In Part 5 of our series, we’ll be discussing the eighth article that Jack @ Sigma Frame wrote about Gnosticism.
I came across an insightful article at The Catholic World Report (Benjamin Wiker): The New Gnosticism (2011-05-02).
I can’t confirm the veracity of the source, but this particular article strikes me as being an extremely incisive exposition on the influence of modern Gnosticism, and this article is 10 years old! I encourage readers to go read the article in its entirety and come back to comment, but in the interest of time, I’ll pick out a few excerpts that reiterate what I’ve been talking about in the last few posts of this series.
Let’s review that article, shall we?
The article was written by Benjamin Wiker, Ph.D., a Roman Catholic and Professor of Political Science at the Franciscan University of Steubenville and a teacher at a few other Roman Catholic schools. He’s most well-known for promoting intelligent design.
One of the oldest heresies besetting the Church is Gnosticism. We can say “is” rather than “was” because the temptation to entirely spiritualize Christianity and demonize the material world never really goes away. In fact, we are seeing it in a new form today in the notion that the material world, as it’s been “given” to us by evolution, is radically defective, and we therefore need to transform it completely by human will.
So, let me get this straight: ancient Gnosticism attempted to spiritualize Christianity and demonize the material world. Now “Neo-Gnosticism” has taken the theory of evolution as proof that the material world is defective and needs to be transformed by human will.
Right out of the gate, this makes no sense at all. Where is the Gnostic spiritualization to be found in the supposed Neo-Gnosticism? Nowhere at all. Spiritualization is replaced by human will. It’s not Gnostic at all.
Professor, this is really poor logic!
This new Gnosticism is rooted in modern science, rather than ancient spiritualism, and sees the human body itself—even the distinction of male and female—to be something that is fundamentally flawed and in need of transformation by human technological power. To understand the new form of Gnosticism, we’d better remind ourselves of the old.
Oh, come on. This isn’t Gnosticism at all. What Wiker is describing is transhumanism, not Gnosticism.
Behind transhumanism is science and technology, which operate on empirical and rational grounds. By contrast, ancient Gnosticism was rooted in the spiritual: mythologies, cosmologies, and mystical experiences. At best, the two share some superficial similarities, like changing from one thing to another. But this is so simplistic that it describes Christianity too! In any case, one is religious while the other is not.
If a movement or philosophy lacks the spiritual or mystical elements central to Gnosticism and rejects further them for science, rationality, and technology, then it has fundamentally departed from the central tenants of Gnosticism. Just because both are trying to “transcend” in some way does not make them equivalent or closely comparable.
The heresy of Gnosticism had its origin in paganism but burst into full flower in its disruption of early Christianity. At its heart is a hatred of the material world, in particular, the human body.
This is nonsense. Hatred of the material world was not essential to Gnosticism, rather, the dualism between the spiritual and the material was. For example, Gnostic groups like the Valentians, Sethians, Basilideans, Carpocratians, and Ophites were all more libertine in their approaches than Wiker’s description.
Jesus was divine, but since the flesh was evil, he wasn’t really incarnate.
The belief that the Gnostics thought the flesh was evil is an oversimplification and misunderstanding of Gnostic doctrine, which was highly complex and nuanced.
That is the way of heresies. They are almost always human simplifications of Divine mysteries.
Without a hint of self-awareness, Wiker ironically simplifies Gnosticism and its approach to the divine mysteries.
Since Wiker doesn’t know what he’s talking about, I’m just going to skip ahead for a bit. If you are interested in me discussing anything I skipped over, feel free to mention it in the comments.
One of the most insightful of figures of the 20th century was the political philosopher Eric Voegelin, whose classic New Science of Politics revealed the Gnostic origins of modernity, or better, of certain powerful and influential strains of modern thought and practice.
Jack has done a very poor job at citing the sources of his opinion, but when he finally reveals one of his sources, it’s Eric Voegelin. Does that sound familiar? Recall what Bruce Charlton wrote in the comments under Part 1 in the series:
As I’ve said before, it seems to me that most of the references to Gnosticism that have been for c 20 years endemic to the “Christian/ Right” blogosphere is derived (directly or indirectly – e.g. via Lawrence Auster) from Eric Voegelin – who is a non-Christian and secular source of near-zero validity IMO:
Voegelin seems to have wanted to prove that Leftism was a heresy of Christianity (rather than being instead, as I believe, anti-Christian) under the influence of an abstract and hyper-inclusive Bad tendency he called “Gnosticism” – but which had only the vaguest selective similarity to the beliefs of actual Gnostics.
Charlton’s intuition is superb! I’m genuinely impressed.
Here is one critical point:
If your concept of Gnosticism derived from Voegelin, it is important to clarify that Voegelin was not a Christian, was not engaged in any kind of Christian discourse or project; and he was indeed one of those who (mistakenly!) regarded leftism as a Christian ‘heresy’.
Most importantly; Voegelin cannot have known much about real-life historical Gnosticism, because the relevant Gnostic texts (Nag Hammadi library especially) had not been translated when he was writing.
So – Why should Voegelin’s ideas of Gnosticism have any validity At All?
The answer, of course, is that Voegelin’s ideas have no validity. No wonder Jack and Wiker have no idea what they are talking about.
I’m going to stop reviewing Wiker’s article because there really is no point in continuing. His foundation is flawed. Without access to the best source of Gnostic documents, the conclusions he drew were anachronisms without merit. This also serves to explain why Jack’s portrayal of Gnosticism is so bizarre and unmoored from reality.
Given this, don’t be surprised if this is the last article in this series.
Aw shucks! – you’re making me blush…
Bruce,
Before you sent me that link, I hadn’t read your article before and I had mostly pre-written the bulk of this series. Then, as I was doing the prep for this post (after finally having read yours) I realized that, without even knowing it, you had already—back in 2023—intuited the answer to my exploration all along.
Thus is largely explained why this modern conceptualization of “Gnosticsm” is so bizarre. The fact is, you summarized it in a single definition (slightly edited):
I could have saved time had I known to start there, but I suppose proving it the way I did has value too. Anyway, thanks for your insight.
Peace,
DR
i think Charlton today has explained something most RP® Genius Leaders who are so caught up in Rules, Order, Hierarchy, and Power never consider certainly NOT in regards to marriage or any Male-female relationship and something that i(i unlike RP® Genius Leaders don’t think I’m the GREAT I’AM nor have an ego in the size of God either-so i write uncapitalized i) have for decades since my first Girlfriend couldn’t put into words, but now Bruce in my stead has.😉
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2025/02/courage-without-hope-once-possible.html
”But I regard the conceptualization of courage without hope to be a modern, anachronistic, and fundamentally untrue characterization of the attitude of ancient Men. I regard the conceptualization as flawed by failing to take into account that ancient Men were much more groupish in their consciousness, much less individual.
Ancient Men were not alienated, did not experience themselves as cut-off from other people, the natural world, and the world of spirits and gods.
On the contrary, they seem to have experienced life as spontaneously immersed in the consciousness of these other Beings. Their awareness, and their actual perceptions, included other Men, animals, plants, spirits and gods – and the dead were, at times, directly experienced as being present and active. ”
Yes ever since i was with my first GF onwards i consider mine and every other Male-Female relationship to be a US & group unto itself.
Our RP® Genius Leaders foolish friends think it’s all about their ”muh individualism Power and Authoritah and muh Feministic Patriarchy” denying the TRUTH revealed by God in Scripture!:
4 He replied, “Have you never read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female,-Matthew 19:4Amplified Bible
But they are certain their problems with women, the Government, and God are not of their own making!:
13Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business, and make a profit.” 14You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
15Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord is willing, we will live and do this or that.” 16As it is, you boast in your proud intentions. All such boasting is evil. 17Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do, yet fails to do it, is guilty of sin.”
All they think about is women,sex, Rules, Order, Hierarchy, and Power, and deceive and destroy themselves in it and cry about how it’s someone else’s fault(some woman usually) that they don’t keep the law that they supposedly revere and love.
Hey MOD this is what it must be like to be Gen Z reading RP® Genius Leaders talk of game, self-improvement, Trump, and ”Patriarchy”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZJ_1IHJJsw
Millennials explaining work culture to Gen Z
Anna Akana
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It’s like Michael Savage used to say ”why would youth Raised in the modern culture NOT do drugs instead of reading Shakespeare?” yet the Jacks, Oscars, and Sparkless easily expect them to want to learn Shakespeare plus learn PUA,” Patriarchy”, secret female codes, kiss the butts of supposed RP® Genius Leaders who can’t stop failing and read the Bible in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic too.