those who have achieved liberation through
gnosis
, attempting to lead them astray from “the truth of their freedom.”
⁵

The
Apocalypse of Peter
describes, as noted before, catholic Christians as those who have fallen “into an erroneous name and into the hand of an evil, cunning man, with a teaching in a multiplicity of forms,”
⁶
allowing themselves to be ruled heretically. For, the author adds, they

blaspheme the truth and proclaim evil teaching. And they will say evil things against each other.… many others … who oppose the truth and are the messengers of error … set up their error … against these pure thoughts of mine …
⁷

The author takes each of the characteristics of the catholic church as evidence that this is only an imitation church, a counterfeit, a “sisterhood” that mimics the true Christian brotherhood. Such Christians, in their blind arrogance, claim exclusive legitimacy: “Some who do not understand mystery speak of things which they do not understand, but they will boast that the mystery of the truth belongs to them alone.”
⁸
Their obedience to bishops and deacons indicates that they “bow to the judgment of the leaders.”
⁹
They oppress their brethren, and slander those who attain
gnosis.

The
Testimony of Truth
attacks ecclesiastical Christians as those who say “we are Christians,” but “who [do not know who] Christ is.”
¹⁰
But this same author goes on to attack other gnostics as well, including the followers of Valentinus, Basilides, and Simon, as brethren who are still immature. Another of the Nag Hammadi texts, the
Authoritative Teaching
, intends to demolish all teaching, especially orthodox teaching, that the author considers
un
authoritative. Like Irenaeus—but diametrically opposed—he says of “those who contend with us, being adversaries,”
¹¹
that they are “dealers in bodies,”
¹²
senseless, ignorant, worse than pagans, because they have no excuse for their error.

The bitterness of these attacks on the “imitation church” probably indicates a late stage of the controversy. By the year 200, the battle lines had been drawn: both orthodox and gnostic Christians claimed to represent the true church and accused one another of being outsiders, false brethren, and hypocrites.

How was a believer to tell true Christians from false ones? Orthodox and gnostic Christians offered different answers, as each group attempted to define the church in ways that excluded the other. Gnostic Christians, claiming to represent only “the few,” pointed to qualitative criteria. In protest against the majority, they insisted that baptism did not make a Christian: according to the
Gospel of Philip
, many people “go down into the water and come up without having received anything,”
¹³
and still they claimed to be Christians. Nor did profession of the creed, or even martyrdom, count as evidence: “anyone can do these things.” Above all, they refused to identify the church with the actual, visible community that, they warned, often only imitated it. Instead, quoting a saying of Jesus (“By their fruits you shall know them”) they required evidence of spiritual maturity to demonstrate that a person belonged to the true church.

But orthodox Christians, by the late second century, had begun to establish objective criteria for church membership. Whoever confessed the creed, accepted the ritual of baptism, participated in worship, and obeyed the clergy was accepted as a fellow Christian. Seeking to unify the diverse churches scattered throughout the world into a single network, the bishops eliminated qualitative criteria for church membership. Evaluating each candidate on the basis of spiritual maturity, insight, or personal holiness, as the gnostics did, would require a far more complex administration. Further, it would tend to exclude many who much needed what the church could give. To become truly
catholic
—universal—the church rejected all forms of elitism, attempting to include as many as possible within its embrace. In the process, its leaders created a clear and simple framework,
consisting of doctrine, ritual, and political structure, that has proven to be an amazingly effective system of organization.

So the orthodox Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, defines the church in terms of the bishop, who represents that system:

Let no one do anything pertaining to the church without the bishop. Let that be considered a valid eucharist which is celebrated by the bishop, or by the person whom he appoints … Wherever the bishop offers [the eucharist], let the congregation be present, just as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church.
¹⁴

Lest any “heretic” suggest that Christ may be present even when the bishop is absent, Ignatius sets him straight:

It is not legitimate either to baptize or to hold an
agap
e [cult meal] without the bishop … To join with the bishop is to join the church; to separate oneself from the bishop is to separate oneself not only from the church, but from God himself.
¹⁵

Apart from the church hierarchy, he insists, “there is nothing that can be called a church.”
¹⁶

Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, agrees with Ignatius that the only true church is that which “preserves the same form of ecclesiastical constitution”:

True
gnosis
is that which consists in the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient constitution
[systema]
of the church throughout the whole world, and the character of the body of Christ according to the successions of bishops, by which they have handed down that which exists everywhere.
¹⁷

Only this system, Irenaeus says, stands upon the “pillar and ground” of those apostolic writings to which he attributes absolute authority—above all, the gospels of the New Testament. All others are false and unreliable, unapostolic, and probably composed by heretics. The catholic church alone offers a “very
complete system of doctrine,”
¹⁸
proclaiming, as we have seen, one God, creator and father of Christ, who became incarnate, suffered, died, and rose bodily from the dead. Outside of this church there is no salvation: “she is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers.”
¹⁹
As spokesman for the church of God, Irenaeus insists that those he calls heretics stand outside the church. All who reject his version of Christian truth are “false persons, evil seducers, and hypocrites” who “speak to the multitude about those in the church, whom they call
catholic
, or
ecclesiastical
.”
²⁰
Irenaeus says he longs to “convert them to the church of God”
²¹
—since he considers them apostates, worse than pagans.

Gnostic Christians, on the contrary, assert that what distinguishes the false from the true church is not its relationship to the clergy, but the level of understanding of its members, and the quality of their relationship with one another. The
Apocalypse of Peter
declares that “those who are from the life … having been enlightened,”
²²
discriminate for themselves between what is true and false. Belonging to “the remnant … summoned to knowledge [
gnosis
],”
²³
they neither attempt to dominate others nor do they subject themselves to the bishops and deacons, those “waterless canals.” Instead they participate in “the wisdom of the brotherhood that really exists … the spiritual fellowship with those united in communion.”
²⁴

The
Second Treatise of the Great Seth
similarly declares that what characterizes the true church is the union its members enjoy with God and with one another, “united in the friendship of friends forever, who neither know any hostility, nor evil, but who are united by my
gnosis
 … (in) friendship with one another.”
²⁵
Theirs is the intimacy of marriage, a “spiritual wedding,” since they live “in fatherhood and motherhood and rational brotherhood and wisdom”
²⁶
as those who love each other as “fellow spirits.”
²⁷

Such ethereal visions of the “heavenly church” contrast sharply with the down-to-earth portrait of the church that orthodox sources offer. Why do gnostic authors abandon concreteness
and describe the church in fantastic and imaginative terms? Some scholars say that this proves that they understood little, and cared less, about social relationships. Carl Andresen, in his recent, massive study of the early Christian church, calls them “religious solipsists” who concerned themselves only with their own individual spiritual development, indifferent to the community responsibilities of a church.
²⁸
But the sources cited above show that these gnostics defined the church
precisely
in terms of the quality of interrelationships among its members.

Orthodox writers described the church in concrete terms because they accept the status quo; that is, they affirmed that the actual community of those gathered for worship
was
“the church.” Gnostic Christians dissented. Confronted with those in the churches whom they considered ignorant, arrogant, or self-interested, they refused to agree that the whole community of believers, without further qualification, constituted “the church.” Dividing from the majority over such issues as the value of martyrdom, they intended to discriminate between the mass of believers and those who truly had
gnosis
, between what they called the imitation, or the counterfeit, and the true church.

Consider, for example, how specific disputes with other Christians drove even Hippolytus and Tertullian, those two fervent opponents of heresy, to redefine the church for themselves. Hippolytus shared his teacher Irenaeus’ view of the church as the sole bearer of truth. Like Irenaeus, Hippolytus defined that truth as what the apostolic succession of bishops guaranteed on the basis of the canon and church doctrine. But when a deacon named Callistus was elected bishop of his church in Rome, Hippolytus protested vehemently. He publicized a scandalous story, slandering Callistus’ integrity:

Callistus was a slave of Carpophorus, a Christian employed in the imperial palace. To Callistus, as being of the faith, Carpophorus entrusted no inconsiderable amount of money, and directed him to bring in profit from banking. He took the money and started business in what is called Fish Market Ward. As time passed, not a few deposits were entrusted to him by widows and brethren … Callistus, however, embezzled the lot, and became financially embarrassed.
²⁹

When Carpophorus heard of this, he demanded an accounting, but, Hippolytus says, Callistus absconded and fled: “finding a vessel in the port ready for a voyage, he went on board, intending to sail wherever she happened to be bound for.”
³⁰
When his master pursued him onto the ship, Callistus knew he was trapped, and, in desperation, jumped overboard. Rescued against his will by the sailors as the crowd on the shore shouted encouragement, Callistus was handed over to Carpophorus, returned to Rome, and placed in penal servitude. Apparently Hippolytus was trying to explain how Callistus came to be tortured and imprisoned, since many revered him as a martyr; Hippolytus maintained instead that he was a criminal. Hippolytus also objected to Callistus’ views on the Trinity, and found Callistus’ policy of extending forgiveness of sins to cover sexual transgressions shockingly “lax.” And he denounced Callistus, the former slave, for allowing believers to regularize liaisons with their own slaves by recognizing them as valid marriages.

But Hippolytus found himself in the minority. The majority of Roman Christians respected Callistus as a teacher and martyr, endorsed his policies, and elected him bishop. Now that Callistus headed the Roman church, Hippolytus decided to break away from it. In the process, he turned against the bishop the same polemical techniques that Irenaeus had taught him to use against the gnostics. As Irenaeus singled out certain groups of Christians as heretics, and named them according to their teachers (as “Valentinians,” “Simonians,” etc.), so Hippolytus accused Callistus of teaching heresy and characterized his following as “the Callistians”—as if they were a sect separate from “the church,” which Hippolytus himself claimed to represent.

How could Hippolytus justify his claim to represent the church, when he and his few adherents were attacking the great majority of Roman Christians and their bishop? Hippolytus explained that the majority of “self-professed Christians” were
incapable of living up to the standard of the
true
church, which consisted of “the community of those who live in holiness.” Like his gnostic opponents, having refused to identify the church through its official hierarchy, he characterized it instead in terms of the spiritual qualities of its members.