Question: How much ‘spirituality’ is too much?
Gnosticism: focused on “knowledge” rather than good works; “spirit” rather than body; and attempted to understand the mysteries of heaven, angels, and other spirits
The Influence of Culture
- “Gnosticism” developed from the mixture of Christianity and certain Greek ideas (see notes on Plato below)
- How do some of our American cultural ideas influence how we think about our faith? (for instance, our disposition to think about the spiritual life individualistically rather than collectively)
Spiritual Cosmology of Plato (Greek philosopher in the 4th century BC):
- The world of “matter” is just an illusion; what really matters is the divine world
- Human souls are, in fact, sparks of the divine world that now are stuck in this world of matter
Who Were the Gnostics?
- Groups of people within Christian congregations, from late 1st century to early 3rd
- They had a wide range of views, but a few points in common:
Common Gnostic Themes
- An emphasis on “secret knowledge” as a means of salvation
- A denigration of physical matter (including the human body)
1.) There is one all-powerful, spiritual God over all others
2.) Human beings are “sparks of the divine” trapped in bodies
3.) All physical matter is evil and must be escaped
4.) God sent a spiritual emanation of himself (Christ) as a non-physical messenger of the secret knowledge we need for salvation
The Goal of Gnosticism
To escape the “tomb” of the physical body and return to God
1.) Acquire the “secret knowledge” / “wisdom” of our true origins
2.) Denigrate the body—some groups did this by extreme austerity; others by hedonistic license
The New Testament vs. Gnosticism
Paul, in 1 Corinthians, attacks certain Christian cliques who defined their elite status with reference to “wisdom” (1 Cor. 2), and who apparently had no shame in how they used their bodies (5:1-2)
James stands against a trend in early Christianity that emphasized only a faith based on knowledge of Christ; in contrast, he reminds us that what we do, here and now, in our bodies, matters to our spiritual lives (James 2:14-24)
But the clearest example of a NT author actually challenging an early form of Gnosticism is the apostle John. In his Gospel, he makes clear that both “spirit” and “flesh” are important, and reminds us over and over that Christ came “in the flesh” (see John 1:14, 6:51-57, 20:24-28)
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.” - 1 John 1:1
“Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.” – 1 John 4:2-3
“Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.” – 2 John 7
Are we a little too Gnostic?
- We need to remember that, according to Scripture:
- The body and the physical world are good creations of God, to be treasured and cared for (not to be escaped)
- Human beings are meant to be embodied—that means that when we think about eternity, we should probably think more in terms of “resurrection” and “the new earth” than of our “soul going to heaven”
- As important as knowledge of Christ is, it’s not our act of intellectual assent that saves us—it’s Christ’s own sacrifice that does that. And when we want to grow as Christians, our sanctification comes from the work of the Spirit more than from some new insight we can apply to our lives
- “Real worship” isn’t just the things we think about as “spiritual”—singing, praying, reading the Bible. Real worship, according to Scripture, is a matter of our whole lives being oriented towards God—our jobs, our relationships, the food we eat, etc.—all of this is part of true Christian “spirituality”