The False Gnostic Tradition in Modern Times

DEFINING TERMS

It was St. Irenaeus who pointed out that alongside the true sacred Tradition of Christianity there ran the false tradition of heretics......also known as gnostics.

Since gnosticism, which has been called "the heresy of knowing," is the invariable element in every Christian heresy, acquiring an understanding of gnosticism is a valuable undertaking for a Christian.


In the Catholic Encyclopedia we read:

The doctrine of salvation by knowledge. This definition, based on the etymology of the word (gnosis "knowledge", gnostikos, "good at knowing"), is correct as far as it goes, but it gives only one, though perhaps the predominant, characteristic of Gnostic systems of thought. Whereas Judaism and Christianity, and almost all pagan systems, hold that the soul attains its proper end by obedience of mind and will to the Supreme Power, i.e. by faith and works, it is markedly peculiar to Gnosticism that it places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge. Gnostics were "people who knew", and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know. A more complete and historical definition of Gnosticism would be:

A collective name for a large number of greatly-varying and pantheistic-idealistic sects, which flourished from some time before the Christian Era down to the fifth century, and which, while borrowing the phraseology and some of the tenets of the chief religions of the day, and especially of Christianity, held matter to be a deterioration of spirit, and the whole universe a depravation of the Deity, and taught the ultimate end of all being to be the overcoming of the grossness of matter and the return to the Parent-Spirit, which return they held to be inaugurated and facilitated by the appearance of some God-sent Saviour.

However unsatisfactory this definition may be, the obscurity, multiplicity, and wild confusion of Gnostic systems will hardly allow of another. Many scholars, moreover, would hold that every attempt to give a generic description of Gnostic sects is labour lost.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06592a.htm


With regard to heretical "Christian" gnosticism, gnostic heretics reject FAITH in the objective body of public divine revelation given by Christ to His Apostles which has been preserved intact and handed down by them to their successors in a concrete historical Apostolic succession to this very day.

Instead, the gnostics claim to directly (subjectively/privately) KNOW the "secrets of the universe"/mind of God independently of divine revelation. This was a so-called "secret knowledge" that the leaders of the heretical gnostic sects claimed that only they were able to supply.

It would be like one person saying that he could KNOW another person's thoughts independently of that other person's choosing to REVEAL what he is thinking. If we cannot know another person's thoughts independently of his choosing to reveal his thoughts to us, then how can anyone presume to think that he can know the mind of God independently of Divine Revelation?

Of course this is where demonic deception often comes into play. Because also according to the Catholic encyclopedia:

The second great component of Gnostic thought is magic, properly so called, i.e. the power ex opere operato of weird names, sounds, gestures, and actions, as also the mixture of elements to produce effects totally disproportionate to the cause. These magic formulae, which caused laughter and disgust to outsiders, are not a later and accidental corruption, but an essential part of Gnosticism, for they are found in all forms of Christian Gnosticism and likewise in Mandaeism. No Gnosis was essentially complete without the knowledge of the formulae, which, once pronounced, were the undoing of the higher hostile powers. Magic is the original sin of Gnosticism, nor is it difficult to guess whence it is inherited. To a certain extent it formed part of every pagan religion, especially the ancient mysteries, yet the thousands of magic tablets unearthed is Assyria and Babylonia show us where the rankest growth of magic was to be found. Moreover, the terms and names of earliest of Gnosticism bear an unmistakable similarity to Semitic sounds and words.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06592a.htm

By means of the aforementioned magical formulae and gestures, gnostics blasphemously claim to be able to tap into the mind of God - whether God likes it or not - and/or to control/ command "deity."

This "magic" can also include false mysticism such as false claims of apparitions, locutions, etc. It can also include deceptive "miracles," signs and wonders as we shall see in future articles.

In addition to all that, gnosticism is also blasphemous in so far as it pretends to "see what is veiled as if it were face to face." ( St. Irenaeus )

Indeed, some modern gnostics such as the notorious Aleister Crowley have equated their trances and false mystical experiences with the Beatific Vision which is the direct vision of God "face to face."

In fact, Crowley writes in his CONFESSIONS:

During this time, I was also granted what mystics describe as "the Beatific Vision" which is the most characteristic of those attributed to Tiphereth, the archetypal idea of beauty and harmony. In this vision one retains one's normal consciousness, but every impression of daily life is as enchanting and exquisite as an ode of Keats............

http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/confess/chapter78.html


One of the more obvious things (or at least it should be for critical thinkers) that was pointed out by St. Irenaeus is that gnosticism is an outright fraud in so far as the things the gnostics claim "to know" are things, which, in the last analysis, have to be taken on faith!
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Another component of gnosticism is its strong pantheistic strain. In fact, gnosticism is described by the Catholic Encyclopedia as "thinly disguised pantheism." Its emanationist cosmogony is simply a way of expressing the notion that everything in the universe is somehow all or a part of God. The evolutionary pantheism of the late Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin with its so-called "Omega Point" is redolent of the gnostic emanationist cosmogony in which everyone is "becoming a god."

According to the CATHOLIC COMMENTARY ON HOLY SCRIPTURE published in 1953, the two chief dangers to the Church at the time of the writing of the Apocalypse were emperor worship and gnosticism. If these two dangers have a tendency to go tandem, it is precisely because of gnosticism's strong pantheistic strain which is compatible with emperor worship - or worship of the state embodied in modern totalitarianism.

As the French philosopher Charles Peguy once so eloquently put it: "Everything begins as a mystique and ends as a politique."